My debts are too many to permit more than brief acknowledgement here. My first and enduring debt is to Ibrahim Abu Nab of Amman. A gifted translator, journalist and filmmaker, Ibrahim opened his heart as well as his home to me when I visited him back in the 1980s. We spent long evening hours reading, discussing and translating the Noble Qur'an. I have benefited from his insight into A Book of Signs (the Qur'an is at once the Noble Qur'an and A Book of Signs. See below pp. 8 & 15) and his reverence for its divine origins. I honour his memory by dedicating this book to him.
In several chapters I have used some of the privately circulated translations of Shawkat Toorawa. I am indebted to him for permission both to cite his lyrical renditions and to modify them slightly in this biography of A Book of Signs. Equally am I beholden to five of my former students, Rick Colby, Jamillah Karim, Scott Kugle, Rob Rozehnal and Omid Safi, for their extraordinary insight into the shaping and reshaping of this text. To my colleague, Ebrahim Moosa, who read the whole of the manuscript with the heart of a believer and the eye of a critic, I give special thanks. My life's partner, Miriam Cooke, did so much that no words of mine are adequate. I invoke Rumi. Quoting the Prophet's dictum, Mawlana once observed that 'women totally dominate men of intellect and possessors of hearts'. May this book be its beneficiary!
