Title of the Book and Proof of Its Ascription to the Author

• The book’s full title is:

“ʿUmdat al-Ṭālib li-Nayl al-Maʾārib fī al-Fiqh ʿalā al-Madhhab al-Aḥmad al-Amthal, Madhhab al-Imām Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥanbal,”

and this is how it appears in every manuscript relied upon in the present edition.

• As for the book’s attribution, there is no doubt that it belongs to Shaykh Manṣūr al-Buhūtī—may Allah have mercy on him—for every scholar who wrote his biography has affirmed this, among them:

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Badrān, al-Madkhal ilā Madhhab al-Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (1) (p. 446);

al-Ghazzī, al-Naʿt al-Akmal (p. 212);

Ibn Bishr, ʿUnwān al-Majd (2/ 323);

Ibn Ḥumayd, al-Suḥub al-Wābila (3/ 1133);

Ibn Ḍuwayyān, Rafʿ al-Niqāb ʿan Muʾallafāt al-Aṣḥāb (p. 375);

al-Shaṭṭī, Mukhtaṣar Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila (p. 116);

Ibn Ḥamdān, Kashf al-Niqāb (p. 145);

a​nd Dr. Bakr Abū Zayd, al-Madkhal al-Mufaṣṣal (2/ 796).

Shaykh ʿUthmān ibn Qāʾid al-Najdī—may Allah have mercy on him—said in the introduction to his commentary on ʿUmdat al-Ṭālib:

“This is a concise commentary and an honorable set of annotations on the abridgment entitled ʿUmdat al-Ṭālib li-Nayl al-Maʾārib, authored by the erudite imam, the vast ocean of scholarship, the teacher of our teachers, Shaykh Manṣūr ibn Yūnus al-Buhūtī—may Allah have mercy on him.” (2)