A Commentary, and a Very Good Translation

There is a lot more detail to all of this. For further detail, a commentary on the ʿAqīdah Ṭaḥāwiyyah is being prepared, based primarily on al-Maydānī's commentary, along with notes from al-Ghaznawī's and al-Bābartī's and other commentaries, so that it will be a more comprehensive commentary. For the time being, for something to study, and to reinforce what has just been discussed, further detail can be found in the translation of al-Fiqh al-Akbar that was published recently. It contains a lot of the discussions covered in this chapter anyway. May Allah (swt) give the tawfīq to finish the ʿAqīdah Ṭaḥāwiyyah commentary soon as well.

Now to the book itself. Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī begins with the Bismillah. Bismillāh al-Raḥmān al-Raḥīm: in the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

The translation of the creed used here is by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, and permission for its use was, it is understood, taken from Zaytuna Institute. It is a very good translation. There have been, it seems, a number of other translations, by Iqbal Azami, and there are some other translations as well that are available online for free. As for the reason he translated this particular text again, he has explained how he went into the Latin roots of the words, to try to get the exact meaning.

A lot of the other translations out there had to resort to explanatory sentences in order to explain, because al-Ṭaḥāwī's work is very, very succinct; it is very eloquent; it is very particular about the way it says things. To transport that into English using a similar number of words is very difficult, and that, it seems, is the speciality of this particular translation. One could only wish he had added notes that further elaborated on certain points; but it is not a commentary, it is a translation, and a very good translation at that. Allah reward them. They gave permission, it is understood, for it to be used.