The translation of the last five and a half chapters, which was left unfinished, was very kindly done by Dr. Margoliouth, (p. 570) Professor of Arabic in the University of Oxford, who had taught my brother Arabic when the latter was a student at Oxford in the late nineties. The first seventeen chapters of the book as well as chapters 23 to 29 were published in the magazine "Islamic Culture" at Hyderabad between the years 1928 and 1933. After my retirement from the Indian Police Service in August, 1934, I went to England. There my sister-in-law, Mrs. Evelyn Khuda Bakhsh, told me that she had carefully preserved the unpublished translations of the Renaissance of Islam by her husband, and that she desired to have the entire work published in the form of a book. I suggested to her that she should write to Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall, the Editor of "Islamic Culture", and ask him if he would publish the book, as most of the translated chapters had already appeared in his magazine. This my sister-in-law did, and she received a reply from Mr. Pickthall to the effect that he could not undertake the publication but would have no objection to her getting the translations printed in the form of a book anywhere in England or in India. We then decided to try and have the book published here, and as I was returning to India I brought the manuscripts back with me. It was beyond my means to defray the entire cost of the publication of the book, so I approached my friend, Mr Syed Abdul Aziz, Barrister-at-Law, the then Hon'ble Minister of Education to the Government of Bihar, and he very kindly sanctioned a substantial grant of money to enable me to accomplish my purpose. But for the generous aid given by the Government of Bihar this book would have remained unpublished, and perhaps lost to the world for ever.
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