Irving/Hegab

The Irving/Hegab Qur’an is a revised edition of T.B. Irving’s pioneering American-English translation, reworked by Mohamed Hegab. Its character is inherited from Irving’s original aim: a fluent, contemporary American idiom meant to free the Qur’an from the archaic, biblical English common to earlier versions, so that English-speaking readers — especially North American Muslim youth — could approach it confidently. Hegab’s revision retains that accessible register while adding editorial material, including study notes and introductory framing, building upon rather than replacing Irving’s text.

T.B. Irving (al-Hajj Ta’lim Ali Abu Nasr) was an American convert and scholar whose 1985 rendering is widely regarded as the first complete American translation of the Qur’an. Mohamed Hegab undertook the later editorial revision, and editions credit both men — Irving as original translator, Hegab as reviser. Because the work is explicitly a revision, readers encounter Irving’s distinctive prose voice mediated through Hegab’s emendations.

Irving’s base translation has long been praised for its readability and modern flow, with the customary caveat that interpretive, idiomatic phrasing can move some distance from the literal Arabic; the revised edition carries the same strengths and the same caution.