Robert used Muslim Qur’an commentaries and he made his own “loose” translations of difficult words or complex passages with knowledge gleaned from these same commentaries. Robert understood what many of his European successors who attempted to translate the Qur’an did not understand: the long tradition of Arabic/Muslim commentary could help non-Muslims in their effort to move between different languages, cultures and religions. Produced just as the Crusades were beginning, and given the polemical title The Law of the Pseudo-Prophet Muhammad and the Arabic Koran, Ketton’s translation nonetheless wins high marks from Lawrence for subtlety and even sympathy: With his 1143 Latin translation, he may be said to have translated the Qur’an into “European,” Latin being then the language of learning in Europe. Lawrence makes the story of the Qur’an in English as informative as it is fascinating. LAWRENCE, professor emeritus of the Duke University Islamic Studies Center, is the author of The Qur’an: A Biography (2006), published as part of the Atlantic Monthly Press series “Books That Shook the World.” Now, as a more than welcome guide for the perplexed, comes a companion volume: The Koran in English: A Biography, in the thriving “Lives of Great Religious Books” series at Princeton University Press.

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