This is my humble translation for the book of Abdul-Sâhib Al-'âmeli. Of course, and because of the high flexibility of Arabic and it's numerous words and divisions, my translation won't exactly be in the same line of the book, but I tried my best to give the overall meaning as much as and as clearer as possible. This book is considered a valuable item in any Shiite library, and I would like to notice out that there is another book and considered older than this one which was written by a scholar and a holy faithful man called "Al-Sayed Al-Jazâ'iri" but I really did not get to know this book very well, but in this translation of the book of Abdul-Sâhib you will find some reference for the book of Al-Sayed Al-Jazâiri.
I faced many troubles analysing and trying to understand the complex philosophical terms in order to proceed with my translation but I couldn't be lucky all the time, so whenever I couldn't continue translating I've put a notice of that between square brackets [..].
Maybe it is important to show some of the characteristics of the creed of Shiite in order to understand some parts of the book, of course if you are an Arabic learner and could read, then reading this book by its Arabic contents would be far more beneficial to you to understand what is going on.
For Shiite people, they believe that every prophet or a messenger from God, since the time of Adam until the last messenger which is Muhammad, every one of them got a viceroy or a saint that would take care of things after the death of the prophet or the messenger himself. For example, there is Asaph the son of Berechiah who was a viceroy for king Solomon, and there is Joshua the viceroy of Moses and lot others, and so do the prophet Muhammad got a viceroy, which is his cousin and the husband of his daughter, 'Ali ben Abi Tâlib, and after 'Ali ben Abi Tâlib comes his children and his descendants. For sunnite muslims, they do not believe in such thing, but believe that the prophet ordered things to be organized in a committee after his death, and such thing is denied by Shiite believers. It is important to note out that Shiite and Sunnite are creeds and not bound to some borders and to some countries as some others think. Lot of people think that a Shiite would mean Iranian person which is something not true at all, but people got this impression because supposedly that the modern islamic government in Iran is a Shiite government, although it has different aspects than other sub-Shiite creeds, and the speech about this will take long time and maybe it needs a book for its own sake.
Here are some of the abbreviations and notifications first that I used in my translation:
PUH: Peace Upon Him (Her)
PUT: Peace Upon Them
--------------------
from (name1) from (name2) ...etc: This is called the chain of the speech
or saying and points out the names of people that carried the tidings or
news.
[..] = a personal note
(..) = further translation or an abbreviated expression
(?) = means not clearly understood or couldn't be explained
ben = "The son of", like the Irish "mac"
þ,Þ = TH as in Thin
XXXXX ð,Ð = TH as in There
Here I mention the names of the Household of Muhammad, whom Shiite believe in , notice that "ben" means "son of", it is like the Irish "mac" in names, and the names between the brackets are the most famous surnames for each one:
1. the prophet Muhammad (PUH)
2. 'Ali ben Abi Tâlib, the prince of believers (PUH) [the husband
of Fâtima the daughter of the prophet, and the cousin of the prophet
and his viceroy]
3. Al-Hasan ben 'Ali (Al-Mojtabâ)
4. Al-Husain ben 'Ali (Al-Shaheed: meaning the martyr)
5. 'Ali ben Al-Husain (Zayn Al-'Abedeen)
6. Muhammad ben 'Ali (Al-Bâqir)
7. Ja'far ben Muhammad (Al-Sâdiq)
8. Musa ben Ja'far (Al-Kâðim)
9. 'Ali ben Musa (Al-Ridha)
10. Muhammad ben 'Ali (Al-Jawâd)
11. 'Ali ben Muhammad (Al-Hâdi)
12. Al-Hasan ben 'Ali (Al-'Askiri)
13. Muhammad ben Al-Hasan (Al-Mahdi)
and the last one is called the "awaited" because Shiite believe he is still alive and will appear at the time when wrong and ill comes all over the world and he will be with Jesus to place justice all over the world.
This is all for this event, I hope I've answered most of the questions and I hope this might help in understanding what is mentioned in the translation of the book.
At the end I would like to thank the owners of some sites that helped
a lot in my translations and they are:
www.sacred-texts.com : for the Pickthall translation of the Quran
www.biblestudytools.net : for the old and new testaments translation within Greek and Hebrew which helped a lot in translating the prophets and saints names into English as much as possible.
The translator:
Taher Al-Shemaly (TJ)
Kuwait