in this field has been the constant practice of the scholars from the time independent reasoning first arose.

We must also draw the reader’s attention to the fact that this book began as nothing more than shorthand notes: our Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—jotted down brief headings of issues to remind himself of topics he would later teach in his fiqh lessons to the youth of Syria. Accordingly, he would mention one side of a question and then list the main proofs—or merely hint at them. After a while, the Shaykh decided to expand those notes into a full-fledged work, presenting each issue together with its proofs from the Quran and the sound Sunnah. This is why, in the early pages of the book—roughly the first dozen—he cites the sources of the hadiths only by symbols, without giving volume and page numbers. Thereafter he began to reproduce some of the chains of transmission, discuss them, lighten the use of symbols, and replace them with the authors’ names together with the relevant volume and page numbers, save on very rare occasions.

For the reader’s convenience, we list below the meanings of the symbols employed:

symbol = source … symbol = source
Kh = al-Bukhari … Yaʿla = Abu Yaʿla
M = Muslim … Tab = al-Tabarani in al-Kabir
Ahm = Ahmad … Tas = al-Tabarani in al-Awsat
D = Abu Dawud … Mas = al-Hakim in al-Mustadrak
N = al-Nasaʾi … Haq = al-Bayhaqi in al-Kubra
T = al-Tirmidhi … Hab = Ibn Hibban in his Sahih
Maj = Ibn Majah … Khz = Ibn Khuzaymah
Mi = al-Darimi … Qat = al-Daraqutni
Taya = al-Tayalisi … Taha = al-Tahawi