The letter, preserved in its Russian translation, contains text which scholars later identified as For instance, in December 1572, a Russian messenger returned to Moscow from his voyage to Constantinople, bringing with him a letter from Sultan Selim II addressed to Tsar Ivan IV. ( Posol’skii prikaz) also frequently had to render Qurʾānic verses quoted in letters that arrived from Muslim correspondents. Translators from Russia’s Foreign Chancellery Sūrah “The Bee”, which reads as follows: “Fulfil any pledge you make in God’s name and do not break oaths after you have sworn them, for you have made God your surety: God knows everything you do”. The first recorded translation of this kind, made in the seventeenth century, is verse 91 of the The verses that were most frequently repeated in this context were also translated into Russian. In order to ensure the loyalty of incoming ambassadors from Muslim countries, as well as that of local Muslim nobility who entered into Russian service, the authorities made the Muslims swear an oath on the Qurʾān. The flourishing of international trade and establishment of diplomatic relations with Muslim countries in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries presented the Russian authorities with new problems of a legal nature: it was necessary to guarantee verbal assurances given by the foreign Muslim diplomats. Not only was it regularly read and copied by Muslim inhabitants of the empire, but it was also used by Russian Christian authorities for their administrative purposes. The Mohammedan Book – as the Qurʾān was known in pre-modern Russia – enjoyed a wide circulation nevertheless. Despite Russia’s long history of diplomatic and trade relations with Muslim countries, as well as the existence of a large Muslim population within the country’s borders, no complete Qurʾān translation seems to have existed before the eighteenth century.
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