The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Sale’s Preface to the Preliminary Discourse and Translation.
• Sale’s Preliminary Discourse.
• Section 1.: Of the Arabs Before Muhammad; Or, As They Express It, In the Time of Ignorance; Their History, * Religion, Learning, and Customs.
• Section II.: Of the State of Christianity, Particularly of the Eastern Churches, and of Judaism, At the Time of Muhammad’s Appearance; and of the Methods Taken By Him For the Establishing His Religion, and the Circumstances Which Concurred Thereto.
• Section III.: Of the QurÁn Itself, the Peculiarities of That Book; the Manner of Its Being Written and Published, and the General Design of It.
• Section IV.: Of the Doctrines and Positive Precepts of the QurÁn, Which Relate to Faith and Religious Duties.
• Section V.: Of Nertain Negative Precepts In the QurÁn.
• Section VI.: Of the Institutions of the QurÁn In Civil Affairs
• Section VII.: Of the Months Commanded By the QurÁn to Be Kept Sacred, and of the Setting Apart of Friday For the Especial Service of God.
• Section VIII.: Of the Prinzipad Sects Among the Muhammadans, and of Those Who Have Pretended to Prophecy Among the Arabs In Or Since the Time of Muhammad
• The QurÁn.
• Chapter I.: Entitled Surat Ul FÁtihat (the Preface). Revealed At Makkah.
• Introduction.
• In the Name of the Most Merciful God.
• Chapter II.: Entitled Surat Ul Baqr (the Cow). Revealed Partly At Makkah and Partly At Madína.
• Introduction.
• In the Name of the Most Merciful God.

IN THE NAME OF THE MOST MERCIFUL GOD.

First Manzil

∥ (1) Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures; (2) the most merciful, (3) the king of the day of judgment. (4) Thee do we worship, and of thee do we beg assistance. (5) Direct us in the right way, (6) in the way of those to whom thou hast been gracious; (7) not of those against whom thou art incensed, nor of those who go astray.

CHAPTER II.

ENTITLED SURAT UL BAQR (THE COW).

Revealed partly at Makkah and partly at Madína.

[(1) ]Lord of all creatures. “The original words are Rabbi’lálumm, which literally signify, Lord of the worlds: but alamina, in this and other places of the Qurán, properly means the three species of rational creatures, men, genii, and angels.”—Sale. Savary translates it, “Sovereign of the worlds.” Rodwell has it, “Lord of worlds.” Abdul Qádir of Delhi has it, “Lord of the whole world.” In the Persian translation it is rendered “Cherisher of the worlds.”

[(5-7) ]“This last sentence,” says Sale. “contains a petition that God would lead the supplicant into the true religion, by which is meant the Muhammadan, in the Qurán often called the right way: in this place more particularly defined to be the way of those to whom God hath been gracious, that is, of the prophets and faithful who preceded Muhammad; under which appellations are also comprehended the Jews and Christians, such as they were in the times of their primitive purity, before they had deviated from their respective institutions; not the way of the modern Jews, whose signal calamities are marks of the just anger of God against them for their obstinacy and disobedience; nor of the Christians of this age, who have departed from the true doctrine of Jesus, and are bewildered in a labyrinth of error (Jaláluddín, Baidháwi. &c.) This is the common exposition of the passage, though al Zamakhshari and some others, oy a different application of the negatives, refer the whole to the true believers, and then the sense will run thus: The way of those to whom thou hast been gracious, against whom thou art not incensed, and who have not erred, which translation the original will very well bear.”

These two views really coincide, inasmuch as the claim of Islám is that all true believers among Jews and Christians were Muslims.

Abdul Qádir says that by these words we are to understand four classes—the prophets, the righteous, the martyrs, and the good: and by “those against whom God is incensed,” the Jews are indicated; and if any othei class be included, it is that of the Nazarenes.