David Friedrich Megerlin (1698–1778) and his German Qur'an *

In 1772 a retired Lutheran pastor and scholar by the name of David Friedrich Megerlin (1698-1778) published a German translation of the Qur'an. Although there had been several German Qur'an translations since the early seventeenth century, Megerlin's was the first German rendering to be made directly from the Arabic original. It was not well received. This chapter briefly examines Megerlin's practices as translator and attempts to set this ambitious undertaking in a broader theological, cultural and political context and to reconstruct his intentions. Megerlin's German Qur'an, the circumstances which forged this translation and its cool reception offer a minor but instructive episode in the history of the early modern engagement with the Qur'an in Europe and the shifting expectations such a translation was expected to fulfil in the later eighteenth century