N. J. Dawood
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N. J. Dawood (Nessim Joseph Dawood). Born in 1927 in Baghdad, Iraq. He came to England in 1945 as an Iraq State scholar, and settled there. Hons. graduate, University of London. He is best known for his English translation of the Qur’an, Tales from the One Thousand and One Nights (Penguin Classics) and his edition of the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun. N.J. Dawood’s translation of the Qur’an, titled “The Koran”, is so far the only translation of the Qur’an in proper, idiomatic English, and is also the world’s best-selling English translation of the Qur’an.
In the first edition of his translation of the Qur’an, in 1956, Dawood rearranged the chapters (suras) into more-or-less chronological order. Later editions restored the traditional sequence.
Some have criticized Dawood’s translation for “inaccuracies”. In an earlier edition, the phrase “Children of Adam” was wrongly printed “Children of Allah” owing to an oversight by the printers’ proof-reader. Although there have since been seven major revisions with more than 55 reprints over five decades, this “aberration” is still being harped upon by those who have not taken the trouble to look up later editions.[citation needed]
Throughout his translation, Dawood has closely followed the tafsir of Al-Baidhawi and Al-Jalalain.
The fiftieth anniversary edition of the Penguin Classics Koran is being published in late 2006.
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