Know—may Allah have mercy on you—that there is among us one who has journeyed through many lands, become familiar with people’s temperaments, and observed most of their conditions. By Allah, by Allah, by Allah, no one beneath the vault of heaven has been seen who resembles your shaykh: in knowledge (1), in spiritual state, in character, in adherence, in generosity, in forbearance concerning his own rights, and in rising for Allah whenever His sanctities are violated. He is the truest of people in resolve, the soundest in knowledge and determination, the most penetrating and exalted in zeal for championing and establishing the truth, the most open-handed in giving, and the most perfect in following his Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.

In our age we have not seen anyone whose words and deeds so clearly unveil the Muhammadan Prophethood and its sunnah (2) save this man; a sound heart bears witness that this is genuine adherence.

After all that, however, speaking the truth is obligatory. We do not claim that he is infallible and free from error (3), nor do we assert that he has attained the utmost limits of the distinctive perfections sought. It may be that someone otherwise deficient possesses a particular, desired quality without which completeness is impossible; that very quality might be more fully realised in another than in him—meaning that person is truly characterised by its realities, for example, because the aspiration of his time (4) is devoted solely to it, whereas our shaykh’s concern is distributed among many important religious virtues and other merits (5). Were we to examine the matter closely, we would find our shaykh superior to that man while still upholding it