Introduction to the forthcoming publication of the Al-Bahr al-Madeed fi Tafseer al-Qur’an al-Majeed

‘The Boundless Sea: A Tafseer of the Illustrious Quran’ by the mighty Scholar, Abu ‘Abbaas Ahmad bin Muhammad bin al-Mahdi ibn ‘Ajeeba al-Hasani

This translation assumes a certain basic knowledge of Islamic vocabulary. It is now over fifty years since Shaykh Dr. Abd al-Qadir as-Sufi initiated the use of transliterated Arabic for the key terms regarding the Law and the science of tasawwuf. It is clear that a corresponding transformation has taken place among the leading Muslims of Europe: by their adoption of such Arabic words as zakat rather than the completely false and misleading term ‘alms’, or deen rather than the minimalist word ‘religion’, or riba rather than the cosmetic term ‘interest’, they now have access to what these terms actually denote; and if the non-Muslim reader genuinely wishes to acquire a true understanding of the Quran, the Messenger peace be upon him, and the Muslims, then he too must be prepared to take the plunge into linguistic purity and leave behind the graeco-Latin, churchy-English coloured soup of the translations of Islamic texts undertaken by orientalists or Muslims still fettered by a christian past. The Quran comes to us in Arabic and Arabic is a vibrant living language which can still be clearly translated directly into European languages. The difference between this latter and one which comes to us via Isa’s Aramaic – to Greek, Latin and finally to the Old, Middle or Victorian English – is clear. It is a well-known phenomenon that when one translates a text into another language, then to another and to yet another and one then compares the outcome to the original then two often quite different texts result.

The Islamic health of a territory may be measured in accordance with the degree of use of correct Islamic terms amongst its ordinary inhabitants. This was well understood at the beginning of the twentieth century by the perpetrators of the linguacide of the Uthmani Turkish which at the height of its flowering contained well over the half of its vocabulary from the Arabic of the Quran and the sunna.

The reader shall find that consistency of spelling is not necessarily a priority in this translation: each nation transliterates its terms from the Quran and the sunna in harmony with the rythms of its own language. In this translation we have incorporated various forms of spelling in order to relax in their symphony of sound; and to keep the dear reader on his toes; and to avoid the hieroglyphics of diacritical marks, off-putting to the normal reader. And as anyone who searches in the internet knows, one must be aware of all the disparate spellings of any Arabic name or term if one wants to find all the entries. The cobweb Swiftian pinning down and helplessizing of the giant text through the use of endless footnotes is also avoided for the same reason. However, in general, the Arabic words which are in common use are written in the transliteration-form which is most common amongst European and American Muslims.

Or one might say:

Beware the charm of AbdalBasit’s recitation, lest the meanings have no fascination,

or first edition leather binding, blinding and enclosing

a text of utter tooled perfection where comma, composition and correction

count more than shattering revealings.

The mufassir’s often detailed analysis of the Arabic used in the ayats is of course crucial for his own initial understanding of the ayat; however it has usually been omitted unless of particular use in our understanding the text: given that Arabic is a semitic language and contains forms and constructions quite foreign to English it is often of little use to inform the general reader that a particular word ‘is’ or ‘corresponds to’ a second object, syndetic relative or a conjunction attached to a subjunctive, subject to apocope; and this, because, as often as not, they do not ‘correspond’ in any significant or practical way, although for want of a viable alternative these are used by orientalists. Some examples of his linguistic analysis from the opening ayas of al-Baqara have been left in order to show his methodology, and demonstrate his mastery of the Arabic and capacity to disclose the true meanings of any aya.