presenting Islam as peaceful, tolerant, rational, inspiring
This edition of Maulana Muhammad Ali’s English Translation and Commentary of the Holy Quran is the first to be produced from new typesetting since the publication of his revised edition in 1951. It was essential to renew the typesetting in order to maintain and improve print quality. We have taken advantage of this opportunity to correct previous misprints, improve layout and design, use a better footnote numbering scheme, check cross-references, and substantially expand the Index of subjects. The proposals for this redesign and misprint correction were made some years ago by Dr. Zahid Aziz and submitted to the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Lahore, Pakistan. These were studied in detail by the then Head and President, Dr. Saeed Ahmad Khan, the Vice-President, Mr. Naseer Ahmad Faruqui, and other senior members of the Anjuman, and approval was given after due consultations and discussions. At the same time, a Foreword was approved for the new edition which is reproduced preceding this Note. In the previous edition, there were many cases in which quotations from the Holy Quran as given within the footnotes and the Introduction were somewhat differently worded from the same passages as given in the translation itself. To prevent confusion, these have now been made consistent with the translation, but wherever the different wording was being used to illustrate a particular point we have retained it, either in parentheses after the standard translation or by insertion of the standard translation in parentheses. There were also some instances in the footnotes where an Arabic term or expression had been mentioned without indicating the specific word or words that it corresponded to in the translation of the verse above. In such cases, whenever necessary for clarity, we have inserted the English words within parentheses after the Arabic term. We wish to stress that we have only corrected printing errors as well as certain inconsistencies which, in our judgment, Maulana Muhammad Ali himself would have rectified. No other kinds of additions, omissions or changes have been made in the translation or footnotes. At certain points we also consulted the Maulana’s first edition of 1917 to help in identifying some errors and unintended omissions which occurred during the production of the revised 1951 edition. Readers of the previous editions should note the slight change in verse numbering in chapter 3, most of chapter 6, and the end of chapter 4, made for reasons of standardisation, which is explained on page I-21. We wish to thank all those volunteers in North America who, over the past three or four years, did the initial proof reading of the keyed-in text. In the end we humbly thank Almighty Allah Who enabled us to carry out this massive undertaking, pray for all those departed elders whose hard work and devotion made this translation a reality, and further pray that Allah may bring humanity to right guidance through it — Amin. Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore Inc. U.S.A. |
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