IT is now about forty-five years since, having finished my studies in Arts and Law, I was enlisted, at about the age of 25, as a soldier for the literary service of Islām, by the great Muslim reformer of this age, Hadzrat Mirzā Ghulām Ahmad of Qādiān, the Founder of the Ahmadiyyah Movement. Thank God that during this period He has granted me to contribute to Islamic religious literature more than six thousand pages in English and ten thousand pages in Urdu, in spite of other multifarious duties, first as Secretary of the Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyyah at Qādiān, and then as President of the Ahmadiyyah Anjuman Ishā'at Islām, Lahore. I am thankful to God again that He has vouchsafed me at this advanced age to do yet another service to the literary cause of Islām. The present work was undertaken to fulfil, primarily, the need of English converts to Islām, but it is really a work the need of which is felt throughout the English-speaking Muslim world. It is a faithful picture of the culture of Islām at its source, free from foreign influence and independent of later growth. It shows what the Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allāh be on him, said and did, and what lives his companions led. This is technically known as the Sunnah (lit., a manner of acting or a mode of life) of the Holy Prophet, and is popularly known as Hadīth (lit., a saying), being a record of what he said, did or approved. A translation of the Sahīh Bukhārī was undertaken about eight years ago by Mr. Muhammad Asad, an Austrian convert to Islām; but at first, owing perhaps to the lack of means as compared with the difficulties of the undertaking and, later, to his internment owing to the war, only a fractional part of the work has been published. Even if completed, the work, at a price of about Rs. 120, could decorate only the shelves of big libraries and would not be accessible to the man in the street. But really the Bukhārī is every Muslim's need, and it is this need that I have tried to fulfil by publishing the present work. In A Manual of Hadīth I have tried to give a compendium of the Sahīh Bukhārī, so far as subjects relating to the practical side of a Muslim's life are concerned. I have not touched the historical or prophetical portions of this great work, as I considered this beyond the scope of a handy treatise. In the arrangement of chapters too, I have mainly followed Bukhārī. But as my object was to make this short treatise complete so In conclusion, I must give expression to my thanks to Mr. F. W. Bustin, Editor of the The Civil & Military Gazette, Lahore, for having gone through the manuscript, and to Malak Sher Muhammad Khan, B.A. for having gone through a part of the proofs. MUHAMMAD 'ALI SECOND EDITION The second edition of the Manual of Hadīth is being brought out without any material change.
