Biography of the Author

This poem is (obviously) very humbly called Mandhumat al-Adab. Mandhumah is a poem and the meaning of Adab has been explained in the last circle. Mandhumat al-Adab was written by a Hanbali scholar known as Ibn Abdul Qawi (may Allaah have mercy on him). His full name is Muhammad ibn Abd al-Qawi ibn al-Badran ibn Saad-Allaah al-Maqdisi al-Mardawi as-Saalihi al-Hanbali. His kunya was Abu Abdullaah and his title at that time was Shams ad-Deen. He was born in the year 630 H, which is around about year 1232 CE, in a town called Marda, near the city of Nablus in Palestine. He studied hadeeth under the Hanbali khateeb of Marda of that time, Ibn Khaleel (may Allaah have mercy on him). He studied fiqh under Shams ad-Deen alMaqdisi (may Allaah have mercy on him), the nephew of the great Ibn Qudaamah alMaqdisi (may Allaah have mercy on him) who wrote al-Mughni. He was particularly excellent as an Arabic grammarian and a Mufti. He was a teacher of some of the famous scholars including Imaam adh-Dhahabi (may Allaah have mercy on him), a very famous scholar what has he not written on!? He is famous for his work Siyaar Alam an-Nubalaa. Ibn Abd al-Qawi was also the teacher of Shaikh al-Islaam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allaah have mercy on him). Adh-Dhahabi mentions that he recieved an Ijaazah from Ibn Abd al-Qawi. Ibn Abd al-Qawi died in the year 699 H, which is approximately 1299 CE. He has many works. Being a grammarian and a linguist, one of the things which he produced was a poetry on Hanbali Fiqh. The reason why the scholars would codify law in rhyming poetry is that it would make it easy and simple for us to memorize all the legal issues. How easy is it to remember songs compared to memorizing a paragraph? If you read a paragraph in a book, it would be very difficult for you to memorize, even if you read it ten times over. But if you listen to a song, ten time sor twenty times, the lyrics will stick to your head and it will be difficult for you to forget, because of the way the lyrics are arranged, in a very timely fashion, with the right notes and so and so forth. And this is the way the human mind works and this is what the early scholars used to do. Take a science and put it in an artistic fashion in a poetry form to make it easy for the people to memorize and retain that knowledge. So when the time comes to recall the knowledge, they can always refer back to this organized library of poems inside their heads. He wrote a whole poem on fiqh and after that poem he wrote this (book). Adab is just a collection of issues of Fiqh, but because these are not the main components of Fiqh, they are just left out, like breadcrumbs and what he did is that he just put them all together and compiled them all into an Adab poetry. This mandhuma has many commentary. One of the commentaries we will be studying is that of Shaikh as-Saffarini al-Hanbali. Many other scholars have commented on this poetry. One of the most recent one is by Shaikh Saalih al-Fawzan and it has been printed as well.

