When The Stars Prostrated: Meditations On Surat Yusuf

Without doubt, to know the cause of a thing, the occasion on which an incident has come in a particular way, and the circumstances under which an event has taken place in a certain manner can remove a great deal of ambiguity because of which it is not only difficult to understand this thing, but also it is possible to understand it quite differently from what it really is.

An enduring classic work on the etiquette that a Muslim must or should have with regard to handling and reciting the Quran (the Muslim scripture). The topics this volume raises include: ritual cleanliness, opportune times for recitation, the etiquette that students have with their teachers (and that teachers must have with their students), and variety of other issues that every Muslim should know and frequently ask about.

He present works was designed and written to explain to men and women how best to benefit from the Book of Allah. The blessing of the Quran is that whoever recites it as it should be recited is changed by it, and brought by imperceptible degrees to see why everything is the way it is. The seed of this knowledge is a humble intention to draw nearer to the Divine, the soil in which it takes root are reverence, awe, and love, ant its fruit is this world and the next. It is well known to everyone conversant wuth the Islamic disciplines that the learning of many thins does not teach wisdom, and that traditional books do not reveal their secrets or bestow their benefits to those without the key to them.

This key is adab, the “the right way of doing things,” rendered in the title as “etiquette.”… Books, especially sacred ones, give their knowledge to those of adab, and Westerns who know something about the sciences of Islam have been waiting for a book like this in English for a long time.
-From the Foreword by
Nuh Ha Mim Keller

A contemporary exploration of Qur’anic studies, analysing the various approaches to the Qur’an taken by leading scholars through the centuries.

Have you ever wondered in what circumstances a particular verse or Soorah was revealed? In this translation of the great work ‘Asbaab an-Nuzool’ by the great Muslim scholar Ali ibn Ahmad an-Neesaboori, you may well find the answer. This first volume covers the first four sections of the Qur’an, from Sorrah al-Fatihah to verse 22 of Soorah an-Nisa. The publication of this book reflects our continuing effort to bring to the English speaking Muslims works previously only available to Arab speakers.