concerning the aforementioned temporal events. Despite this, he persisted in faulting me for documenting the book’s hadiths because, as he said, my work had helped the book spread throughout the Muslim world. I praise Allah for the success He granted me in this and in my other works of hadith documentation and authorship, which Allah has caused to find acceptance in the hearts of Muslims—even though some of them oppose us because we call for abandoning the notion that religion consists in blindly following the imams and for sincerely following the Quran and sunnah.
For that reason—and because I believe that scarcely any land in any region is without someone like the aforementioned Sufi, as the proverbs say, “Every land has its Saʿd ibn Zayd—or its Tuʿāl!”—I hereby declare that the utmost I undertook to do with respect to The Lawful and the Unlawful was solely to document its hadiths. Obviously, I am therefore not responsible for any error the author may have made in some of its issues, nor, indeed, for errors in his own documentation of its hadiths. Nevertheless, on some occasions I was moved to take issue with him on more than one question in which it became clear to me that he had erred, while documenting the hadiths pertaining to them. These include wearing an iron ring, hadith no. (82); plucking facial hair, no. (95); hair extensions, nos. (100 and 103); dyeing the hair black, no. (106); image-making and images, nos. (119, 120, 121, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, and 144); leasing land, nos. (355 and 369); singing and musical instruments, no. (399); the rights of non-Muslims under Muslim protection, no. (469); and other such matters.
I have entitled this work The Utmost Aim in Documenting the Hadiths of The Lawful and the Unlawful. I ask the Lord—Glorified and Exalted—to make it sincerely for His sake and to benefit Muslims through it generally, and scholars and critical researchers among them especially. Indeed, He is the best of those asked.
Glory and praise be to You, O Allah. I bear witness that none is worthy of worship but You. I seek Your forgiveness and repent to You.
Written by
Muhammad Nāsir al-Dīn
al-Albānī
Damascus, 18 Safar al-Khayr, 1399 AH.