Biography of the Commentator

The commentary we will be studying is by Shaikh Muhammad as-Saffarini al-Hanbali (may Allaah have mercy on him). As-Saffarini was again one of the great scholars of the Hanbali madh-hab. The whole thing is based on the Hanbali madh-hab; it does not mean that we will restrict ourselves to the Hanbali madh-hab. The scholars were nurturning the rulings as parthis particular school. Every now and then, the author goes beyond the madh-hab and refers to jurist of various schools, Shaafiees, Maalikis to prove a point for example and we will be doing exactly the same inshaaAllaah. As-Saffarini was born in Nablus, Palestine (part of West Bank). He was born in a village called Safarine. Then he left Safarine to travel to Damascus to seek knowledge. Damascus at its time was the capital of Islamic learning. As we have for example Oxford and Cambridge, because thats what these two cities are known for. At that time Damascus, in the Muslim world, had that sort of repute. So people would travel from far away to Damascus to learn under various scholars. So he himself went and learnt under various scholars of that time and from them are Abd al-Ghani ibn Ismaeel an-Nabulisi and Muhammad ibn Abd ar-Rahmaan al-Ghazzi and many Hanbali and non-Hanbali scholars. And he came to his home town and wrote many beneficial works. From them is Sharh Thulathiat li-Imaam Ahmad. Thulathiat are narrations of Imaam Ahmad where there are only three people between Imaam Ahmad and the prophet (blessings and peace of Allaah be upon him). For example narrations where between the narrator and the prophet (blessings and peace of Allaah be upon him) are four people are known as Rubaaiyaat and five people are known as Khumasiyaat. The significance of this is that the less the people, the stronger the chain, in that sense. Imaam Maalik has two people between himself and the messenger of Allaah (blessings and peace of Allaah be upon him) [known as the "Golden Chain"]. So as-Saffarini collected all of those ahadeeth from the Musnaad of Imaam Ahmad and commented on them. These are available in two volumes today. There are several things that make a hadeeth more authentic than the others. For example if you have two hadeeth, one of them has two people between the prophet and the narrator and the other one has five people, then from the point of view of the number of narrators, the one that has the lesser number of narrators in stronger, in that sense. It doesnt mean that you have five people between the narrator and the messenger of Allaah (blessings and peace of Allaah be upon him), and the narration is authentic; it also depends on the narrator himself. Ghidha al-Albaab (Food for Thought/Nourishment for the Intellect) is one of the books we will be studying. He wrote this commentary on Mandhumat al-Adab. He also wrote a Sharh of Umdat al-Ahkam. Umdat al-Ahkam is a collection of hadeeth on rulings. If you look in the fiqh books, the way they are arranged, they are like texts starting off with Tahaarah, then Salaah, then Siyaam and so on and so forth. Most of it is written by jurists, codifying law issue number 1, issue number 2 etc. Another approach to Fiqh is

the Fiqh of hadeeth itself, so instead of having stating the ruling, you just state the hadeeth and then you study that hadeeth. Umdaat al-Ahkaam is that book where the compiler compiled ahadeeth and he arranged them in order of legal issues. As-Saffarini came along and wrote a very good commentary on that. As-Saffarini also wrote a work on Aqeedah, again in poem form, known as ad-Durrat alMudiyyah fee Aqeedat-il-Firqaat-il-Mardiyyah and this was representing the Aqeedah of Imaam Ahmad, the Aqeedahof people of Athar, the Athaari Aqeedah, the Aqeedahof Ahl as-Sunnahwal-Jamaaah, as opposed to the Aqeedah of the Mutazilah (the rationalists) for instance or the Asharees (also rationalists). He also did a commentary on his own poem (on Aqeedah) and if you put both his poem and his commentary together, you will find it very beneficial, very detailed and like in all of his works, he is always quoting Shaikh al-Islaam Ibn Taymiyyah and al-Muhaqqiq Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allaah have mercy on him). This shows that even here as we study, he will mention the number of books he is using, you can tell where was this person was influenced from, who was he influenced by and you can tell that a person when they rely on such and such persons book, that they are of the correct Aqeedah. Many soofees today, they claim as-Saffarini for themselves. They say that he said you have to blindly follow a madh-hab, so he is our champion and he believed that we do not believe in the Names and Attributes of Allaah literally for instance. So they accuse him of all of these sort of things. Really and truly if you study his work, he quotes Ibn Taymiyyah from the beginning of the book right to the end (as we shall see in this book inshaaAllaah). As it happens he says that one of the books I am relying on is al-Adab al-Kubra by Ibn Muflih al-Hanbali for instance. Another sharh of this Mandhumat by al-Hajjawi, another Hanbali scholar. He will be relying on Seerat ibn Hisham; Ibn Hisham was one of the earliest authors of Seerah. He will be relying on Zaad al-Maad, whose author is Ibn alQayyim (may Allaah have mercy on him). Miftah Daar as-Saadah by Ibn al-Qayyim. [A long list of books by Ibn al-Qayyim are then listed as well as books by Ibn al-Jawzee, Ibn Rajab and Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allaah have mercy on him)] This generally shows what he is leaned towards, the sort of thinking he leans towards. He is not as the soofees claim he was, this is that he was anti-Ibn Taymiyyah, antiSalaafee and so and so forth, who was trying to refine the Hanbali madh-hab from the tamperings of In Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim and of course that was not at all the case. This is the biography of Imaam as-Saffarini.