The narrations would have to be cross-checked against one another.

The narrations would have to be cross-checked against one another. Later the researcher would have to consider all other declarations and citations on the same topic from other references and then use the holy Qur'an as the arbitrator. Of more significance still, one has to abide by the rules and regulations laid down by the specialists and which rules can never be ignored.

Therefore, the researcher would have to go back either to the ideological and linguistic books or to the books of jurisprudence and legislation, that is, those books which cover the inference aspects and the evaluation of various proofs and evidence used to back-up (23) any ideological principle or jurisprudence.

This is the approach to be adopted if he wants his research to be systematic and if he wants the results to be sound, accurate and reliable, thus satisfying his scientific conscience and obliging others to honour and follow such inferences. This very point has been ignored - intentionally or otherwise - by many researchers and we are stressing it here in order that other researchers would neither make the same mistake of ignoring it nor suffer the same deviation.

And for several considerations we refrained from introducing unnecessary explanatory notes, except where it was absolutely necessary, so as to stick to our . original aim of merely translating and publishing the book. -4- In the translation we have retained the Islamic format and Arabic pronunciation of the names and proper nouns encountered in various ah??d?th.

We were not content with the Biblical equivalents, but, instead, retained the Islamic articulations in the text, following each proper noun or name (especially those mentioned in the holy Qur'an) like, Mus? (Moses), 'Is? (Jesus), Maryam (Marry), Jibr?l (Gabriel). . . with its Biblical equivalent in brackets. We took this measure because we strongly believe in preserving the original Islamic character even with respect to names and proper nouns.

We believe in originality even when it comes to appearances, and we will completely avoid imitation and reproduction even if it were merely with respect to pronunciation and expression. . . -5 We have put a table at the beginning of each section giving general particulars and information in tabular form about the Holy Prophet (p.b.u.h.a.h.p.) and F?tima az-Zahra' (p.b.u.h.) and the twelve Im?ms (p.b.u.t.). For each of them we have assigned a number according to their sequence.