In 1143, Robert de Ketton was given a request by Abbot Peter de Cluny to complete the first translation of the Qur’an into the Latin. This translation, which exists in the form of 24 manuscripts, was one of the main ways in which European readers gained access to the Muslim holy book. Many of those who read it, including Pedro de Cluny himself, did so in order to refute it, because in their mind it was the foundational text for a heretical creed. However, many read the Qur’an for other reasons, which were not always hostile.

In 1543, four centuries after Robert completed his translation, Theodor Bibliander published it in Basel, along with a collection of other texts about Islam and a preface by Martin Luther. For the Protestant writers Bibliander and Luther, the Qur’an may have been a useful tool in the fight against the Catholic Church, a way to demonstrate that, as Luther claimed, “the Pope’s devil is bigger than the Turks’.” Catholic writers quickly developed counterarguments, combing through the Qur’an to find similarities between its “heresies” and those unfurled by Luther or Calvin. The Latin Qur’an, as we shall see, already formed part of Europe’s intellectual and cultural experience in the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, and the interests and uses given to it by European readers were complex and varied.

Casa Árabe has organized this conference on “Readings of the Qur’an in Latin Europe (twelfth-sixteenth centuries)” to be given by John Tolan, a professor of History at the University of Nantes and a member of Barcelona’s Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts and Academia Europæa. Moderating the session will be Juan Pedro Monferrer, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Cordoba. The event will be presented by Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s International Relations Coordinator.
John Tolan is a professor of History at the University of Nantes and a member of Academia Europæa. He has a PhD in History from the University of Chicago, a Master’s degree in History from the same university and graduate studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales of Paris (HDR), as well as a bachelor’s degree in Classical Languages from Yale University. He has received various awards and distinctions, including two fellowships from the European Research Council (ERC) and the Diane Potier-Boès Award bestowed by the Académie Française. He has authored several books and articles, including: Los Sarracenos: el islam en el imaginario europeo en la Edad Media (The Saracens: Islam in the European imaginary in the Middle Ages, 2007), Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (2008), Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter (2009) and Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today (2019: translated into the Spanish by Rafael Peinado as “Mahoma el Europeo: Percepciones occidentales del Profeta del Islam desde la Edad Media a nuestro días”, to be published in 2022 by the University of Extremadura’s Publishing House).