yet the entire collection was compiled by its author—may Allah have mercy on him—bringing together both impeccable transmission and acute critical insight. These features, and others besides, reveal the secret behind the scholars’ eagerness to study the work, engage with it, and bestow their full care upon it. From the earliest times to the present day they have poured immense effort into its service, investing their precious hours and granting it the attention it rightly deserves. How many commentators have unfolded everything contained between its two covers, whether at length or in abridged form, and how many have confined themselves to elucidating only certain aspects! They wrote on its narrators—especially on al-Bukhari’s own teachers—produced treatises on the meanings of its chapter headings and the connections between them, and authored works on numerous other facets that were treated in stand-alone monographs.

Foremost among those who excelled in this field was the great hadith master Ahmad ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani (d. 852 AH). In his monumental work Fath al-Bari, together with its introduction, he set down wonders that inspire amazement. Just as the compiler—may Allah have mercy on him—excelled in selecting and arranging his material with unrivaled perfection, so Ibn Hajar excelled in serving it and attending to it with consummate mastery: his standing among other scholars is like that of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī among the rest of the compilations. May Allah envelop them all in His boundless mercy and reward them with the finest recompense