The Perfect Guide to the Sciences of the Qur'an ─ Al-Itqan fi 'Ulum al-Qur'an

Imam Jalal-al-Din `Abd al-Rahman al-Suyuti (849--911 AH / 1445--1505 AD) was born, lived and was buried in Cairo. The ascription `al-Suyuti' is a reference to Asyut, a town in Upper Egypt from which his family hailed. Known as the `son of books' from the numerous books he studied and referred to in his works, he could equally be called the `father of books' because of the many books he produced

From his early years, al-Suyuti devoted his life to learning, reading, writing and teaching, holding notable positions in those fields in the city of Cairo at a time when it was the centre of Islamic learning par excellence. He was an outstanding scholar, second to none in the field, of Quranic Sciences (`Ulum al-Qur'an), in which he produced many well-known works. However, being the all-round scholar that he was, his contributions covered almost all the fields of Arabic, the Qur'an, the Traditions (hadith) and History. His works were of such superb quality that they earned him the respect of his generation and the generations that followed to the present day. Most important of these in the field of Quranic Sciences was his al-Itqan. The work found its way to many circles both near and far in the Islamic world. It was first published in the years 1271, 1278, 1279, 1306, 1317 and 1318 AH, in two volumes, but the translation presented here is of a publication of four volumes published in 1987 AD (1967 AD). The translation at hand is of the first volume. Al-Itqan is perhaps the most outstanding work of its kind in the field of Quranic Sciences. Exhaustive in its sources and its subjects, thoughtfully and lucidly written, the work is also well arranged. Readers will be taken by the depth, breadth, scope and mastery of the author while noting how much Muslim scholars have devoted to the study of the Qur'an and how varied and diverse were the fields in which those studies were made. A must to the specialist of Quranic Studies, the work is highly recommended to the initiate

Hamid Algar is Professor of Persian and Islamic Studies at the University of California in Berkeley, California
Michael Schub is a Senior Lecturer in Arabic at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut
Ayman Abdel Haleem is a translator and academic researcher at the Golden Web Foundation, Cambridge, England