5 Preface هَل في ذٰلِكَ قَسَمٌ لِذي حِجرٍYusuf AliIs there (not) in these1 an adjuration (or evidence) for those who understand?All these mystic Symbols draw our attention, like solemn adjurations in speech, to the profoundest mystery of our inner life, viz., how from utter depths of darkness—ignorance or even degradation—God’s wonderful Light or Revelation can lead us by contrast into the most beautiful sunshine of a glorious spiritual Day. But the contrast suggests also the opposite process as a corollary,—how resistance to God’s light would destroy us utterly, converting our greatness or glory to perdition, as happened with the peoples of Arab antiquity, ‘Ād and Thamūd, and the type of the powerful but arrogant and godless monarch, the Pharaoh of Egypt. Like a man with a bounded horizon, the average man does not understand these long-range mysteries of life, and we have need to pray that we may be of “those who understand”.