Page:The Moslem World - Volume 02.djvu/41

 Rh and exceedingly valuable, especially as he gives chapter and verse in his abundant references to Arabic authors. The missionary should also secure, if possible, two standard lives of the Prophet in Arabic; the earliest by Ibn Hisham (A.H., 218) based on Ibn Ishak (A.H., 151), was printed at Cairo in A.H., 1295. The other, in three volumes, is more popular and contains a mass of later tradition. It is by Ali Ibn Burhan-ud-Din el Halebi, and is entitled Insan el Ayoon (Cairo, A.H., 1308).

The best edition in Arabic is still that of Fluegel (Leipzig 1834 and later, especially the revised publication of Fluegel' s edition by Redslob, Leipzig 1837). Some will prefer the Cairo* or Constantinople editions. Most of those published in India contain numerous typographical errors and are badly printed. A polyglot version, however, is published at Delhi in Arabic, Persian and Urdu, interlinear, which is most useful. Of translations into English that of Sale* (Warne and Co., London; Chandos Classics) is still valuable for its notes and paraphrase of difficult passages; Rodwell's (Everyman Library, J. M. Dent and Co., London) for chronological order, and Palmer's (Sacred Books of the East, Vols. VI. and IX. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1880), for idiomatic translation. Among commentaries in English there is nothing better than E. M. Wherry's Commentary on the Quran (4 vols. Trübner and Co., London, 1886). The best Arabic commentaries for reference are the two volume editions of El Beidhawi (Cairo) and that of El Zamakhshari (Cairo). The latter deals with grammatical points; the former is best for exegesis. For a critical study of the text the student will find T. Nöldeke's Geschichte des Qurans (Gottingen, Verlag der Dieterichsehen Buchhandlung, 1860) or E. Sell's Historical Development of the Quran (S.P.C.K., Madras, 1898) indispensable.

For general introduction to this part of the subject read F. A. Klein, The Religion of Islam* (London, Trübner and Co., 1906); W. St. Clair Tisdall, The Religion of the Crescent (S.P.C.K., London, 1895); or S. M. Zwemer, Islam (Student Volunteer Movement, New York, 1907). The first named