for surpassing his contemporaries in knowledge, shunning fame, capable of overcoming every difficulty, quick to clarify what is obscure, and fully competent in rendering the arduous easy—namely, the ḥadīth expert, Professor Shaykh Shuʿayb al-Arnaʿūt.

I have come to appreciate the great favor this eminent scholar has bestowed upon this precious and widely treasured work when he insisted that the critical edition be produced according to the finest scholarly standards; for he and its patron are not of those who prefer the fleeting to the enduring.

I observed him holding the original manuscript while the editor read his work aloud to him; not for a single moment did he lapse into heedlessness. He would elucidate the ambiguous, illuminate the hidden, and devote long, priceless hours to scrutinizing a single word or correcting a single vowel. He would repeat the process and present it anew, regarding the task as both a trust and an act of devotion, thereby strengthening the editors’ resolve. Beyond that, he undertook the takhrīj (critical documentation) of every ḥadīth and historical report in the book—which are remarkably numerous—in strict accordance with the recognized principles of ḥadīth methodology. Today he is the undisputed master of this demanding field, having traversed its breadth and depth and probed its innermost recesses.

I am not, in this brief note, in a position to enumerate all that distinguishes the book’s verification in terms of refined craftsmanship, skill, and precision: the extraordinary care devoted to meticulous collation, the orderly arrangement of the text, the placement of diacritical points, punctuation, and the various kinds of brackets; the vocalization of many words that require it; the indication of the book’s “mines” by comparing its passages and narratives with the sources from which the author drew; the tracing of biographical notices to the primary works concerned with them; the documentation of the ḥadīths and reports and the clarification of their degrees of authenticity or weakness; and other matters whose detailing would take too long. The work that now lies before the reader is itself the clearest testimony to all of this: “Say, ‘Do deeds! Allah will behold your deeds, and so will His Messenger and the believers. Then you will be returned to the Knower of the unseen and the seen, and He will inform you of what you used to do.’” (al-Tawbah, 105).

Written by Dr. Bashshar ʿAwwad Maʿruf