Muhammad Abu 'Abdullah Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi al Shafi'i (d. 748H - 1348CE) 'alayhi al-rahmah wa'l-ridwan

Al-Dhahabi (1274-1348CE) the great Shafi'i hadith master (hafiz) and historian of Islam, the imam, Shaykh al-Islam, head of hadith masters, perspicuous critic and expert examiner of the hadith, encyclopedic historian and biographer, and foremost authority in the canonical readings of the Qur'an. Born in Damascus where his family lived from the time of his grandfather 'Uthman, he sometimes identified himself as Ibn al-Dhahabi - son of the goldsmith - in reference to his father's profession. He began his study of hadith at age eighteen, travelling from Damascus to Ba'labak, Hims, Hama, Aleppo, Tripoli, Nabulus, al-Ramla, Cairo, Iskandariyya, al-Qudus, Hijaz, and elsewhere to thirty different locations, after which he returned to Damascus where he taught and authored many works and achieved world renown. He lost his sight two years before he died, leaving three children: his eldest daughter Amat al-'Aziz and his two sons 'Abd Allah and Abu Hurayra 'Abd al-Rahman. The latter taught the hadith masters Ibn Nasir al-Din al-Dimashqi and Ibn Hajar, to whom he transmitted several works authored or narrated by his father.

His student TAJ AL-DIN AL-SUBKI said:

Our time was graced with four hadith masters: al-Mizzi, al-Birzali, al-Dhahabi, and my father the Shaykh and Imam [Taqi al-Din al-Subki]. As for our shaykh Abu 'Abd Allah, he is an ocean without peer, a treasure and refuge in time of difficulty, the imam of the living on record, the gold of our time in spirit and letter, the shaykh of narrator-discreditation and narrator-commendation (al-jarh wa al-ta'dil)... and the one who trained us in this science and brought us out into the scholarly throng - may Allah reward him greatly!

Another student of his, Salah al-Din al-Safadi, said:

I read before him many of his works and did not find in him the rigidity (jumud) of hadith scholars nor the denseness (kawdana) of transmitters. Rather, he is highly perspicuous and proficient in the sayings of the scholars and the schools of the imams of the Salaf and authorities in doctrine. What most pleased me is the care he shows, in his works, not to mention a hadith except he states whether it suffers from any weakness in its content or chain of transmission or one of its narrators. I did not see others show the same care in what they cite.

The "Commander of the Believers in Hadith" (Amir al-Mu'minin fi al-Hadith), Shaykh al-Islam IBN HAJAR AL-ASQALANI said of him:

"He was the most prolific of the scholars of his time. People yearned to obtain his books, travelling to him for that purpose and circulating them through reading, copying, and audition." "He is among those who have total mastery in the field of narrator-criticism."

He authored nearly a hundred works, some of them of considerable size:

Major History of Islam ('Tarikh al-Islam al-kabir), thirty-six volume
Talkhis al-Mustadrak
Tadhkirat al-huffaz
The Lives of Noble Figures (Siyar a`lam al-nubala'), twenty-three volume
Tadhhib al-Tahdhib
Al-Kashif fi Asma' Rijal al-Kutub al-Sittah

In his Mu'jam al-Shuyukh, in a large version entitled al-Kabir and a smaller one entitled al-Saghir or al-Latif. These Mu'jams are a fascinating chronicle of al-Dhahabi's shaykhs through meetings or correspondence. The Kabir contains biographies of about 1,300 of his shaykhs. In the entry devoted to Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Mun'im al-Qazwini, al-Dhahabi writes the following lines:

Ahmad ibn al-Mun'im related to us... [with his chain of transmission] from Ibn 'Umar that the latter disliked to touch the Prophet's - Allah bless and greet him - grave. I say: He disliked it because he considered it disrespect. Ahmad ibn Hanbal was asked about touching the Prophet's - Allah bless and greet him - grave and kissing it and he saw nothing wrong with it. His son 'Abd Allah related this from him. If it is asked: "Why did the Companions not do this?" We reply: "Because they saw him with their very eyes when he was alive, enjoyed his presence directly, kissed his very hand, nearly fought each other over the remnants of his ablution water, shared his purified hair on the day of the greater Pilgrimage, and even if he spat it would virtually not fall except in someone's hand so that he could pass it over his face. Since we have not had the tremendous fortune of sharing in this, we throw ourselves on his grave as a mark of commitment, reverence, and acceptance, even to kiss it. Do you not see what Thabit al-Bunani did when he kissed the hand of Anas ibn Malik and placed it on his face saying: "This is the hand that touched the hand of Allah's Messenger"? Muslims are not moved to these matters except by their excessive love for the Prophet - Allah bless and greet him -, as they are ordered to love Allah and the Prophet -- Allah bless and greet him -- more than their own lives, their children, all human beings, their property, and Paradise and its maidens. There are even some believers that love Abu Bakr and 'Umar more than themselves...

Al-Dhahabi defined knowledge in Islam (al-'ilm) as "Not the profusion of narration, but a light which Allah casts into the heart. Its condition is followership (ittiba') and the flight away from egotism (hawa) and innovation."

At the mention of al-Harawi al-Ansari's Sufi manual Manazil al-Sa'irin in the Siyar al-Dhahabi exclaims:

How beautiful was the tasawwuf of the Companions and Successors! They did not probe those phantasms and whisperings of the mind but worshipped Allah, humbling themselves and relying upon Him, in great awe and fear of Him, fiercely combating His enemies, hastening to obey Him, staying away from idle speech. Allah guides whomever He wills to the straight path.