Bausani Il Corano.pdf ((exclusive)) May 2026

Alessandro Bausani's 1955 translation and commentary of the Quran is widely regarded as the definitive academic reference for the text in Italy. Known for its objective, philological approach, the work is frequently updated and available through publishers like BUR, bridging Islamic studies with Western scholarship. For more details, visit Academia.edu . The Arab-Islamic tradition in European culture

rhyme scheme

He argued that the Quran’s power lies precisely in what Western critics might call its “non-literary” qualities: the sudden ruptures of narrative, the oscillation between the majestic plural of God and the intimate singular, the hypnotic repetition of rhymes. In his translation, Bausani famously attempted to preserve the of the original Arabic, even at the cost of Italian syntax. For example, where another translator might write “By the sun and its brightness,” Bausani would twist the Italian to end with a stressed vowel sound that mimics the Arabic wāw or nūn . This choice was controversial; critics accused him of producing an unnatural, forced Italian. Yet, this very “unnaturalness” becomes a theological statement: the language of revelation is not meant to sound like a newspaper. Bausani Il Corano.pdf

| Translator | Date | Direct from Arabic? | Literary style | Theological leaning | |------------|------|---------------------|----------------|----------------------| | Bonelli | 1929 | Yes | Classical, flowing | Neutral, Christian scholarly | | Bausani | 1955 | Yes | Archaizing, rhythmic, deliberately foreignizing | Academic, non-confessional | | Piccardo | 1994 | Yes | Modern, clear, fluid | Islamic (Sunni, Daʿwa-oriented) | Alessandro Bausani's 1955 translation and commentary of the

Comparison with Other Italian Translations

Alessandro Bausani (1921–1988) was one of Italy’s most eminent Islamicists, linguists, and historians of religion. His 1955 translation of the Qur’an, Il Corano , published by Sansoni (Florence) and later reissued by Rizzoli’s BUR series, remains a watershed in Italian Islamic scholarship. Unlike earlier Italian translations—which often relied on Latin, French, or Arabic intermediary texts and were filtered through confessional or apologetic lenses—Bausani’s version was the first direct, philologically rigorous Italian translation that deliberately foregrounded the literary and oral texture of the Arabic original. The Arab-Islamic tradition in European culture rhyme scheme