The Quran (Koran), 1st translation - - (top 100 novels .txt) 📗

with posterity,

"Peace be on Noah throughout the worlds!"

Thus do we reward the well-doers,

For he was one of our believing servants;-

And the rest we drowned.

And truly, of his faith was Abraham,

When he brought to his Lord a perfect heart,

When he said to his father and to his people, "What is this ye worship?

Prefer ye with falsehood gods to God?

And what deem ye of the Lord of the worlds?"

So gazing he gazed towards the stars,

And said, "In sooth I am ill:10

And they turned their back on him and departed.

He went aside to their gods and said, "Do ye not eat?

What aileth you that ye do not speak?"

He broke out upon them, with the right hand striking:

When his tribesmen came back to him with hasty steps

He said, "Worship ye what ye carve,

When God hath created you, and that ye make?"

They said, "Build up a pyre for him and cast him into the glowing flame."

Fain would they plot against him, but we brought them low.

And he said, "Verily, I repair to my Lord who will guide me:

O Lord give me a son, of the righteous."

We announced to him a youth of meekness.

And when he became a full-grown youth,11

His father said to him, "My son, I have seen in a dream that I should sacrifice thee; therefore, consider what thou seest right."

He said, "My father, do what thou art bidden; of the patient, if

God please, shalt thou find me."

And when they had surrendered them to the will of God, he laid him down upon his forehead:

We cried unto him, "O Abraham!

Now hast thou satisfied the vision." See how we recompense the righteous.

This was indeed a decisive test.

And we ransomed his son with a costly12 victim,

And we left this13 for him among posterity,

"PEACE BE ON ABRAHAM!"

Thus do we reward the well-doers,

For he was of our believing servants.

And we announced Isaac to him-a righteous Prophet-

And on him and on Isaac we bestowed our blessing. And among their offspring were well-doers, and others, to their own hurt undoubted sinners.

And of old,14 to Moses and to Aaron shewed we favours:

And both of them, and their people, we rescued from the great distress:

And we succoured them, and they became the conquerors:

And we gave them (Moses and Aaron) each the lucid book:

And we guided them each into the right way:

And we left this for each among posterity,

"PEACE BE ON MOSES AND AARON."

Thus do we reward the well-doers,

For they were two of our believing servants.

And Elias truly was of our Sent Ones,

When he said to his people, "Fear ye not God?

Invoke ye Baal and forsake ye the most skilful Creator?

God is your Lord, and the Lord of your sires of old?"

But they treated him as a liar, and shall therefore be consigned to punishment,

Except God's faithful servants.

And we left this for him among posterity,

"PEACE BE ON ELIASIN!"15

Thus do we reward the well-doers,

For he was one of our believing servants.

And Lot truly was of our Sent Ones,

When we rescued him and all his family,

Save an aged woman among those who tarried.

Afterward we destroyed the others.

And ye indeed pass by their ruined dwellings at morn

And night: will ye not then reflect?

Jonas, too, was one of the Apostles,

When he fled unto the laden ship,

And lots were cast,16 and he was doomed,

And the fish swallowed him, for he was blameworthy.

But had he not been of those who praise Us,

In its belly had he surely remained, till the day of resurrection.

And we cast him on the bare shore-and he was sick;-

And we caused a gourd-plant to grow up over him,

And we sent him to a hundred thousand persons, or even more,

And because they believed, we continued their enjoyments for a season.

Inquire then of the Meccans whether thy Lord hath daughters, and they, sons?

Have we created the angels females? and did they witness it?

Is it not a falsehood of their own devising, when they say,

"God hath begotten"? They are indeed liars.

Would he have preferred daughters to sons?

What reason have ye for thus judging?

Will ye not then receive this warning?

Have ye a clear proof for them?

Produce your Book if ye speak truth.

And they make him to be of kin with the Djinn: but the Djinn have long known that these idolaters shall be brought up before God.

Far be the glory of God from what they impute to him.

"His faithful servants do not thus.

Moreover, ye and what ye worship

Shall not stir up any against God,17

Save him who shall burn in Hell.

And verily each one of us hath his appointed place,

And we range ourselves in order,

And we celebrate His praises."18

And if those infidels say,

"Had we a revelation transmitted to us from those of old,19

We had surely been God's faithful servants."

Yet they believe not the Koran. But they shall know its truth at last.

Our word came of old to our servants the apostles,

That they should surely be the succoured,

And that our armies should procure the victory for them.

Turn aside therefore from them for a time,

And behold them, for they too shall in the end behold their doom.

Would they then hasten our vengeance?

But when it shall come down into their courts, an evil morning shall it be to those who have had their warning.

Turn aside from them therefore for a time.

And behold; for they too shall in the end behold their doom.

Far be the glory of thy Lord, the Lord of all greatness, from what they impute to him,

And peace be on his Apostles!

And praise be to God the Lord of the worlds.

