George Sale (1697–1736) was a British Orientalist scholar and practising solicitor, best known for his 1734 translation of the Quran into English. In 1748, after having read Sale's translation, Voltaire wrote his own essay "De l'Alcoran et de Mahomet" ("On the Quran and on Mohammed"). For A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, an English translation and enlargement of Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique, Sale supplied "Articles relating to Oriental History". Biography Born in Canterbury, Kent, he 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. Sale became seriously ill with fever for eight days before his death. George Sale died at Surrey Street, The Strand, London, on 13 November 1736. Sale was buried at St Clement Danes in London. His family consisted of a wife and five children. The Quran In 1734, Sale published a translation of the Quran, Al Quran,<ref>The Quran translated into English immediately from the original Arabic; with explanatory notes, taken from the most approved commentators, to which is prefixed a preliminary discourse</ref> dedicated to John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. Relying heavily on O.M.D. Louis Maracci's 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. Preliminary discourse 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