Abdullah Ali - The Holy Qur-an - Text, Translation and Commentary

To send as Messengers, preaching, working

In the dim twilight of history,

Wherein men fashion legends

After their own hearts, and dimly seek

A light afar, remote from the lives,

Mean and sordid, such as they knew.

C. 18.—But Muḥammad came in the fullest blaze

Of history; with no learning he put to shame

The wisdom of the learned; with pasture folk

He lived and worked, and won their love; in hills

And valleys, caves and deserts, he wandered,

But never lost his way to truth and righteousness;

From his pure and spotless heart the Angels washed

Off the dust that flew around him; through the ways

Of crooked city folk, he walked upright and straight,

And won from them the ungrudging name

Of the Man of Faith who never broke his word.

C. 19.—To the Praiseworthy indeed be praise:

Born in the Sacred City he destroyed

Its superstition; loyal to his people to the core,

He stood for all humanity; orphan-born

And poor, he envied not the rich,

And made his special care all those

Whom the world neglected or oppressed,—

Orphans, women, slaves, and those in need

Of food or comforts, mental solace, spiritual strength,

Or virtues down-trodden in the haunts of men.

C. 20.—His mother and his foster-mother

Loved and wondered at the child;

His grandfather, ’Abdul Muṭṭalib,

Of all his twice-eight children and their offspring,

Loved him best and all his sweet and gentle ways;

His uncle Abu Ṭālib, loth though he was

To give up the cult of his fathers,

Knew well the purity of Muḥammad’s

Mind and soul, and was his stoutest champion

When the other chiefs of Mecca sought to kill

The man who challenged in his person

Their narrow Pagan selfish lives.

C. 21.—To his cousin ’Alī, the well-beloved,

Born when he was thirty, he appeared

As the very pattern of a perfect man,

As gentle as he was wise and true and strong,

The one in whose defence and aid

He spent his utmost strength and skill,

Holding life cheap in support of a cause so high,

And placing without reserve his chivalry,

His prowess, his wit and learning, and his sword

At the service of this mighty Messenger of God.

C. 22.—Not till the age of forty did he receive

The Commission to stand forth and proclaim

The Bounty of God, and His gift, to lowly Man,

Of knowledge by Word and Pen; but all through

His years of preparation he did search

The Truth: he sought it in Nature’s forms and laws,

Her beauty and her stern unflinching ways;

He sought it in the inner world

Of human lives, men's joys and sorrows,

Their kindly virtues and their sins

Of pride, injustice, cruel wrong,

And greed of gain, scarce checked by the inner voice

That spoke of duty, moral law, and higher still,

The Will Supreme of God, to which the will

Of man must tune itself to find its highest bliss.

C. 23.—But he grew steadfastly in virtue and purity;

Untaught by men, he learnt from them, and learned

To teach them; even as a boy of nine,

When he went in a trade caravan with Abu Ṭālib

To Syria, his tender soul marked inwardly

How God did speak in the wide expanse

Of deserts, in the stern grandeur of rocks,

In the refreshing flow of streams, in the smiling

Bloom of gardens, in the art and skill with which

Men and birds and all life sought for light

From the Life of Lives, even as every plant

Seeks through devious ways the light of the Sun.

C. 24.—Nor less was he grieved at Man’s ingratitude

When he rebelled and held as naught the Signs

Of God, and turned His gifts to baser uses,

Driving rarer souls to hermit life,

Clouding the heavenly mirror of pure affections

With selfish passions, mad unseemly wrangles,

And hard unhallowed loathsome tortures of themselves.

C. 25.—He worked, and joyed in honest labour;

He traded with integrity to himself and to others;

He joined the throngs of cities and their busy life,

But saw its good and evil as types

Of an inner and more lasting life hereafter;

People gladly sought his help as umpire

And peacemaker because they knew his soul

Was just and righteous: he loved the society

Of old and young, but oft withdrew to solitude

For Prayer and inward spiritual strength;

He despised not wealth but used it for others;

He was happy in poverty and used it as his badge

And his pride when wealth was within his reach

But not within his grasp, as a man among men.

C. 26.—At twenty-live he was united in the holy bonds

Of wedlock with Ḵẖadīja the Great, the noble lady

Who befriended him when he had no worldly resources,

Trusted him when his worth was little known,

Encouraged and understood him in his spiritual struggles,

Believed in him when with trembling steps

He took up the Call and withstood obloquy,

Persecution, insults, threats, and tortures,

And was a life-long helpmate till she was gathered

To the saints in his fifty-first year,—

A perfect woman, the mother of those that believe.

C. 27.—There is a cave in the side of Mount Ḥiraa

Some three miles north of the City of Mecca,

In a valley which turns left from the road to ’Arafāt,

To which Muḥammad used to retire for peaceful contemplation:

Often alone, but sometimes with Ḵẖadīja.

Days and nights he spent there with his Lord.

Hard were the problems he revolved in his mind,—

Harder and more cross-grained than the red granite

Of the rock around him,—problems not his own,

But his people’s, yea, and of human destiny,

Of the mercy of God, and the age-long conflict

Of evil and righteousness, sin and abounding Grace.

C. 28.—Not till forty years of earthly life had passed

That the veil was lifted from the Preserved Tablet

And its contents began to be transferred to the tablet of his mind,

To be proclaimed to the world, and read and studied

For all time,—a fountain of mercy and wisdom,

A warning to the heedless, a guide to the erring,

An assurance to those in doubt, a solace to the suffering,

A hope to those in despair,—to complete the chain

Of Revelation through the mouths

Of divinely inspired Apostles.

C. 29.—The Chosen One was in the Cave of Ḥiraa.

For two years and more he had prayed there and adored

His Creator and wondered at the mystery

Of man with his corruptible flesh, just growing

Out of a clot, and the soul in him

Reaching out to knowledge sublime, new

And ever new, taught by the bounty

Of God, and leading to that which man himself

Knoweth not. And now, behold! a dazzling

Vision of beauty and light overpowered his senses,

And he heard the word " Iqraa! "

C. 30.—" Iqraa! "—which being interpreted may mean "Read!" or "Proclaim!” or "Recite!” The unlettered Apostle was puzzled; He could not read. The Angel seemed To press him to his breast in a close embrace, And the cry rang clear " Iqraa! " And so it happened three times; until The first overpowering sensation yielded To a collected grasp of the words which made clear His Mission; its Author, God the Creator, Its subject, Man, God’s wondrous handiwork, Capable, by Grace, of rising to heights sublime; And the instrument of that mission, the sanctified Pen, And the sanctified Book, the Gift of God, Which men might read, or write, or study, or treasure in their souls.