The Author’s Principal Sources in This Book

The importance of studying authors’ sources is evident. Such study offers numerous benefits: it assists in collating and correcting the text of the work under examination (1); deepens our knowledge of the author, his learning and the breadth of his reading; sheds light on scholarly activity in his age; and provides information about the works from which he quotes. It can establish that a work existed and survived until the author’s time, and provide extracts from a work that may now be lost. Indeed, the author may have drawn on it extensively, providing ample scope for comparison and assessment. There are many such benefits, which this is not the place to discuss at length (2).

Ibn al-Qayyim is known to have possessed an extensive library and devoted great care to acquiring books. His friend Ibn Kathīr said: “He acquired so many books by earlier and later scholars that others could not have managed to obtain even a tenth of them” (3).

This gives particular value to tracing the author’s sources. In this chapter, however, we shall not trace every source from which he quoted, covering those whose titles he explicitly mentioned, those whose authors he named, and those he did not explicitly identify. This is because he quotes very extensively from some of his sources, such as hadith works—the Sahīh, Sunan, Musnad and Musannaf collections, among others. These are his mainstay in all his writings, including