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George Sale (1697–1736) was a BritishOrientalist scholar and practisingsolicitor, best known for his 1734 translation of theQuran into English. In 1748, after having read Sale's translation,[1]Voltaire wrote his own essay "De l'Alcoran et de Mahomet" ("On the Quran and on Mohammed").
ForA General Dictionary, Historical and Critical,[2]an English translation and enlargement ofPierre Bayle'sDictionnaire historique et critique,[3]Sale supplied "Articles relating to Oriental History".[2]: title page
Born inCanterbury, Kent, he was educated at theKing's School, Canterbury, and in 1720 became a student of theInner Temple. It is known that he trained as a solicitor in his early years but took time off from his legal pursuits, returning at need to his profession. Sale was an early member of theSociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
Sale became seriously ill with fever for eight days before his death. George Sale died atSurrey Street,The Strand, London, on 13 November 1736. Sale was buried atSt Clement Danes in London. His family consisted of a wife and five children.
In 1734, Sale published a translation of the Quran,The Koran: Commonly called The Alcoran of Mohammed,[4] dedicated toJohn Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. Relying heavily onO.M.D.Louis Maracci's Arabic edition and Latin translation,[5] Sale provided numerous notes and aPreliminary discourse. Sale had access to theDutch Church, Austin Friars' 14th-century manuscript ofal-Baydāwī'sLights of Revelation and the Secrets of Interpretation, and this seems the source for his Arabic Quran rather than his own personal Quran, cataloguedMS Sale 76 in theBodleian Library.[6]
Sale's footnotes provide the literal translation where it differs from the idiom of the body text; he gives alternate variant readings; and supplementary historical and contextual information.[6]Sir Edward Denison Ross added the Introduction to the 1922 reprint of Sale's translation.[7]
Though he did not placeIslam at an equal level with Christianity, Sale seemed to view Mohammad as a conqueror who sought to destroyidolatry and a lawgiver who managed to change and supplant many practices in Arabia:
The remembrance of the calamities brought on so many nations by the conquests of the Arabians may possibly raise some indignation against him who formed them to empire, but this being equally applicable to all conquerors, could not, of itself, occasion all the detestation with which the name Mohammed is loaded. He has given a new system of religion, which has had still greater success than the arms of his followers, and to establish this religion made use of an imposture, and on this account it is supposed that he must of necessity have been a most abandoned villain, and his memory is become infamous. But as Mohammed gave his Arabs the best religion he could, as well as the best laws, preferable, at least, to those of the ancient pagan lawgivers, I confess I cannot see why he deserves not equal respect, though not with Moses or Jesus Christ, whose laws came really from heaven, yet withMinos orNuma, notwithstanding the distinction of a learned writer, who seems to think it a greater crime to make use of an imposture to set up a new religion, founded on the acknowledgment of one true God, and to destroy idolatry, than to use the same means to gain reception to rules and regulations for the more orderly practice of heathenism already established.
Sale prefixed a Preliminary Discourse to his translation covering topics including Arabs "beforehijrah"; the State of the Eastern Churches, and Judaism, at time of Mohammed; the Peculiarities of the Quran; positive and negative Doctrines and Instructions of the Quran; andpolitical Islam in the 1730s.
Sale posits the decline of the Persian Empire on rivalry between the sects ofManes andMazdak, and mass immigration into Arabia to escape persecution in the Grecian empire. In his eighth essay onFalse Prophecy, Sale notesMuslim Sects both Canonical (Maleci,Hanefites,Hanbali andShafi‘i) and "heretical" (Shi'ism).
Sale was also a corrector of theArabic version of theNew Testament (1726) issued by theSociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He acquired a library with valuable rare manuscripts ofPersian,Ottoman Turkish, and Arabic origins, which is now held in the Bodleian Library,Oxford.
He assisted in the writing of theUniversal History published in London from 1747 to 1768. When the plan ofuniversal history was arranged, Sale was one of those who were selected to carry it into execution. Sale wrote the chapter, "The Introduction, containing the Cosmogony, or Creation of the World". Critics of the time accused Sale of having a view which was hostile to tradition and the Scriptures. They attacked his account ofcosmogony as having a view giving currency toheretical opinions.
His books:
In 1760 theRadcliffe Library, Oxford acquired his collection of mainly 13th-18th century Persian and Arabic manuscripts, mostly poetry andbelles-lettres. They were transferred to the Bodleian Library in 1872.[8] Richard Alfred Davenport wrote his biography.[5] Works included in Sales library includeIbn Khallikān’sWafayāt al-ayān (MSS Sale 48–49); selection of hadith (MS Sale 70); collections of the stories of saints and martyrs (MS Sale 77–78); the sayings of Alī (MS Sale 82); biographies of Shi'ite,Majālis al-mu'minīn by Nūr Allāh b.'Abd Allāh Shushtarī (MS Sale 68); instructions on use of the Quran for divination (MS Sale 69), and a treatise on the merits of visiting the Prophet's grave (MS Sale 56).[6]
Sale's translation of the Qur'an has been reprinted into modern times. In January 2007,Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress,was sworn in using a 1764 edition of Sale's translation of the Quran, sold to theLibrary of Congress in 1815 byThomas Jefferson.[9] In January 2019 newly elected CongresswomenRashida Tlaib andIlhan Omar were sworn in using the same edition of Sales's translation of Qur'an.[10]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Cousin, John William (1910).A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – viaWikisource.
