In this edition the Selections are divided into two parts. The first is Islám; the second, other religions as regarded in Islám. In the first are grouped, under distinctive headings, the more important utterances of Moḥammad on what his followers must believe and do; in the second are his versions of the history of the patriarchs and other personages of the Jewish and Christian writings.
It is only in the First Part that I have made much alteration, either by adding fresh extracts (distinguished by a sign), or by making a few merely verbal alterations in the original extracts, or by the suppression or transposition of the commentary. Any alterations that go beyond this—new renderings, for instance—are duly recorded in the footnotes.
The Second Part is almost unchanged from the first edition. In this part the interwoven commentary is left entire, for the traditions of the commentators about Abraham and Moses and Christ are as curious as the traditions of Moḥammad, and about as credible; and the narrative style of the Second Part allows the introduction of parentheses more easily than the rhetorical form which many of the extracts in the First Part present.
Mr. Lane’s Introduction was abridged from Sale’s Preliminary Discourse, with but little addition from his own knowledge. Sale’s Discourse abounds in information, but it is too detailed and lengthy for the purpose of this volume. I have, then, substituted a short sketch of the beginnings of Islám. I have tried to bring home to the reader the little we know of the early Arabs; then to draw the picture of the great Arab prophet and his work; to show what are the salient points of Islám; and finally to explain something of the history of the Ḳur-án and its contents. I am conscious of having drawn the picture with a weak hand, but I hope the sketch may serve as a not quite useless introduction to a volume of typical selections from a book which, in the peculiar character of its contents and the extraordinary power of its influence, has not its parallel in the world.
S. L. P.
June 1878.