The Qur'an: Saheeh International Translation

Saheeh International is an English rendering of the meanings of the Qur'an, first published in 1997, and one of the most popular modern English translations. ¹ It stands out as the work of a team rather than of one translator, and a team of three American women converts, which is rare in the field. ¹

The story begins in Jeddah in the late 1980s. Emily Assami, known as Umm Muhammad, born in the United States in 1940, moved to Jeddah from Damascus in 1981; Mary Kennedy and Amatullah Bantley joined her in the same community. ^{1 2} Assami alone had studied Arabic and Islamic studies to a level that allowed her to translate, and taught Islam to foreigners at an Islamic centre in Jeddah, so she led the translation while the other two edited the English. ¹ Their first plan was to edit the Hilali–Khan translation; they then decided on a wholly new one. ¹

The project gave rise to the Abul-Qasim Publishing House, the first press in Jeddah devoted to Islamic books in English, which began as a bookstore owned by Bantley. ¹ The first edition appeared in 1997 as The Qur'an: Arabic Text with Corresponding English Meanings, without the translators' names, its cover naming Abul-Qasim and al-Muntada al-Islami of London. ¹ A second edition with a few corrections followed in 2004 and has been reprinted many times; a 2019 printing simplifies some wording further and rewrites some notes. ¹

The preface says the translation was made after study of the earlier English translations, and that it presents the core meanings according to the creed of Ahl al-Sunna wa-l-Jama'a, in line with Ibn Kathir and Ibn Taymiyya, with particular care for the names and attributes of God. ¹ It is written in contemporary English, with more than two thousand footnotes, most of them brief. ¹

Yakubovych writes that it is widely used for private reading and as a source of quotations; that in the UK it is one of the most popular Muslim translations, found in almost every Sunni mosque and Islamic centre, helped by free distribution, though no official body issued it; and that it has drawn much less criticism than Hilali–Khan. ¹ A 2017 press report said it had become the main version used in English-language propaganda of the Islamic State group. ¹

• Mykhaylo Yakubovych, "Qur'an translation of the week #192", The Global Qur'an, 2024. ¹
• English Wikipedia, "Sahih International", revision 1359267064. ²