[Back to the biographical sketch of Shaykh al-Islam]
The ḥadith master Abū ʿAbd Allah al-Dhahabī (1) — while writing the Shaykh’s biography, may Allah have mercy on him — said: “He possessed wide-ranging expertise in the legal opinions of the Companions and the Successors, and it is rare for him to treat a question without citing the positions of the four madhhabs (2). In a number of well-known issues he differed from all four, composing works on those points and supporting them with evidence from the Quran and Sunnah.

“While he was imprisoned in Alexandria, the ruler of Ceuta asked him to grant an ijāzah for his narrations and to specify (3) the titles of a selection of them. Thereupon he wrote, on ten pages, a list of those works together with their chains of transmission from memory — something even the greatest ḥadith scholar (4) would be unable to accomplish with a part of it.

“For several years now he has not issued fatwas tied to any one school; rather, he rules according to whatever evidence is established in his view. He has championed the unadulterated Sunnah and the Salafī path, arguing for them with proofs, premises, and considerations to which no one before him had laid claim.

“He voiced expressions from which both earlier and later scholars had shrunk back in awe, yet he (5) boldly employed them. Consequently, a host of scholars from Egypt and Greater Syria rose against him with an opposition that could scarcely be exceeded: they branded him an innovator, debated him, and contended with him (6). Even so, he remained steadfast, neither flattering nor compromising; he spoke the bitter truth.”