Translation and Interpreting Research
Research Institute for Translation Studies (RITS)

When the First Brick is Crooked: The Philological Imperative in Historical Translation Studies

Document Type : Translation Studies

Author

Milad Bigdeloo

PhD Candidate in Translation Studies, Department of English Translation Studies, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22054/tir.2026.96233.1099
Abstract
Historical Translation Studies risks building theoretical arguments on unstable foundations when pre-modern translations are examined without rigorous philological scrutiny. This paper addresses this problem through a case study from recent debates on Qurʾānic translation history: the celebrated Persian rendering of Q. 15:22, Abr-hā rā ba dāmādī-yi gul-hā firistādēm (We send the clouds as bridegrooms to the flowers). It argues that debates about the translation’s fidelity and historical context are premature without establishing its textual integrity. Comparative analysis challenges the modern editor’s attribution of the source text, a version of Ghazali’s J̌awāhir al-Qurʾān, to Abū Ḥafs ʿUmar Nasafī, suggesting instead a considerably later origin, c. 8th/9th century AH. More fundamentally, manuscript analysis shows that the translation is absent from the source text and was interpolated by its 20th-century editor. Examination of its purported sources, including Sūrābādī’s Translation-Commentary, further confirms that it is a modern editorial insertion—a “ghost” translation with no manuscript basis. The case demonstrates how scholarly debate can rest on a textual phantom and underscores a methodological imperative for HTS: authorship, dating, and manuscript verification must precede theoretical analysis of historical translations.

Keywords

Historical translation studies
manuscript studies
philology
textual criticism
Qurʾānic translation

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