This second edition of Tamām al-Minna enjoys a number of significant advantages. Foremost among them is that I have appended the remainder of the commentary I had previously prepared—namely, my notes on the third of the small fascicles in which Fiqh al-Sunnah was first published. That fascicle begins with the opening of the Book of Zakāh and ends with the conclusion of the Book of Fasting.

With this addition, by Allah’s grace, we will have annotated roughly one quarter of Fiqh al-Sunnah. I pray that He will enable me to complete the commentary if He prolongs my life and blesses my time, or at the very least to extract the rest of the weak and rejected hadiths it contains, so that readers may be aware of them and appreciate the actual weight of the legal questions that have been built upon them.

One example is the report cited at the beginning of the Book of Funerals—which follows Fasting—“O Allah, to You I complain of my frailty…,” and so on. Despite its widespread fame in the sīrah works, it is weak. I documented and clarified its weakness in Takhreej Fiqh as-Seerah, p. 131, and again in al-Daʿīfah, no. 2933.

Another is the hadith, “Knowledge is three things, and all else is superfluous: a decisive verse, an established sunnah, and an equitable obligatory ruling.” This too is weak, as demonstrated in Takhreej al-Mishkāt, no. 239; Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl, no. 1664; and Ḍaʿīf Abī Dāwūd, no. 496. It is quoted near the end of Fiqh al-Sunnah, in the Book of Inheritance.

Between that point and the Book of Funerals there are further chapters that contain dozens—if not hundreds—of unsound narrations.

Perhaps I disclose no secret by adding the following. One of our university brothers once suggested that I send to Shaykh Sayyid Sābiq—so that we might cooperate in goodness, scholarship, and the pursuit of truth—the introduction to this book together with its first part, both in my own handwriting and before they went to press. I accepted his suggestion and dispatched them.