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Conventions
The honorific for the Prophet
ṣ
all
ā
Ll
ā
hu 'alayhi wa-sallam (‘may God bless him and grant him peace’) is
given as
ṣ
in parentheses (
ṣ
), for the sake of brevity. The term
ḥ
an
ī
f has not been translated, but it should
generally be understood to describe those who had, prior to the advent of Islam, a monotheistic tendency,
thought by Muslim tradition to be the remaining followers of the faith of Abraham. The term
taw
ḥī
d appears
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in almost every other verse; it is difficult to translate succinctly in English, since it denotes the concept of
‘God being One’, the affirmation of God’s Oneness as well as belief in, or profession of, the statement, ‘there
is no god but God’. The term
ī
m
ā
n is generally translated ‘belief’, occasionally, ‘faith’, depending on which of
the two nuances the Arabic favours in a given context. The term
isl
ā
m has been translated as ‘submission’.
The reader should also note that
kufr (kuff
ā
r, kafar
ū
,
yakfur
ū
n) has different nuances according to context,
and they are: to ‘deny’ or to ‘disbelieve in’, to ‘be an disbeliever’ (a
k
ā
fir) or to ‘be ungrateful’ (for God’s
blessings).
Biblical names that should be familiar are given in their standard form (Noah, Jonah, Zachariah,
John etc.); less well-known ones and non-Biblical names are transliterated. The biographical appendix at the
end of the commentary identifies and gives a brief biography of the principal traditionists and compilers that
are mentioned repeatedly in the commentary. As regards the sundry figures that appear in verses bearing
on the Prophet’s immediate experiences, the best reference would be the
S
ī
ra itself, to which the reader is
directed.
A distinctive aspect of the Jal
ā
layn commentary, more so perhaps than any other popular
commentary, is the density of the grammatical material interfused with the narrative elements of the
commentary. While this is reasonably easy to digest in Arabic, the same concision cannot be reproduced in
English without losing the reader totally. Therefore, in order to distinguish between the grammatical
discussions and the paraphrased commentary to the verse, I use parentheses (…). The Qur'
ā
nic text is
indicated in bold and italics; but only in italics when it is a reference to some other verse in the Qur'
ā
n not
forming the basis of the commentary at that given point. Brackets […] constitute my own insertions or
repetitions, and these are used to maintain the flow of the original commentary and to clarify the nature of
the paraphrased comments of the authors.
The commentary is full of variant readings, most of which can be found in the well-known ‘seven
readings’ text of Ibn Muj
ā
hid (see bibliography below). The authors of the commentary, naturally, guide the
reader to these variants by commenting on which single letter is changed or inflected differently. Where
such instances appear, together with variant inflections of a particular clause, I always write these out in
transliteration, sometimes giving the original in brackets, in order that the reader might see how the
changes relate to one another (for example I write out the active and the passive of variants, as opposed to
merely translating the terms
mabn
ī
li’l-f
ā
'il wa’l-maf'
ū
l). Needless to say, reproducing the Arabic verbatim in
such instances would be impractical, if not impossible.
Given the idiosyncracies of every language, on occasion the reader not consulting the Arabic original
will be unaware of instances where the authors use the root of a particular word to explain its derivative,
thus creating a play on words of sorts, not for the purposes of humour, but because the Arabic allows for it
as an effective way of providing a quick explanation (see Q. 36:2 and Q. 52:27 for examples of this). I
indicate such instances of paronomasia by providing the original term as well as its explanation in
parentheses so that the reader will see the affinity between the two, where in the English there will be two
unrelated roots. Where the gloss makes a difference only in Arabic, the gloss is ignored, as it will be
reflected in the English translation of the Qur'
ā
n itself (so for instance,
al
ī
m is frequently glossed as mu'lim;
a'dadn
ā
for
a'tadn
ā
[Q. 17:10] is another example). Somewhat similarly, there are numerous cases where
the only way to translate the commentary is to incorporate its rendition into the Qur'
ā
nic text (for example
ẓ
illin min ya
ḥ
m
ū
m, of Q. 56:43 et passim).
For the English translation of the Qur'
ā
n, I have drawn principally on, M. M. Pickthall’s
The Meaning
of the Glorious Koran (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1930) and the recently published, commendable translation
by 'Al
ī
Qul
ī
Qar
ā
'
ī
,
The Qur'
ā
n: with a phrase-by-phrase English translation (London: ICAS Press, 2004).
Occasionally I have consulted Y. 'Al
ī
,
The Holy Qur’an, and less frequently, A. J. Arberry’s, The Koran
Interpreted (Oxford: OUP, 1955). There are numerous editions of the Tafs
ī
r al-Jal
ā
layn. This work is based
on a recent and good edition by 'Abd al-Q
ā
dir al-Arn
ā
'
ūṭ
and A
ḥ
mad Kh
ā
lid Shukr
ī
(Damascus and Beirut:
D
ā
r Ibn Kath
ī
r, 1998), which I collate with the much older Cairo version (B
ū
l
ā
q, 1280/1863).
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