قُلْ إِنَّ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ وَٱلْـَٔاخِرِينَ
Easy-read (simplified)qul inna l-'awwaleena wal-'aakhireen
DIN 31635qul ʾinna l-ʾawwalīna wal-ʾāḫirīna
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
The translators word this verse differently
Marked words appear in this translation and in no other English translation of this verse. Common small words and older spellings are not marked. The marks show where the wording differs, not where the meaning does.
Say, "The first and the last.
Talal Itani, ClearQuran ·ClearQuran, "God" edition, EPUB·Talal Itani / ClearQuran.com ·Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International·retrieved 7 Sep 2026
Translation by Talal Itani, ClearQuran.com https://clearquran.com
Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Lo! those of old and those of later time
Translation Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran·Public domain — copyright term expired
Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran ·1930 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Say, 'Verily, those of yore and those of the latter day
Translation Edward Henry Palmer, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
Edward Henry Palmer, English translation of the Qur'an ·1880 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
SAY: Aye, the former and the latter
Translation John Medows Rodwell, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
John Medows Rodwell, English translation of the Qur'an ·1861 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Say, verily both the first and the last
Translation George Sale, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
George Sale, English translation of the Qur'an ·1734 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Thuaju: "Po, të parët dhe të mbramët,
হে রাসূল! তুমি বলো: ‘নিশ্চয় পূর্ববর্তীরা ও পরবর্তীরা,
Reci: “I drevni i kasniji,
Reci: “I drevni i kasniji,
Maaku : "pellet, aramɓe e sakkitiiɓe ɓe.
უთხარი (მათ) (ო, შუამავალო): «ჭეშმარიტად, პირველნი და უკანასკნელნი [ყველა, ვინც დედამიწაზე ცხოვრობდა და იცხოვრებს]
Sag: „Wahrlich, die Früheren und die Späteren
Πες (ω, Προφήτη): «Πράγματι, και οι πρώτοι και οι τελευταίοι (δηλ. όλοι),
आप कह दें : निःसंदेह अगले तथा पिछले (सभी) लोग।
Di’: “In verità i precedenti e i successivi
49. Sakyk (O Muchammedai ﷺ): „Ištiesų, tie iš senesnių, ir tie iš naujesnių laikų.
“(Yaa Muhammad!) jedhiin isaan jalqabaatii fii isaan boodaas (ni kaafamu)”.
Скажи: «Воистину, и первые, и последние —
Реци: „И древни и каснији,
Sema: 'Hakika wa zamani na wa mwisho.'
Säg: ”Både de första och de sista [generationerna],
De ki: "Hem öncekiler, hem sonrakiler."
آپ کہہ دیجئے کہ یقیناً سب اگلے اور پچھلے.
5 cleared translations, newest first, by year of publication, so the modern English comes before the historical ones. That is an ordering by date, not a judgement. Each is shown complete — this platform never excerpts a translation — and each renders under its translator's name. No translation here is marked as the correct one.
Which translations appear here is set by copyright: they are the ones whose rights could be documented and cleared. The selection is not a judgement that these are the best.
Easy-read is a simplified pronunciation, not authoritative — a rule-by-rule romanisation, not a reading. Each verse ends in its pause form, as it is said when you stop there. Pauses inside a verse and other tajwid rules are not shown. It is derived from the Tanzil Simple edition, while the Arabic above is the Uthmani edition; both are cleared, but they are not the same edition and their orthography differs.
shown so it's never read alone
وَكَانُوا۟ يَقُولُونَ أَئِذَا مِتْنَا وَكُنَّا تُرَابًا وَعِظَٰمًا أَءِنَّا لَمَبْعُوثُونَ
Easy-read (simplified)wakaanoo yaqooloona a'idhaa mitnaa wakunnaa turaaban wa'izaaman a'innaa lamab'oothoon
DIN 31635wakānū yaqūlūna ʾaʾiḏā mitnā wakunnā turāban waʿiẓāman ʾaʾinnā lamabʿūṯūna
And they used to say, "When we are dead and turned into dust and bones, are we to be resurrected?
And they used to say: When we are dead and have become dust and bones, shall we then, forsooth, be raised again
and used to say, 'What, when we die and have become dust and bones, shall we then indeed be raised
And were wont to say, "What! after we have died, and become dust and bones, shall we be raised
And they said, after we shall have died, and become dust and bones, shall we surely be raised to life
أَوَءَابَآؤُنَا ٱلْأَوَّلُونَ
Easy-read (simplified)awa'aabaa'unaa l-'awwaloon
DIN 31635ʾawaʾābāʾunā l-ʾawwalūna
The translators word this verse differently
And our ancient ancestors too?"
And also our forefathers
or our fathers of yore
And our fathers, the men of yore
Shall our forefathers also be raised with us
56:49 — the verse above
لَمَجْمُوعُونَ إِلَىٰ مِيقَٰتِ يَوْمٍ مَّعْلُومٍ
Easy-read (simplified)lamajmoo'oona ilaa meeqaati yawmin ma'loom
DIN 31635lamaǧmūʿūna ʾilā mīqāti yawmin maʿlūmin
Will be gathered for the appointment of a familiar Day."
