About the Book
– The Title:
There is a difference of opinion about how the book should be entitled; it appears in several forms:
- Al-ʿUqūd ad-Durriyyah min Manāqib Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyyah (The Jeweled Necklaces on the Merits of Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyyah).
The work was first published under this title in 1356 AH, edited by Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Faqī. From that edition the designation became widespread, although he did not state the evidence for it. The manuscript he relied on—our Kuwait copy, coded (K)—bears no title at all.
Nevertheless, we found the book referred to by this name before al-Faqī. First, it appears on a manuscript held in the Noble Meccan Library, copied in 1295 AH (a description of this copy will follow in the survey of manuscripts). Its heading reads: “Al-ʿUqūd ad-Durriyyah fī Dhikr Baʿḍ Manāqib Ibn Taymiyyah.”
Second, Shaykh Abū Bakr ibn Muḥammad Khūqayr al-Makkī (d. 1349 AH) cites the book by this title, saying: “Among the earlier and later Ḥanbalīs who wrote a biography of Ibn Taymiyyah is his pupil, Shaykh al-Islām, the ḥadith master Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī … He authored Al-ʿUqūd ad-Durriyyah in roughly fifteen gatherings.” (1) It is possible that the copy Khūqayr refers to is the very Meccan manuscript just mentioned—Allah knows best.