The Early Years of Islam
This work comprises the historical chapters of the most important compilations of Traditions, Kitāb al-Jāmi‘ aṣ-Ṣaḥīḥ by Imām Muḥammad ibn Ismā‘īl al-Bukhārī and depicts the beginning of the Prophet’s revelation, the merits of the Prophet’s Companions and the early years of Islam up to and including the decisive turning point of Islamic history, the Battle of Badr. Although the author set out to translate the whole of the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, he could not accomplish the task for much of his manuscripts were destroyed in the chaos and the inter-religious holocaust that followed upon the outbreak of the Second World War and the partition of the Indian subcontinent. However this led to his realisation, in his own words, “ten years spent on analysing, translating and clarifying the Ṣaḥīḥ were a God-willed preparation for a work which for a very long time had represented an enticing dream to me: a new rendering into English of the Message of the Qur’ān and Commentary based on the principle that the doors of ijtihād have never been and never could be closed to man’s searching intellect.” The result was the author’s Qur’ānic commentary under the title The Message of the Qur’ān, published in 1980. Any scholarly reader of that work will easily recognise how much of the spirit of ḥadīth-and, hence, of the immortal labour of Imām Bukhārī-has gone into his interpretation of the word of God.
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