This presentation focuses on the ecumenism of Ferdowsi with regard to religion. Such ecumenism can best be understood in terms of the reception of this poet’s poetry—a reception extending from the poet’s own life and times in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries CE all the way to the era of the Timurid prince Bāysonghor in the fifteenth century CE.

“The Global Qur’an (GloQur)” will be the first project that tackles the global dimension of Muslim Qur’an translation in the 20th and 21st centuries, a topic that has so far attracted surprisingly little attention in Islamic Studies.

After achieving independence in 1945, Indonesian leaders began tackling the basic questions that faced all postcolonial state-builders: What principles would guide the state and nation? Communism or capitalism? Secularism or Islam? How could they craft a common national identity from a diverse population? It is against this backdrop that in the April 1954 issue of the popular Indonesian Muslim periodical Al-Muslimun, the editors published an unusual translation of a well-known verse from Sūrat al-Nisāʾ of the Qur’an from Arabic into Indonesian...