Professor 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 Shariah,
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-Ghazaliss 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 Shari ah 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.
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.
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
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.