Thus, in this work one finds extensive passages from Ibn al-Mubārak’s Book of Asceticism and al-Ājurrī’s The Etiquette of the Bearers of the Quran, as well as entire sections from al-Hāfiz al-Mizzī’s Tahdhīb al-Kamāl. If, for example, he encounters a narrator named Ismāīl, he reproduces his biography verbatim from al-Mizzī’s work, without addition or omission, and includes the biographies of all—or nearly all—of the narrators named Ismāīl. When he comes to the hadith of the Slander, for example, he reproduces Qādī Iyād’s commentary on it in full. When he encounters a legal issue, he presents the entire relevant chapter from Ibn Qudāmah’s al-Mughnī.

The work also contains such material from the writings of Hanbalī scholars—including Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ibn Rajab, and al-Muwaffaq—as will delight the student’s eyes, satisfy the scholar’s thirst, and leave any discerning person amazed at its compilation. Indeed, it contains the only complete copy of the exceptional work Tawdhīh al-Mushtabih by Ibn Nāsir al-Dīn al-Dimashqī (1). The work consequently exceeded 130 volumes, of which approximately forty remain today in the Zāhiriyyah Library in Damascus, while scattered volumes are held by the Egyptian National Library and the Süleymaniye Library in Turkey.

The manuscript was copied in Damascus, and the author read it at the Umayyad Mosque there. It consists of three folios.

We may say that, just as Imam al-Bukhārī was the first to compile an alphabetical biographical work, Ibn Urwah al-Hanbalī was the first to produce an index of biographical entries. He devoted an entire volume to indexing the figures whose biographies appear in his work, placing beside each name the title of the chapter containing that biography, as I have seen for myself. This volume is held at the Zāhiriyyah Library—may Allah preserve it.