83 Preface ۞ وَأَيّوبَ إِذ نادىٰ رَبَّهُ أَنّي مَسَّنِيَ الضُّرُّ وَأَنتَ أَرحَمُ الرّاحِمينَYusuf AliAnd (remember) Job, when He cried to his Lord, “Truly distress has seized me.1 But Thou art the Most Merciful of those that are merciful.”Job (Ayub) was a prosperous man, with faith in God, living somewhere in the northeast corner of Arabia. He suffers from a number of calamities; his cattle are destroyed, his servants slain by the sword, and his family crushed under his roof. But he holds fast to his faith in God. As a further calamity he is covered with loathsome sores from head to foot. He loses his peace of mind, and he curses the day he was born. His false friends come and attribute his affliction to sin. These “Job’s comforters” are no comforters at all, and he further loses his balance of mind, but God recalls to him all His mercies, and he resumes his humility and gives up self-justification. He is restored to prosperity, with twice as much as he had before; his brethren and friends come back to him; he had a new family of seven sons and three fair daughters. He lived to a good old age, and saw four generations of descendants. All this is recorded in the Book of Job in the Old Testament. Of all the Hebrew writings, the Hebrew of this Book comes nearest to Arabic. The account given in the Biblical sources and the image that it projects of Prophet Job is decidedly different from that found in the Qur-ān and the Ḥadīth, which present him as a prophet and a brilliant example of dignified patience becoming of a great Prophet of God ever trustful in Him and His promises. Nothing could be further from the truth than saying that he lost his peace of mind or resorted to curses during the period of his trial. (R).