ADVERTISEMENT
TO THE
THIRD EDITION.
Since the publication of the first edition of the present work, the studies in which I have been engaged have enabled me to improve it by various corrections and additions; and the success which it has obtained (a success very far beyond my expectations) has excited me to use my utmost endeavours to rectify its errors and supply its defects.
In reading the Kur-án, with an Arabic commentary, I have found that Sale’s version, though deserving of high commendation for its general accuracy, is incorrect in many important passages; and hence I have been induced to revise with especial care my abstract of the principal Muslim laws: for as Sale had excellent commentaries to consult, and I, when I composed that abstract, had none, I placed great reliance on his translation. My plan, in the execution of that portion of my work, was to make use of Sale’s translation as the basis, and to add what appeared necessary from the Sunneh and other sources, chiefly at the dictation of a professor of law, who was my tutor: but I have found that my foundation was in several points faulty.
I am indebted to a gentleman who possesses a thorough knowledge of the spirit of Muslim institutions[[8]] for the suggestion of some improvements in the same and other portions of this work; and observations made by several intelligent critics have lessened the labour of revision and emendation.
I have also profited, on this occasion, by a paper containing a number of corrections and additions written in Egypt, which I had mislaid and forgotten: but none of these are of much importance.
The mode in which Arabic words were transcribed in the previous editions I thought better calculated than any other to enable an English reader, unacquainted with the Arabic language, to pronounce those words with tolerable accuracy; but it was liable to serious objections, and was disagreeable, in some respects, to most Oriental scholars, and to myself. I have therefore now employed, in its stead, as I did in my translation of “The Thousand and One Nights,” a system congenial with our language, and of the most simple kind; and to this system I adhere in every case, for the sake of uniformity as well as truth.[[9]] It requires little explanation: the general reader may be directed to pronounce
| “a” as in our word “beggar:”[[10]] | “i” as in “bid:” |
| “á” as in “father:”[[11]] | “o” as in “obey” (short): |
| “e” as in “bed:” | “ó” as in “bone:” |
| “é” as in “there:” | “oo” as in “boot:” |
| “ee” as in “bee:” | “ow” as in “down:” |
| “ei” as our word “eye:” | “u” as in “bull:” |
| “ey” as in “they:” | “y” as in “you.” |
An apostrophe, when immediately preceding or following a vowel, I employ to denote the place of a letter which has no equivalent in our alphabet: it has a guttural sound, like that which is heard in the bleating of sheep.
The usual sign of a diæresis I sometimes employ to show that a final “e” is not mute, but pronounced as that letter, when unaccented, in the beginning or middle of a word.