It appears to me of great importance that the Sources of Islam should be
translated into Arabic, Urdu, and other languages of the East, and so made
accessible to Muslim readers everywhere.
The Persian volume, of which the present forms but a partial and
compressed translation, is remarkable for giving, in their primitive
tongues, all the Authorities quoted by our Author, which are then followed
by translations into Persian. Where the passages are in Arabic or other
language understood at the present time, it will no doubt be proper in any
new Edition's to continue printing them as they stand, with a translation
into the common tongue of the country for which the edition is intended.
But where they consist of quotations from primitive tongues (as Pehlavi,
etc.) not now in use, the originals should I think be left out, and simply
the translation given as above proposed. The great antiquity of some of the
evidence which