then such a person is no Muslim; he is one of the people of the Fire. By the same token, anyone whose heart is certain of faith in Allah, His messengers, His angels, His books, and the Resurrection is not a disbeliever, even if he should plunge into the major sins.

The Exalted says: “He it is who created you; yet among you are disbelievers and among you are believers” (At-Taghābun 2).

This is a great and weighty issue. Scholars have written separate works about it, and our own shaykh, Imām Abū al-ʿAbbās (1), gathered the material into a sizeable volume which I have abridged.

We ask Allah—exalted is He—to safeguard our faith until we meet Him with it.

ʿAbdullāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal said: I heard my father say, “I heard Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh narrate from ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus, who said: ‘Had I wished Abū Bakr ibn Abī Maryam to collect for me the narrations of so-and-so and so-and-so, he would have done it.’” He meant the reports of Rāshid ibn Saʿd, Ḥabīb ibn ʿUbayd, and Ḍamrah.

ʿAbdullāh then said: My father transmitted nothing from Isḥāq except this.

Mūsā ibn Hārūn said: I asked Isḥāq, “Who is older, you or Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal?” He answered, “He is older than I, both in age and in other matters.”

Mūsā added: Isḥāq was born in the year 166 AH—so Mūsā believed.

I say: We have already mentioned that his birth preceded that by some years; Mūsā did not verify the point precisely.

Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ said: Isḥāq told me, “Yaḥyā ibn Ādam wrote down two thousand hadiths from me.”

Hāshid ibn Ismāʿīl said: I heard Wahb ibn Jarīr say, “May Allah reward Isḥāq ibn Rāhwayh, Ṣadaqah ibn al-Faḍl, and Yaʿmar with goodness for Islam; they revived the Sunnah in the East.”