The Cake that Omar Baked

A modern-phrased interpretation in English (Arabic-English Parallel Edition)

This contemporary, authoritative translation interprets the Quran’s meaning for the English reader with unprecedented access to the Book that is the foundational source of Islam, its civilization and its peoples, who now comprise nearly one-fourth of humanity across the breadth of all the Earth’s continents and who form a crucial, contiguous community at the middle of the world.

Twenty years in the making, The Gracious Quran: A Modern-Phrased Interpretation of Its Meanings in English is both highly reliable and powerfully expressed. Where the Arabic of the Quran swells with important implication, that intent is conveyed in this rendering with a light hand in unobtrusive brackets, every effort having been expended to make its reading August, clear, accessible, and consistent while at the same time free of poetic pretension, philosophical complication, and lifeless literalisms. Its graceful layout and design augment the profound simplicity of the Quran’s message and give some semblance of resonance to its almost hypnotic power of literary expression.

The interpretation of The Gracious Quran is thoroughly guided by wide and deep experience with the civilizations of both luminous Islam and the enlightened west, while not unmindful of the light that infuses the world’s brilliant traditions. Fully four decades of scholarly expertise in Quranic studies and related disciplines are in its service, and the latest advances in the art of translation conspicuously benefit it.

About the translator:

Dr. Ahmad Zaki Hammad is an internationally known authority on Quran and Islamic Studies. He teaches Islamic Civilization and the Primary Disciplines of Quran Commentary, the Prophetic Traditions, and the Principles of Islamic Law at the foremost center of Islamic and Arabic learning in the Muslim world, AL-Azhar University (Faculty of Languages and Translations, Department of English). He is also a member of the Faculty of Shari’ah, Department of Juristic Studies.

He received his early Islamic and Arabic training at Al-Azhar University, Cairo, and was awarded the graduate degree of Alamiyyah from the Faculty of Theology. He holds a Ph.D., in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago and is the author of a study of translation of Abu Hamid al-Ghazalis’s Al-Mustasfa min Ilm al-Usul, The Quintessence of the Science of the Principles of Islamic Law; and also Islamic Law: Understanding Juristic Differences, a Primer on the Science of al-Khulaf al Fiqhi in Light of the Shariah Sources.

He lived for many years in the United States, where he founded and served in numerous national and community Islamic institutions for American Muslims.