Preamble

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بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

وصلّى الله على سيّدنا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه وسلّم * لك الحمد يا من منّ بالذوق السليم * على من شاء من عباده وبلّغه الفرق بالفهم المستقيم * بين نفيس الكلام وأضداده * وخصّ من شاء بفكرة خامده * وكانت لديه أقصى مراده * ووهبه قريحة جامده * لا تَسْنَح بموارد نظم نثر الكلام ولا بإيراده * والصلاة والسلام على أفصح من نطق بالضاد * وأشجع من هزم من عاداه وضادّ * محمّد المبعوث للخلائق * بأوضح الطرائق * وعلى آله وصحبه نجوم الهدى ما ذرّ شارق ولمع بارق *

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

God bless Our Lord Muḥammad, his kin, and his Companions, and grant them peace! Thanks be to You, O God, who have bestowed sound taste on those of Your servants whom You desire and imparted to them the power to discriminate, through right understanding, between verse that’s exquisite and that which is dire, just as You have singled out those whom You please for an intelligence barely flickering (the most to which any such may aspire) and given them a genius resistant to quickening, sealed against any seepage or transmission from those wellsprings that the conversion of scattered words into ordered verse inspire! And blessings and peace upon the most well-spoken of those who the ḍād pronounce,¹ the bravest of those who their enemies and opponents trounce (Muḥammad, sent to show humanity the clearest of ways) and upon his kin and his companions, those guiding stars, so long as sun shall rise and lightning blaze!