This is the Basmala — bismillāh ar-raḥmān ar-raḥīm — and it opens every surah of the Quran except the ninth (at-Tawba), where its absence is itself a notable signal. Every observant Muslim begins meals, journeys, lessons, letters, prayers, and acts of work with this formula. It is the most-spoken Arabic phrase in human history. Schools of recitation differ on whether to count the Basmala as ayah 1 of each surah (Hanafi and Shafi'i traditions tend to) or as a freestanding consecration (Maliki). Either way it is woven through the daily life of the believer in a way that has no real parallel in any other scripture's opening.Standard ulum al-Quran on the Basmala; al-Suyuti, al-Itqan.
Pickthall's English here was published in 1930 — the first translation of the Quran into English by a Muslim, later authorized by al-Azhar. He chose a deliberately archaic register, KJV-flavored ("thee," "hath," "Lo!"), to give the Arabic the gravity that contemporary plain English felt unable to carry. Modern Muslim translators (Yusuf Ali 1934, Asad 1980, Saheeh International 1997, Khattab 2015) have moved closer to ordinary English. If a phrase here ever sounds Victorian rather than Quranic, that's Pickthall — the Arabic is much more compressed, much more rhythmic, and far less English-Empire than his diction can suggest.Pickthall biography in Peter Clark's Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim (1986); al-Azhar's authorization is documented in the 1930 first edition's preface.