In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful

The Opening of the Book

All praise belongs to Allah, the Opener and Bountiful Bestower, Possessor of abundant generosity, grace, and beneficence; the One who has favored us with faith, exalted our religion above all others, and—through His Beloved, His intimate friend, His servant and Messenger Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—eradicated idolatry. He distinguished him with miracles and with a sunnah that endures through successive ages. May blessings be upon him, upon all the other prophets, and upon the families of them all, as long as the two luminaries alternate, His rulings and remembrance are renewed, and day and night succeed one another.

To proceed: the science of hadith is among the finest means of drawing near to the Lord of the worlds. How could it be otherwise, when it sets forth the path of the best of creation and the most honored of the first and the last? This book is an abridgment I prepared from al-Irshad, which itself I had previously distilled from ʿUlūm al-Ḥadīth (The Sciences of Hadith) by the erudite, precise hadith master (ḥāfiẓ), researcher, Shaykh Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, widely known as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ—may Allah have mercy on him. In the present volume I have striven, Allah willing, to condense as much as possible without compromising the objective, paying special attention to clarity of expression. Upon Allah, the Most Generous, I place my reliance; to Him I delegate all affairs and upon Him I depend.