Shakir

The translation circulated under the name The Holy Qur’an and attributed to M.H. Shakir is, in practice, a plain prose English rendering in a lightly archaic register, presented without commentary, footnotes, or interpretive apparatus. Its real significance lies less in its method than in the controversy over its origins. Researchers have argued that the text follows the 1917 English translation by Maulana Muhammad Ali of the Lahore Ahmadiyya movement so closely—often verbatim—that it is best described as derivative rather than independent.

The identity of “Shakir” is itself uncertain. One account links the work to Mohammedali Habib, a Karachi banker whose family arranged its publication after his death; the name is also frequently confused with the Egyptian jurist Muhammad Habib Shakir, who in fact opposed translating the Qur’an at all. Because the translator did not work directly from Arabic in the view of these critics, the attribution remains unsettled.

The version became widely available through cheap print and early digital distribution, which accounts for its broad circulation despite the doubts surrounding it. Scholarly assessments treat the authorship and originality questions as the dominant caution for any reader relying on this text.