numerous questions reached me from them about quite a number of the issues and ḥadiths cited in the book. I would answer according to what I knew, and very often my answer differed from what the book contained, for I judged many of its ḥadiths weak and considered a number of its legal conclusions mistaken. When some devotees of Sunnah-based jurisprudence—eager to disseminate it soundly among the Muslim community—noticed this, they suggested that I record my criticisms of the book and publish them. I excused myself at first, but when the request was repeated and many others pressed the matter, I saw that I had no choice but to comply, for doing so would serve the book itself and, more importantly, the idea it embodies and calls people to: “uniting them upon the Book and the Sunnah, ending disagreement, and eliminating the innovation of fanaticism for the schools of law,” as he declared in his introduction.

Moreover, it would purge the book of the jurisprudential errors and weak reports whose presence is incompatible with the very title Fiqh al-Sunnah. By this I would also fulfill, in part, the wish one of our brothers expressed on behalf of both parties when he traveled to Egypt—namely, close cooperation in advancing that very idea. Several factors, foremost among them the distance between us and the impossibility of meeting, prevented such cooperation. Since that opportunity escaped me, the least I could do was to cooperate from afar, for, as the saying goes, “What cannot be attained in full should not be abandoned altogether.”

Once Allah opened my breast to this and my heart felt at ease with it, I began to read the published volumes of the book with careful scrutiny and reflection. Whenever something struck me as deserving mention and caution, I wrote it down and attached it to my notes. No sooner had I finished annotating them than I became certain of the necessity of what I had done, for in them I had come across—after