—and even adh-Dhahabi—were Shafiʿis.

Each one of them cherished the others and openly acknowledged their virtues.

Adh-Dhahabi repeatedly affirms that ʿAlam ad-Din al-Barzali was the one who first endeared to him the study of the noble Prophetic hadith. In his Muʿjam Shuyukhihi al-Kabir he describes him as “the precise, reliable Imam and ḥāfiẓ, a truthful authority; our benefactor, our teacher, and our companion; the hadith master of Syria and the historian of the age” (1). Elsewhere he writes: “He is the person who made me love seeking hadith. When he looked at my handwriting he said, ‘Your script resembles that of the traditionists!’ His words affected me deeply; I attended his sessions and graduated under him in various subjects” (2).

Adh-Dhahabi was profoundly impressed by al-Barzali’s scholarship, especially by his Muʿjam Shuyukhihi (3), which he compiled for his own use. It contains three thousand teachers—two thousand whose narrations he heard directly and one thousand from whom he received ijāzah (4).

Writing about his teacher and companion al-Mizzi, adh-Dhahabi said that he was “the erudite, accomplished ḥāfiẓ, the master of the scholarly community … the hadith authority of Islam” (5); he further praised him as “the last of the great preservers, the critic of isnāds and wordings, the one who tackles our difficult questions and clarifies our problems” (6).

As for Ibn Taymiyyah, his personality had already reached full maturity while adh-Dhahabi was still a young man at the outset of his studies; he had become a mujtahid, with his own distinctive [approach] whose basis rested—