Texts of Islam

The Qur'ân, ed. Palmer (SBE9): XXVII. The Chapter o...

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is a partial English translation of Surah An-Naml (Chapter 27) from the Qur'an, drawn from E.H. Palmer's 1880 translation published in the Sacred Books of the East series — a landmark Victorian scholarly project that rendered major world religious texts into English. The passage covers several narrative sequences central to Islamic scripture: Moses receiving divine revelation at the burning bush and being given miraculous signs for Pharaoh; Solomon's dominion over humans, jinn, and animals (including the famous episode of the ant's warning and the hoopoe bird's report about the Queen of Sheba); and briefer accounts of the prophets Salih among the Thamud and Lot among his people. The Surah then shifts into a rhetorical section of repeated challenges — "Is there a god with God?" — arguing for God's sole creative and sustaining power against polytheism, and closes with eschatological warnings about resurrection, judgment, and a beast that will emerge in the last days. Palmer's translation reflects 19th-century Orientalist philological conventions: accurate but archaic in diction, with footnotes identifying biblical parallels (e.g., noting Sheba's Arabian location). Readers coming to this text will find it most valuable as a historical artifact of how Western scholarship engaged Islamic scripture, rather than as a contemporary or community-authorized translation.

The Qur'ân, ed. Palmer (SBE9): XXVII. The Chapter o...

Related pages View as graph →