Translator's Note

All praise and thanks are due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds. We cannot find words to praise Him, AS He only sees fit how laudation should be addressed to Him. We seek refuge in Allah from the evils within ourselves and the evils of our bad deeds. Whosoever Allah guides will never be led astray, and whosoever He leads astray will never find guidance. We bear witness that there is no god but Allah, the One without any associate, and We bear witness that Muhammad is His Messenger and bondman, peace and blessings be upon him, his kith and kin, his Companions and all those who follow their guidance until the Day of Judgment.

The Glorious Qur'an will continue to be the sole everlasting miracle till the Day of Judgement. It is the Word of Allah, Exalted be He, sent to His chosen Prophet, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) who endeavored with all his might and main to convey and explain it to the whole world. He visualizes to the whole world its inherent wisdom and admonition. The Glorious Qur'an, however, recounts a number of stories that took place throughout far-remote points of history which are full of events that one's eyes and mind cannot fail to grasp its admonition and advice. These admonitions and advice, if seriously considered, can verify and restore to the right course a great number of false beliefs and concepts.        Allah the Almighty says: {Thus We relate to you (O Muhammad (Peace be upon him)) some information of what happened before. And indeed We have given you from Us a Reminder (this Qur'an)}. (Ta-Ha, 99)

Given the significance of these stories, not a small number of Muslim scholars exerted efforts to compile, verify and comment on them. Ibn Katheer (May Allah rest his soul) is a pioneer in that respect. His voluminous Al-Bidayah wan-Nihayah (The Beginning and the End) relates the stories of Allah's prophets and world nations since the beginning of history. Truly, he successfully managed to find the relationship between the details cited in the Glorious Qur'an and the Prophetic Hadiths of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) that explained and clarified the incidents that took place. He also tried his best to portrait the characters of heroes of our stories and their relevant backgrounds. So doing, he presented a lively easy account of these stories of the Glorious Qur'an.

Here, I must admit that translating this book Stories of the Qur'an was not an easy thing. As the original book of Ibn Katheer was full of details, the translation underwent some abridgment, without impairing the contents of the book. Also, I have left out most of the Invented Hadiths, Al-Mawdu `at, that were 'falsely' attributed to Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) throughout the book (by other than Ibn Katheer of course!). However, it goes without saying that the style of the Arabic language is totally different from that of English. This forced me to make so many changes in the form of presenting the text with a view to rendering it more readable and easily understood by our dear reader.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all those who helped to publish this book. I pray to Allah to accept all our efforts as sincere deeds done solely for His Sake, for it is He alone Whose reward is of any real significance.

Translator Ali As-Sayed Al- Halawani

Department of English, Faculty of Alsun, Minia University