Camille Adams Helminski
This Volume XI, contains fresh English translations of surahs 67 through 114, the shorter surahs of the Qur’an so frequently remembered by heart. Also interspersed are transliterations of key terms and verses, so that the reader may have a sense of the flowing beauty of the Qur’anic language. Saints and the wise across the world have been inspired and guided by these verses for centuries.Hakim Sana’i, a beloved mystic and revered predecessor of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, once expressed the beauty of the Qur’an in this way: 'The lines of the Qur’an are like unto faith’s shore, for it gives ease to heart and soul; its bounty and its might are as the encircling sea around the soul’s world; its depths are full of pearls and jewels, its shores abound in aloes-wood and ambergris; knowledge of first and last is scattered from it for benefit for soul and body both.'Volume XI is the completion volume in a series of eleven volumes, God willing, which together are intended to hold the complete one hundred and fourteen surahs of the Holy Qur’an. Together with Volume I it is as the two leaves of a plant emerging, with new leaves and branches, and inshallah flowers and fruit, opening further, from the Center in further volumes. The translation is rendered with gender-inclusive language in alignment with the underlying understanding of the Qur’anic revelation that 'Allah' (Divine Reality) is unlimited, far beyond anything by which we might attempt to describe It, and that all of creation is held and nurtured by the Beneficent Womb of Reality (ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim). We offer this translation to support the increased opening of our awareness to all the Compassionate Generosity and Loving Guidance of the Divine Bestowal-that Love that is always communicating with us, which we simply need to open our hearts to hear, and our eyes to see, and through which our hearts might be deeply nourished, with the blessing of that abundant Grace.
