The Koran
AMONG the books that have marked civilisa- tion, but whose influence remains obscure to those who have not read them in the original, stands the Koran. We know that it sent the Arabian horsemen on their Valkerwanderung from Herat to Gibraltar (an Arabic place-name itself), but the patchwork of gnomic wisdom and mystical illuminism which has been presented by Western translators makes it difficult to understand how it came to leave its mark in the shape of a civilisation far more culturally united than that of Europe.
In The Koran Interpreted (Allen and Unwin, two vols., 45s.) Professor A. J. Arberry rightly puts the emphasis on the literary impact of the Koran. It is its rhythmic quality that he tries to bring out in his new translation—not unsuc- cessfully, though 'and there for them shall be spouses purified' is rather a forbidding account of the Moslem paradise. Still, this is a rendering that, together with the prefaces to both volumes, makes better reading of a religious book, which, whatever its merits as poetic expression of mystical feeling, does lack the dramatic interest of the Bible.
THOMAS ARCHER
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