The translator’s grateful thanks are due to all those at the Ahmadiyya Headquarters, Rabwah, who have been concerned in the preparation and publication of this English version of this well-known book by the [then] present Head of the Ahmadiyya Movement. Most of all he is grateful to his friend Sahibzada Mirza Mubarak Ahmad and the Tabshir Staff for the interest they have taken in this venture and the assistance they have provided in seeing it into print and also to Chaudhri Muhammad Ali for special assistance in checking the English of the translation.
Thanks are also due to steno-typists Mirza Rahmatullah and Salim Ahmad and typist Nazir Husain for the pains they took over the type-script; also to the translator’s daughter Kausar and her husband Ishaq, under whose roof the corrections of the translation were finalized. This reminds him also of the years he spent at Government College, Lahore, where the translation was prepared during intervals of leisure from the heavy duties of a college professor and principal. The translator owes much to the comforts and conveniences of those days; so he remembers them with gratitude.
The translation itself may be described as a moderately free translation, the major aim of which is to communicate a vital theme of contemporary Islam to readers who prefer to read about it in English. The idiom, vocabulary, and rhapsody of the Original Urdu are not easy to turn into English; they certainly could not be presented except by taking a certain amount of freedom with the original; the freedom, however, has been kept to a minimum.