in al-Sakhawi’s own handwriting, opposite the biography of Salama al-Sayyad al-Manbiji the ascetic, the following statement: “O Muslim, be ashamed before Allah! How reckless you are, and how often you disparage the people of the Sunnah who are the Ashʿarīs. Since when have the Hanbalīs been anything, and has a Hanbalī head ever been raised at all?” (1)

Even so, the matter merits careful study, for it highlights both the importance of al-Dhahabī’s book and his method and fairness in criticism and verification.

Our examination of Tārīkh al-Islām has shown that al-Dhahabī succeeded, to a notable degree, in being equitable when evaluating many individuals. We did not find him making significant distinctions among the scholars of the four legal schools, nor was he willing to speak unjustly—or even to transmit such speech on occasion. He says, in the biography of al-Ḥasan ibn Ziyād al-Luʾluʾī, the Ḥanafī jurist: “Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb has included in this man’s biography things I should not mention” (2). In the biography of Ibn al-Ḥarīrī al-Dimashqī, the Ḥanafī (d. 728 AH), he writes: “Chief Judge, a luminary of the school, possessed of knowledge and practice” (3). Concerning the Ḥanafī judge Shams al-Dīn al-Adhruʿī (d. 673 AH), he remarks: “No one like him was left behind” (4).

He also composed an elegant biography of Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī, demonstrating the breadth of his learning, merit, and abundant knowledge (5). In Siyar, speaking of ʿImād al-Dīn al-Jābarī the Ḥanafī, who died in 584 AH, he says: “The shaykh of the Ḥanafīs, the Nuʿmān of his age” (6). Likewise, in the biography of al-Marghīnānī the Ḥanafī he declares: “He was one of the storehouses of knowledge” (7).