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The statement: “Were it not for the people of hadith, Islam would have disappeared.”
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The people of hadith being the most deserving of salvation in the Hereafter and the first of creation to enter Paradise.
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The convergence of worldly and otherworldly well-being in hearing and recording hadith.
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The establishment of the hadith scholar’s authority.
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Identifying the people of the sunnah by their love for the people of hadith.
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Identifying religious innovators by their hatred of hadith and its people.
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Those who combined praise of the people of hadith with condemnation of the proponents of speculative opinion and reprehensible speculative theology.
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Those who said that seeking hadith is among the finest acts of worship.
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Those who said that narrating hadith is superior to glorifying Allah.
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Those who said that relating hadith is superior to voluntary prayer.
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The caliphs who wished to narrate hadith and considered the hadith scholars to be the greatest of scholars.
These are the book’s most important chapters and sections. I ask Allah Most High to facilitate its publication by one of the supporters of hadith and its people, so that someone like me may refer to it anyone seeking detailed knowledge of the hadiths and reports from the eminent imams found in these splendid chapters.
I conclude these remarks with a great testimony concerning the people of hadith from one of the foremost Hanafi scholars of India, Abu al-Hasanat Muhammad Abd al-Hayy al-Laknawi (1264–1304 AH). He said, may Allah have mercy on him:
“Whoever considers matters impartially and plumbs the depths of jurisprudence and legal theory, avoiding strained argument, will know with certainty that, in most of the subsidiary and foundational issues over which the scholars have differed, the position of the hadith scholars is stronger than the positions of others. Whenever I traverse the paths of disagreement, I find