George Sale

Born in Canterbury, Kent, Sale was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and in 1720 became a student of the Inner Temple. It is known that he trained as a solicitor in his early years but took time off from his legal pursuits, returning at need to his profession. Sale was an early member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He became seriously ill with fever for eight days before his death. George Sale died at Surrey Street, Strand, London, on 13 November 1736 and was buried at St Clement Danes in London. His family consisted of a wife and five children.

• Illustration — Title page of a first edition of Sale's translation In 1734, Sale published a translation of the Quran, The Koran: Commonly called The Alcoran of Mohammed, dedicated to John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. Relying heavily on O.M.D. Louis Maracci's Arabic edition and Latin translation, Sale provided numerous notes and a Preliminary discourse. Sale had access to the Dutch Church, Austin Friars' 14th-century manuscript of al-Baydāwī's Lights of Revelation and the Secrets of Interpretation, and this seems the source for his Arabic Quran rather than his own personal Quran, catalogued MS Sale 76 in the Bodleian Library. Sale's footnotes provide the literal translation where it differs from the idiom of the body text; he gives alternate variant readings; and supplementary historical and contextual information. Sir Edward Denison Ross added the Introduction to the 1922 reprint of Sale's translation.

Though he did not place Islam at an equal level with Christianity, Sale seemed to view Mohammad as a conqueror who sought to destroy idolatry and a lawgiver who managed to change and supplant many practices in Arabia: Sale prefixed a Preliminary Discourse to his translation covering topics including Arabs "before hijrah"; the State of the Eastern Churches, and Judaism, at time of Mohammed; the Peculiarities of the Quran; positive and negative Doctrines and Instructions of the Quran; and political Islam in the 1730s. Sale posits the decline of the Persian Empire on rivalry between the sects of Manes and Mazdak, and mass immigration into Arabia to escape persecution in the Grecian empire. In his eighth essay on False Prophecy, Sale notes Muslim Sects both Canonical (Maleci, Hanefites, Hanbali and Shafi‘i) and "heretical" (Shi'ism).

Sale was also a corrector of the Arabic version of the New Testament (1726) issued by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He acquired a library with valuable rare manuscripts of Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Arabic origins, which is now held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. He assisted in the writing of the Universal History published in London from 1747 to 1768. When the plan of universal history was arranged, Sale was one of those who were selected to carry it into execution. Sale wrote the chapter, "The Introduction, containing the Cosmogony, or Creation of the World". Critics of the time accused Sale of having a view which was hostile to tradition and the Scriptures. They attacked his account of cosmogony as having a view giving currency to heretical opinions. His books: • The Koran, First Edition, 1734. (ed. high resolution scans from the Posner Memorial Collection.) • George Sale (Translator) and Claude Etienne Savary (illustrator), "The Koran: Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed". J.W. Moore, 1856. 670 pages • George Sale, et al., "Sacred Books of the East: With Critical and Biographical Sketches". Colonial Press, 1900. 457 pages • Sale, George, Bower, Archibald and Psalmanazar, George; An Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time. Millar, 1747. • George Sale, "Selections from the Koran of Mohammed". Priv. print. by N.H. Dole, 1904. 211 pages. • George Sale, et al., "Arabic Reading Lessons: Consisting of Easy Extracts from the Best Authors". Wm. H. Allen, 1864. 103 pages.