“Porokhova is the first translator to convey the heavenly music of the Quranic verses”
Andrey Bertels
The first woman who did a poetical translation of interpretations of the Holy Quran (it is included in the Russian Book of Records as the most demanded and replicated copy), was an active participant in regional, national and international conferences and forums. She passed a difficult life path and managed to keep the love for Islam in her heart. Apart from this, she was a co-Chairman of the organization of Russian Muslims “Direct Way” and for some time she was also the Head of Moscow Islamic Educational Centre “Al-Furkhan”.
This year, she would have been 80. We offer you to learn more about her personal life and scientific work, which, without any exaggeration, has changed the world for Russian Muslims.
From gentlefolk to a sincere belief in Allah
Valeriya Porokhova was born in 1940 in the Russian city of Ukhta to a family of hereditary noblemen. Valeriya’s father was shot during the Stalinist repressions. As the wife of enemy of people, her mother was sent into exile, where the girl was born, who was destined to do a poetical translation of interpretations of the Quran. The family was able to return to Moscow only during the Khrushev thawing. In Moscow Valeriya’s mother spent about 30 years teaching at Moscow Medical Academy.
Valeriya graduated from the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages (MSLU). Already at that time she showed her talent and diligence: she was the first one in the history of the Institute to defend her graduate thesis in a foreign language.
After her successful graduation, she spent 18 years teaching at Moscow State Engineering Physics Institute. In parallel with teaching, Valeriya Porokhova studied at the Philosophy Department of Moscow State University.
In 1975, Valeriya Porokhova married Muhammad Said Ar-Roshed, a graduator of Shariah Faculty of Damask University, who at that moment was a student of Moscow Auto-Mechanical Institute. As Valeriya wrote in her memoirs, Muhammad proposed to her on the sixth day after their acquaintance and immediately received a strong refusal: “But, giving the refusal, out of ignorance I ignored the peculiarities of an eastern man’s mentality, strong and principled in achieving his desires. Muhammad took an academic leave in the Institute and in eight months, he got not only me and my mother, Nadezhda Pavlovna, but also the whole family to fall in love with him”.
Ten years later Valeriya had a landmark moment in her life – together with her husband, she moved from Moscow to Damask, where she embraced Islam and accepted new name Iman (which means “faith” in Russian). She was 45 at that moment. Later she pointed out in her numerous interviews that it was one of the most important and difficult decisions she made all he conscious life: “My mummy was baptized in the same Catherine Cathedral Tsarskoye Selo as the Tsar's daughters. She wanted me to be baptized there as well. Over the years, it became my great desire too”. Valeriya was baptized in 1981. “My husband is an Arab, so I made my point clear at once. He has his faith, I have my own one”.
However, Valeriya was getting interested in the Sacred Muslim Scripture more and more with each day. Line by line, Surahs of the Quran were revealing for her Islam, its reverent and tolerant attitude to people, to human rights and to religions. So, it is not surprising that as a result, Valeriya moved to Syria and converted to Islam. “I was reading the Quran and at some point I felt a certain insight that enveloped me from within. With all my heart, I felt that I was a Muslim and there was not a single word in that holy book my heart would disagree with”. Later she said in one of her numerous interviews that it was the conversion to Islam that became the main gift of fate.
In Syria, Valeriya (Iman) Porokhova got acquainted closer with Arab culture, read a lot of treatises on philosophy, religion and history of the Islamic world.
Poetical translation of interpretations of the Quran and theologians’ attitude
Let’s begin with the fact that the translation of interpretations of the Quran made by Valeriya Porokhova, was recognized to be canonical by the Al-Azhar Islamic Research Academy. And this is the highest recognition of work in the Islamic world.
From 1985 to the beginning of the 1990-s, when Valeriya lived in Damask, she worked tirelessly on the translation of the Quran: “I wanted the Quran to be translated into Russian not by an outsider, as they say, but by someone who believed in what they preached. This is the only way to convey its essence and its meaning without bias and prejudice”.
Valeriya Porokhova tried to show the content of the Arabic text, preserving the form, imagery and stylistics of the Sacred Scripture. The translation was done in verse form, and it took her 11 years to complete the work on it. Her long-term work was highly appreciated by everyone. For instance, Alexey Malashenko, an expert of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, called the translation the “brilliant poetical work”. And Andrey Bertels, a famous Soviet orientalist, said: “Porokhova is the first translator to convey the heavenly music of the Quranic verses”. It was noted in the analytical report by Human Appeal International (UAE) that the “results of their analysis clearly indicate the strong Muslim orientation of the translation done in the original Islamic tradition and the absence of distortion in the transmission of meaning”. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE, after the publication of the translation, organized a thorough analysis of Porokhova’s work. Eight scholars – four from Arab countries and four from Russia – took part in the analysis. After their approval, the Sheikh financed the publication of the translation in 25 thousand copies as a gift to Russian Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan.
Valeriya Porokhova’s words about Islam
When you study the Quran, you will be stunned by its incredible depth. Once, after a four-hour lecture at the Russian Academy of Sciences, a 70-year old venerable academician stood up and said: “If it is the Quran, then I am a Muslim”. The Quran is eternal, and the fact that in the seventh century there could not be such knowledge is unequivocal. And if it was, it’s God’s. It is important to understand.
I realized I had been a Muslim my whole life. I did not know that until I read the Quran. It is true that if a person reads the Quran, turning the last page he or she will say “All praise to Almighty Allah”. The only thing one has to do is to take time reading it. My return to Islam happened in Syria, when I had read the Quran with the tafsir (commentaries). Even the most educated Arabs read the Quran only with the tafsir.
The Quran is the only Sacred Scripture that has come to us through fourteen centuries without any changes. None of the numerous translators of the Eternal Book has ever claimed to be accurate in their work. Any translation, by definition, cannot be accurate. The matter is that the Quran is written in Old Arabic, which differs significantly from modern Arabic, which sometimes leads to unwitting distortion of the meaning of words, text.
What I have done is just a modest effort, which cannot pretend to any significant portion of the transmission of the divine beauty of the Quran’s ayahs, the celestial music of its verse. When I was translating the Quran, my skin got constricted with awe before the Great Book.
Islam is a way of life. And this makes it differ from other religions. You wake up in the morning as a Muslim, you live the day as a Muslim and you go to bed as a Muslim. Moreover, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said a wonderful thing that we should be guided by: “Every morning a person takes his soul hostage, and in the evening he receives it burdened with sins, or lightened and decorated with blessings”.
In Islam it is impossible to come to a mosque on Friday in order to confess, take communion and leave sinless. In Islam you will be responsible for every single sin of yours. Moreover, Islam does not only insist on performing tawbah (repentance,) it also insists that evil be covered with good in favour of the victim. No mortal man on earth can absolve you of your sin. This is a very important point.
Let us emphasize that there is no such thing as “Islamic terrorism”. Criminals have neither nationality, nor religion. According to the Quran, such people are criminals. People who commit crimes should immediately lose the confessional factor. We have no right to say that this terrorist was a Muslim, or a Jew, or a Christian. He stops being that because he is a criminal, he is out of religion. He has to be tried under the civil code. And then another term “Islamic threat”… He's absurd in his own right. The word “Islam” means “peace”. In this case, we get a “peaceful threat”.
The Quran does not tolerate misinterpretation.
Prepared by Ilmira Gafiyatullina
Photo: Maxim Platonov/интернет-газета «Реальное время»