The general opinion of the Islamic schools of law considers...

The general opinion of the Islamic schools of law considers the translation of the Qur'an as legitimate or even necessary, but disapproves of its use as a substitute for Arabic in prayer. The editions under every language are listed alphabetically according to the names of the translators and under each name, mostly, in a chronological order.

The available particulars pertaining to an edition, including the title, number of volumes, number of the edition, place and year of publication, and names of publisher and printer are given. The sizes of the published work, the number of pages pertaining to every volume as well as the script of the translation are mentioned under every entry with the sources of reference.

Occasionally, there are additional remarks about the nature of the work, and the background of the translator, Translations whose authors are unknown as well as those undertaken by teams of scholars are mentioned under entries marked "Anonymous" and placed at the end of the list pertaining to a given language.

Whereas the general rule followed is to list the names of the translators according to their last or family names, the rule followed elsewhere, such as in the case of Urdu, is to list them in the order of the first name. Accordingly Shah Wali Allah's name appears under "Qutb alp-Din Ahmad b. 'Abd alp-Rahim" (p.

356p-464), Another similar instance is that of Husayn wa'iz Kashifi, mentioned under "Kamal alp-Din," Admittedly, it is difficult to follow a general rule when listing names of Muslim authors, especially the names of those belonging to the Indian subcontinent which often do not follow a fixed pattern, but it seems best to list famous authors by the names by which they are wellp- known.

As most of the bibliographical details were gleaned from the sources and the authors did not have direct access to most of the works, some errors in determining the exact nature and content of some works and their ascription to authors and translators were inevitable. For instance, a translation in Esperanto by Italo Chiussi is mentioned among Spanish translations (also mentioned under Esperanto).

This is particularly true of languages in which there is a large number of works, such as Urdu and Persian. Due to problems of access some of the information given is incorrect. For instance, Abu alp-Fath alp-Jurjani's Tafsirp-e Shahi (p. 344) is not a translation of the Qur'an but a work on ayat alp-ahkam in Persian.