1.3. PUBLISHER’S PREFACE
Verily, all praise and thanks are due to Allah. We seek His help and we ask forgiveness from Him. We seek refuge with Allah from the wickedness in ourselves. Whomsoever Allah guides, there is none who can misguide him and whomsoever He sends astray, there is none who can guide him. I bear witness that none is worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger. He sent him with guidance and the true Religion and with the light (of truth), the admonition and wisdom, at a time when no Messengers were sent for a long period, when there was little religious knowledge and the people had gone astray, when the Hour was drawing nearer. Whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger has followed the right course, while whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger erred from it and gone far astray.
The book Al-Bidayah (The Beginning) by the Hafiz, the Imam, the scholarly critic, Ibn Katheer is an incomparable work regarding the study of the events and their chronological order, the knowledge of which he strove hard to acquire. He began by describing the start of creation – from the creation of the Throne and the Kursi and the heavens and the Earth and all that is in them and all that lies between them, such as the angels, the jinn and the devils and he described the manner of Adam’s creation. He recounted the stories of the Prophets and the events that took place therein, up to the times of the Children of Isra’eel and the Days of Ignorance, which ended with the advent of the final Prophet, Muhammad (Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him). Then he gave a detailed description of his life and what happened after that, up to the time in which he lived. He then wrote a separate volume called An-Nihayah Fil- Fitan Wal-Malahim (The Ending With Trials and Great Battles).
Furthermore, Allah inspired us to undertake the noble task of making this book easily accessible to both the students and the scholars and then to translate it into several languages, by Allah’s Permission.
I suggested to my brother, Yoosuf Al-Hajj, the necessity of summarizing this book in a suitable manner, through the omission of unbeneficial repetition, weak ahadeeth, lengthy poems, etc. I am thankful to Brother Yoosuf for assembling a team that consisted of Abdul Malik Wadih, Abu Muslim AlJaza’iri, Muwaffeq Khaleel Hammad, and himself. Darussalam funded the entire project, paying each team member for his contribution and work. After they completed their portion of the project, the work then went through numerous people in the Research Division of Darussalam, who meticulously went through the work, adding and subtracting materials. After this, the project went through another round of editing of the Arabic material before it was sent to the translation department. The translation was then checked for accuracy and then sent for editing, resulting in the final project that you see before you. All praise and thanks be to Allah for allowing us to produce such a classical work for the first time in the English language. O Allah! We ask that You bless us with sincerity and success and that You spread goodness through our hands.
By: Ibn Katheer
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