the conciseness of kanzu'l imaan

Discussion in 'Bibliography' started by Aqdas, Aug 29, 2008.

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  1. Aqdas

    Aqdas Staff Member

    when i was in india recently, i read 'allama arshad ul qadri's monograph about the beauty of kanzu'l iman - alaHazrat's translation of the qur'an.

    'allama wrote about 3 different qualities of kanzu'l imaan and one of them was particularly interesting. it was the conciseness of the translation.

    he wrote that arabic is a very rich language and its words are jaami' i.e. comrehensive جامع

    meaning a short arabic word can have a long definition and translation. he gave examples of how a few words in arabic need whole lines of urdu to get their meaning across

    he then writes about the superlative nature of kanzu'l imaan. he gives a score of examples of qur'anic verses and counts the number of letters in the qur'anic sentence and then compares thanwi's translation with alaHazrat's. it is amazing to see that where, for example, the qur'anic sentence is 30 letters long, alaHazrat's is also 30 whereas thanwi is 50. sometimes, kanzul iman's urdu is shorter than the arabic! but in most cases, it is longer but not by much and in many cases, as above - extraordinarily - it is exactly the same

    he says that this is alaHazrat's mastery of urdu and arabic. the qur'an is jaami' and so is kanzu'l imaan

    i believe he also wrote that nowhere in kanzu'l imaan are there brackets. many translators use brackets to add to the translation but alaHazrat's translation is so superb it needs no brackets
     

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