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Assalamu alaikum, Rahmatullahi wa Rakatuhu, alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa sallamu ala Rasulillah, wa ala aalihi, wa sahbihi, wa manu wa l-aha mavaid.

Welcome back to another lecture and episode about the stories of the prophets and we are still in our preliminary series.

Now, last week, I began the lecture by saying it will be the very last of introductory lectures.

Let me insha'Allah again claim the same thing this today and let's see what happens in insha'Allah ut-A'la.

Last week, I was proven wrong because in my typical tangents and going over various material,

as you are aware, time went by and then the end of the episode was reached.

So let's see what we can do today in insha'Allah ut-A'la.

I wanted to begin by summarizing some of the main sources of the topic of the stories of the prophets

because that's something that we all have to be very curious about.

Where do we get the stories of the prophets?

From our own tradition, from our own, if you like history, from our own intellectual discourse.

It is interesting to note that there are hundreds of books written in modern times about the stories of the prophets.

However, if you look at pre-modernity, if you look at from the beginning of the codification of Islamic

sciences up until, let's say, the 1900s of the CE, and basically a hundred years ago,

it's actually very interesting to note that we do not find a lot of books written specifically

on the genre of the stories of the prophets.

Now, some of you will immediately say, hold on a sec, I saw with my own eyes the famous

Qasus Al-Ambia of Ibn Qatir, and if you are a little bit also aware, you're going to say,

oh, but didn't Imam Al-Tabari also write stories of the prophets?

And we respond that, in fact, both Ibn Qatir and Al-Tabari, and in fact more than just these two,

did not specifically write about the stories of the prophets as a separate subject.

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