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1 I have given in the text the sense of these first two verses according to the Muhammadan commentators. The original, literally translated, viz. By the ranks which rank themselves, and by the repellers who repel, would not convey an intelligible idea to the English reader. Mar. renders, Per ordinantes ordinando et agitantes agitando.

2 Ar. Easts. Errat in pluralitate mundorum. Mar. But the allusion probably is to the different points of the horizon at which the sun rises and sets in the course of the year.

3 See Sura [lvii.] xv. 18.

4 Or, comrades, i.e. the demons.

5 Lit. on the right hand, the side of good omen i.e. with semblance of truth.

6 See Sura [lx.] xxxvi. 6.

7 The ostrich egg carefully protected from dust.

8 Lit. and are we not among the punished?

9 Lit. et sane euge auditores. Mar.

10 And therefore unable to assist at your sacrifices.

11 Lit. cum igitur pervenisset cum eo ad tatem cui competit operandi studium. Mar. Beidh. When he had attained to the age when he could work with him. Lane.

12 Brought, says Rabbi Jehoshua, from Paradise by an angel. Midr. fol.

13 This salutation.

14 The Arabic particle which is here and elsewhere rendered of old (also, already, certainly) serves to mark the position of a past act or event as prior to the time present, and in all such passages merely gives a fulness and intensity to our perfect, or pluperfect tense.

15 The form of this word is altered in the original for the sake of the rhyme.

16 Lit. he cast lots (with the sailors).

17 Nequequam vos ad illud colendum estis Seducturi. Mar.

18 This verse and the six preceding are the words of the Angel.

19 Compare verse 69.

SURA LXXI.-NOAH [LI.]

MECCA.-29 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

We sent NOAH to his people, and said to him, "Warn thou thy people ere there come on them an afflictive punishment."

He said, "O my people! I come to you a plain-spoken warner:

Serve God and fear Him, and obey me:

Your sins will He forgive you, and respite you till the fixed Time; for when God's fixed Time hath come, it shall not be put back. Would that ye knew this!"

He said, "Lord I have cried to my people night and day; and my cry doth but make them flee from me the more.

So oft as I cry to them, that thou mayest forgive them, they thrust their fingers into their ears, and wrap themselves in their garments, and persist in their error, and are disdainfully disdainful.

Then I cried aloud to them:

Then again spake I with plainness, and in private did I secretly address them:

And I said, Beg forgiveness of your Lord, for He is ready to forgive.

He will send down the very Heaven upon you in plenteous rains;

And will increase you in wealth and children; and will give you gardens, and will give you watercourses:-

What hath come to you that ye hope not for goodness from the hand of God?

For He it is who hath formed you by successive steps.1

See ye not how God hath created the seven heavens one over the other?

And He hath placed therein the moon as a light, and hath placed there the sun as a torch;

And God hath caused you to spring forth from the earth like a plant;

Hereafter will He turn you back into it again, and will bring you forth anew-

And God hath spread the earth for you like a carpet,

That ye may walk therein along spacious paths."'

Said Noah, "O my Lord! they rebel against me, and they follow those whose riches and children do but aggravate their ruin."

And they plotted a great plot;

And they said, "Forsake not your Gods; forsake not Wadd nor Sowah,

Nor Yaghuth and Yahuk and Nesr;"

And they caused many to err;2-and thou, too, O Muhammad! shalt be the means of increasing only error in the wicked-

Because of their sins they were drowned, and made to go into the Fire;

And they found that they had no helper save God.

And Noah said, "Lord, leave not one single family of Infidels on the Earth:

For if thou leave them they will beguile thy servants and will beget only sinners, infidels.

O my Lord, forgive me, and my parents, and every one who, being a believer, shall enter my house, and believers men and women: and add to the wicked nought but perdition."

_______________________

1 See Sura xxii. 5.

2 Or, the idols had seduced many. Thus Kas. Beidh. gives both interpp.-See on these idols Freytag's Einleitung, p. 349.

SURA LXXVI.-MAN [LII.]

MECCA.-31 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Doth not a long time pass over MAN, during which he is a thing unremembered?1

We have created man from the union of the sexes that we might prove him; and hearing, seeing, have we made him:

In a right way have we guided him, be he thankful or ungrateful.

For the Infidels we have got ready chains and collars and flaming fire.

But a wine cup tempered at the camphor fountain2 the just shall quaff:

Fount whence the servants of God shall drink, and guide by channels from place to place;

They who fulfilled their vows, and feared the day whose woes will spread far and wide;

Who though longing for it themselves, bestowed their food on the poor and the orphan and the captive:

"We feed you for the sake of God: we seek from you neither recompense nor thanks:3

A stern and calamitous day dread we from our Lord."

From the evil therefore of that day hath God delivered them and cast on them brightness of face and joy:

And hath rewarded their constancy, with Paradise and silken robes:

Reclining therein on bridal couches, nought shall they know of sun or piercing cold:

Its shades shall be close over them, and low shall its fruits hang down:

And vessels of silver and goblets