Among what he wrote on its rearrangement:
(1) al-Taʿlīqāt al-Ḥisān ʿalā al-Iḥsān fī Tartīb Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān.
He also examined Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān ilā Zawāʾid Ibn Ḥibbān by al-Haythamī and authored:
(2) al-Zawāʾid ʿalā al-Mawārid, in which he recovered ḥadiths that met al-Haythamī’s criteria but that the latter had failed to cite.
Further, he divided al-Mawārid into two parts:
(3) Ṣaḥīḥ Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān ilā Zawāʾid Ibn Ḥibbān.
(4) Ḍaʿīf Mawārid al-Ẓamʾān ilā Zawāʾid Ibn Ḥibbān.
(c) Muʿjam al-Ṭabarānī al-Awsaṭ.
He produced four indices for it:
(1) The Names of al-Ṭabarānī’s teachers in the Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ.
(2) An Index of the reports (āthār) cited in the Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ.
(3) An Index of the Companions who transmitted ḥadiths in the Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ.
(4) An Index of all narrators of reports—Companions and others—in the Muʿjam al-Awsaṭ.
(d) al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr min Ḥadīth al-Bashīr al-Nadhīr.
He ruled on the status of its ḥadiths and divided the work into two collections:
(1) Ṣaḥīḥ al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr wa Ziyādātih.
(2) Ḍaʿīf al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr wa Ziyādātih.
He also penned two studies on the book:
(3) A Refutation of al-Suyūṭī’s Claim that His Book Is Free of the ḥadiths of fabricators and impostors.
(4) The Sources of al-Suyūṭī in al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr.
- The range of his writings—may Allah have mercy on him—spanned the Islamic sciences: Qur’anic exegesis, ḥadith, creed, and jurisprudence, and he showed great versatility in all of them.
The Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—would author, abridge, verify, annotate, trace isnāds, select material, arrange books, collate them, index them, supply what others had overlooked, and rebut… (1)
This is plain to anyone who studies his works closely—may Allah have mercy on him.
(a) Among his indices:
Bughyat al-Ḥāzim fī Fahrasat Mustadrak al-Ḥākim.
(b) Among his efforts in cataloguing manuscripts:
al-Muntakhab min Makhṭūṭāt al-Ḥadīth, an index of selected ḥadith manuscripts preserved in the Ẓāhiriyyah Library in Damascus.
More detail on the Shaykh’s indexing work will follow.