Its Influence on Subsequent Books and Writings

“Zād al-Ma‘ād” is among Ibn al-Qayyim’s best-known books. Numerous manuscript copies are held in libraries, and authors have relied on it in works on the Prophet’s biography, jurisprudence, commentaries on hadith collections, Quranic exegesis, and other fields. Among these authors, it was more commonly known as “Al-Hady al-Nabawī” or “Al-Hady” than by its original title, “Zād al-Ma‘ād”. They often reproduce pages from it without acknowledging their source. This is what Majd al-Dīn al-Fayrūzābādī (d. 817 AH) did in his “Sifr al-Sa‘āda”, which he abridged from “Al-Zād” without mentioning either the author or the book even once. His sole contribution was the abridgment itself. The same applies to “Al-Mawāhib al-Ladunniyya” by al-Qastallānī (d. 923 AH): half of it is taken from “Fath al-Bārī” (1), and the remainder from “Zād al-Ma‘ād” and certain other sources. Yet he mentions “Al-Zād” or “Al-Hady” in only a handful of places. Anyone who reads “Al-Mawāhib” will find that many of its chapters are abridged from “Al-Zād” without acknowledging it.

Below, we mention some of the books we have encountered that quoted from “Al-Zād” before it was printed in India in 1298. We have not included works published after that date which relied on it, as this would merely be stating the obvious. We have grouped these books by discipline.

• Among the works of Hanbalī jurisprudence that quoted extensively from it and mentioned the legal positions Ibn al-Qayyim adopted and the opinions he considered strongest on particular questions is “Al-Furū‘” by Shams al-Dīn Ibn Muflih