As-Sunnah by Ibn Abi ‘Asim, As-Sunnah by ‘Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal, As-Sunnah by al-Khallal, ash-Shari‘ah by al-Ajurri, and other similar works.

Among the imams who wrote on the creed of the earliest generations is Imam Abu Ja‘far Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Salamah al-Azdi al-Tahawi (1), an Egyptian scholar of the third century. He was called “al-Tahawi” after a village in Egypt, and he composed this succinct, beneficial, and valuable creed.

Roughly seven commentaries have been written on it, yet none is completely free of mistakes, for their authors followed the methodology of the later scholastic theologians; thus their expositions contain observations and points that diverge from what al-Tahawi himself set forth—except for a single commentary, so far as we know, namely the commentary of al-‘Izz ibn Abi al-‘Izz (2), commonly known as Sharh al-Tahawiyyah. He appears to have been a student of Ibn Kathir, and within his work he incorporated selections from the writings of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and from the books of Ibn