field and specialization. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī drank deeply from their learning and had the good fortune to study under the leading scholars of his day, thereby attaining the loftiest chains of transmission, a commanding grasp of knowledge, and wide mastery of its disciplines. Allah also enabled him to keep close company with their foremost authorities and imams (1). All of this, together with the natural aptitude Allah had bestowed upon him, left a praiseworthy mark on his scholarly personality.
Teachers
We shall point here to the most eminent among them:
- Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH).
Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī describes his studies with Ibn Taymiyyah in the year 721 AH, after the shaykh’s release from prison, when he himself was sixteen years old:
“I used to visit him from time to time during that period. I read to him a portion of al-Arbaʿīn (Forty Hadiths) by al-Rāzī, which he explained for me, and he wrote something for me on part of it. During those days his own works were being read to him, and he would revise them, adding and omitting as he saw fit.
“One day I attended with him in the garden of the amir Fakhr al-Dīn, son of al-Shams Luʾluʾ, who had prepared a banquet. That day I read to the shaykh forty hadiths, and some of the group recorded the names of those present. Thereafter the shaykh began to speak on various branches of knowledge; the listeners were astonished by his discourse and became so absorbed in it that they neglected the food.” (2)