Will all be brought together to the tryst of an appointed day
shall surely be gathered together unto the tryst of the well-known day
Gathered shall they all be for the time of a known day
shall surely be gathered together to judgment, at the prefixed time of a known day
ثُمَّ إِنَّكُمْ أَيُّهَا ٱلضَّآلُّونَ ٱلْمُكَذِّبُونَ
Easy-read (simplified)thumma innakum ayyuhaa d-daalloona l-mukadhdhiboon
DIN 31635ṯumma ʾinnakum ʾayyuhā ḍ-ḍāllūna l-mukaḏḏibūna
The translators word this verse differently
Then you, you misguided, who deny the truth.
Then lo! ye, the erring, the deniers
Then ye, O ye who err! who say it is a lie
Then ye, O ye the erring, the gainsaying
Then ye, O men, who have erred, and denied the resurrection as a falsehood
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) ·Uthmani, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
قُلْ إِنَّ الْأَوَّلِينَ وَالْآخِرِينَ
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Simple) ·Simple, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
These figures count the words the translations share. They measure wording, not meaning, and they do not say which translation is right.
Derived measure: mean pairwise Jaccard distance over the lowercased word sets of the 5 renderings above — 0.71 on a scale where 0 means identical wording and 1 means no shared words. It is computed, not judged.
The page says a verse is worded differently only above the cut below. The cut is a stated convention, not a property of the text, and it can be changed.
One bar per pair of renderings, longest bar for the pair sharing fewest words. Every pair is shown; none is singled out.
The platform does not say which is right, and does not characterise what the difference means. The renderings are placed together so the difference is visible; reading it is the reader's work.
SourceTanzil Qur'an text (Simple) ·Simple, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
SourceTanzil Qur'an text (Simple) ·Simple, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
7 sources stand behind this page. Each is listed once, in the order the page first cites it, with the licence it was cleared under and what was actually read. Nothing on this page rests on a source that is not here.
CLEARED. Licence read verbatim from the block embedded in this very file. Ingested exactly as shipped: no normalisation, no stripping of marks, no Unicode recomposition.
CLEARED on a licence read first-hand from the translator's own download page, not from an aggregator. Tanzil also hosts this translation, but under a blanket "non-commercial purposes only" term that directs the user to the translator or publisher for permission - a hosting disclaimer, not a grant - so the grant was taken from the licensor directly. The "God" edition was ingested; ClearQuran also publishes an "Allah" edition, differing in how the divine name is rendered, which is not ingested.
CLEARED ON THE WORK, WITH TWO RECORDED CAVEATS ON THIS COPY. (1) Rights basis is the expired copyright term, NOT the redistributing repository's licence. That repository dedicates its contents to the public domain under the Unlicense while also redistributing plainly in-copyright translations (Abdel Haleem, Saheeh International, The Study Quran), so it is dedicating rights it cannot hold and its blanket grant is not relied upon here. (2) The file declares its own upstream as tanzil.net, and Tanzil attaches a non-commercial condition to its TRANSLATION distributions, though not to its Qur'anic text. Since Pickthall's copyright has expired, nobody holds rights in these words and no licence is required from anyone; Tanzil's terms are a contract binding those who download from Tanzil, which we did not. The chain is nonetheless not spotless and Anwar may prefer a clean digitisation of the 1930 printing. NOT VERIFIED: that this digital text matches the 1930 first printing rather than a later revised edition. No page images were collated. Recorded as unverified rather than presented as established. SERVED TEXT DIFFERS FROM THE CITED FILE AT ONE VERSE, 37:97: the file reads "red-hotfire" (a glued token, also in Gutenberg #16955); the served row reads "red-hot fire", restored 2026-09-13 from Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (London: George Allen & Unwin, printed for Alfred A. Knopf; 1930), p. 460, XXXVII 97 - scan archive.org in.ernet.dli.2015.216140, PDF page 475; banked data/derivation-sources/pickthall-1930-dli-2015.216140-text.pdf (sha256 70e81146c97fa3a590243a82e04e349108546074787e2551a78c616202138870) on Anwar Malik's grant.
CLEARED ON THE WORK. Term expired by every measure. The digital edition's upstream is not stated by the redistributor and the printing is unverified. No statement of purpose is recorded for Palmer because none was sourced from his own preface in this pass; nothing is asserted on his behalf.
CLEARED ON THE WORK. Term expired by every measure. TWO edition caveats. (1) The upstream is not stated by the redistributor. (2) Rodwell's own edition PRESENTS THE SURAHS IN HIS OWN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, not the mushaf order — he says so in his preface. This digital text is keyed to mushaf order, so it derives from a restored-order printing (such as the Everyman edition) rather than from Rodwell's own arrangement. Which printing is not stated and has not been established.
CLEARED ON THE WORK. Term expired by every measure. The digital edition's upstream is NOT STATED by the redistributor, so the printing it represents is unverified; Sale's text was reprinted and re-edited many times between 1734 and 1900. Recorded as unverified rather than assumed to be the first edition.
CLEARED. Parallel edition, held in ayah_text_variants. It sits alongside the Uthmani spine for search normalisation and is never used to correct it.
Qur'anic text from the Tanzil Project. Copyright (C) 2007-2026 Tanzil Project License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Source: tanzil.net · Updates: tanzil.net/updates/ https://tanzil.net/updates/