⦗1⦘ Ḥadīth.
He devoted himself to studying the Book of Allah and its commentaries, to the Prophetic ḥadīth and their explanations. In the early part of his career he trained in jurisprudence according to the school of Imām al-Shāfiʿī and authored a number of beneficial works in that field. He then began writing on the basis of direct evidence from the Qur’an and the Sunnah, comparing the views of the schools and scholars, and distilling the position to which his independent legal reasoning (ijtihād) led him in his monumental work that counts among the mother-lodes of Islamic literature—al-Majmūʿ—yet death overtook him before he could bring it to completion.
Among his writings are: Rawḍat al-Ṭālibīn (The Garden of the Seekers), which Allah enabled us to publish in twelve critically edited volumes; his Commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, one of the finest available; a commentary on a portion of al-Bukhārī; the book al-Asmāʾ wa-l-Lughāt, in which he presented a sound selection of biographical entries together with a large collection of lexical meanings; Ḥilyat al-Abrār, better known as al-Adhkār—in this work he did not bind himself to narrating only authentic reports, a condition to which he did adhere in Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn; a creed treatise he entitled al-Maqāṣid; al-Tibyān fī Ādāb Ḥamalat al-Qurʾān; and other useful books besides these.
He died in his hometown of Nawa in 676 AH, having not yet reached the age of forty-five. May Allah shower him with abundant mercy, increase within the Muslim community those who follow his path in knowledge and action, in enjoining right and forbidding wrong, and gather us and them beneath the banner of the Chosen One, ﷺ, “on the Day when neither wealth nor children will be of any avail, except for the one who comes to Allah with a sound heart.” (Sura al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:88-89)
Beirut, 20 Shawwāl 1398 AH
Zuhayr al-Shāwish