His Works:

The hadith master Ibn Abī al-Dunyā was a prolific author. He wrote on Quranic readings, hadith, Allah’s oneness, Islamic jurisprudence, asceticism and heart-softening exhortations, manners and virtues, history and biography, literature and witty anecdotes, and other subjects. Despite the variety of topics on which he wrote, all his works followed the method of the hadith scholars, relating reports through chains of transmission. Indeed, nearly all his writings consist of transmitted reports and historical accounts. It is as though he gathered in them all the narrations that had reached him and arranged them by subject. Asceticism and heart-softening exhortation nevertheless remained the overarching theme of his works.

Scholars and bibliographers devoted considerable attention to listing and cataloguing Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s books. Among them were al-Nadīm in al-Fihrist (The Catalogue), p. 185; al-Dhahabī in Siyar Alām al-Nubalā (Lives of the Eminent Nobles), 13/401–404; Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī in Fahrasa mā Rawāhu an Shuyūkhihi (Catalogue of What He Narrated from His Teachers), pp. 282–284; Hajjī Khalīfa in Kashf al-Zunūn (Unveiling Suppositions); al-Baghdādī in Hadiyyat al-Ārifīn (The Gift to Those Who Know), 1/441–442; and al-Kattānī in al-Risāla al-Mustatrafa (The Remarkable Epistle), p. 50.

Among the Zāhiriyya manuscripts is an anonymous catalogue entitled “Names of Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s Works.” Dr. Salāh al-Dīn al-Munajjid published it in the Journal of the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus(1), adding further titles and bringing the total number of his works to 198. Professor Najm Abd al-Rahmān Khalaf also compiled the titles of his works and arranged them thematically in his introduction to the critical edition of Ibn Abī al-Dunyā’s al-Samt wa Ādāb al-Lisān (Silence and the Etiquette of the Tongue), bringing their number to 217.