Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s closeness to his shaykh and the extent of his esteem for him are plain to see: among all of Ibn Taymiyyah’s numerous pupils—and those who came after them—he produced the most expansive biography of the Imam. His devotion is further evident in the care he lavished on Shaykh al-Islam’s writings and legal positions. He even promised to compose an independent work devoted to cataloguing those writings, saying, “With Allah’s permission I shall strive to record, as accurately as I can, all of his works elsewhere. I will indicate which of them he authored in Egypt, which in Damascus, and which he compiled while in prison, and I shall arrange them in a finer order than this, with the help, power, and will of Allah, Exalted is He.” (1)
- Abū ʾl-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf al-Mizzī (d. 742 AH).
The ḥāfiẓ, leading hadith scholar of his age, and author of the two monumental works Tahdhīb al-Kamāl and Tuḥfat al-Ashrāf.
After praising his shaykh, describing the benefit he derived from him, and acknowledging that he completed his studies under him, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī wrote: “He compiled the book Tahdhīb al-Kamāl fī Asmāʾ al-Rijāl … a comprehensive, peerless work, as well as the book al-Aṭrāf. In these two books he clarified problems that no one before him had resolved, and I possess both volumes in his own handwriting, praise be to Allah.
“He is the teacher from whom I benefited greatly in this discipline. He was an imam upon the Sunnah, following the path of the early generations of the ummah … He had a sound intellect, fine understanding, and quick perception. He would challenge both chain and text with refutations that left the distinguished scholars present astounded, and on occasion he would do so while simultaneously consulting and collating variant manuscripts.” (2)