al-Qurrāʾ al-Kibār ʿalā al-Ṭabaqāt wal-Aʿṣār, which is really closer to a biographical dictionary than to a technical treatise on the readings, even though most of its material concerns qirāʾāt.

Ibn al-Jazarī affirmed the excellence of this work (1) and therefore reproduced it in full in his own Ghāyat al-Nihāyah, as he states in the introduction (2). Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī likewise called it “a comprehensive book” (3).

All the same, this aspect of al-Dhahabī’s scholarly activity is the weakest and the least productive.

Al-Dhahabī’s true stature and brilliance shine most brightly when we examine him as a muhaddith devoted to the science of hadith. He mastered the discipline and authored an impressive number of works—indeed, he was “the most prolific writer of his age” (4).

We have already noted his extraordinary enthusiasm for hadith, his avidity for audition, the huge number of teachers listed in his three biographical dictionaries of shaykhs, and the many books, fascicles, and collections he read to those teachers—often more than once.

This vast learning opened wide horizons for him: he produced abridgments of many books and composed even more original works, as anyone can see from the list of his writings in this field.

He also penned studies in hadith methodology (muṣṭalaḥ al-ḥadīth) and prepared numerous critical extractions: forty-hadith collections, thirty-hadith collections, ʿawālī (transmissions with very short chains), individual fascicles (ajzāʾ), teacher dictionaries (maʿājim al-shuyūkh), mashyakhat, and other genres that we discussed at length when surveying his works (5).

Although al-Dhahabī lived in an age largely characterized by intellectual stagnation, rote transmission, and the production of abridgments,