The first thing necessary for all people is to have îmân and the creed of the Ahl-i sunnat scholars as communicated in their books. It is these scholars who have explained the way of our Prophet Hadrat Muhammad ‘’alaihis-salâm’, who have comprehended murâd-› ilâhî (the divine purpose) of the Qur’ân alkerîm, and who have extracted the Prophet’s purpose from the hadîth-i-sherîfs. It is the way shown by them that will save us on the Day of Rising. It is the Ahl-i sunnat scholars who have transferred the way of Allah’s Prophet and his companions ‘radiyAllâhu ta’âlâ ’anhum ajma’în’ into books and who have protected them against being changed or defiled.
Those scholars in the four Madhhabs who reached the grade of ijtihâd and the great scholars educated by them are called the Ahl-i sunnat scholars. The leader and the founder of the Ahl-i sunnat is (Imâm-i a’zâm Abû Hanîfa Nu’mân bin Thâbit ‘radiyAllâhu ta’âlâ ’anh’.)
Sahl bin ’Abdullah Tusturî ‘rahmatullâhi ’alaih’, one of the great Awliyâ who reached the grade of haqîqat (the highest grade in Tasawwuf), says: “If there had been a person like Imâm-› a’zâm Abû Hanîfa ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ ‘alaih’ among the ummats of Hadrat Mûsâ and ’Isâ, they wouldn’t have turned into Jews or Christians.” [Awliyâ are people whom Allah loves.]
Millions of books written by this great leader and by hundreds of his disciples and by the thousands of great people educated by them, correctly spread and promulgate our Prophet’s way all over the world. Today, there is not a city, a village or a person left in the free world that has not heard about the Islam communicated by our Prophet. Upon hearing about Islam, if someone sincerely wants to learn it correctly, Allâhu ta’âlâ promises that He will grant him true knowledge. Today, there are catalogues giving the names of the books on Islam that fill the world’s libraries. For example, there are about fifteen thousand names of books and some ten thousand names of authors in the book Kashf-uz-Zunûn by Kâtib Çelebi. This book, in two volumes, is in Arabic. Ismâ’îl Pasha from Baghdad wrote two supplementary volumes to this book. Nearly ten thousand names of books and authors exist in these supplementaries. Kashf-uzZunûn was first printed in 1250 [1835 A.D.] in Leipzig; the upper portions of its pages were written in Arabic, while the lower
– 32 –
portions were in Latin. Before that, it was translated into French in 1112 [1700 A.D.] At exactly the same time it was printed in Egypt, too. Lastly, together with its two supplementaries, it was printed in Arabic in Istanbul between 1360-1366 [1941-1947A.D.]. The books are in the order of the Arabic alphabet. Four of them were sold at the libraries of the Ministry of Education in Turkey. The two-volumed Arabic book Asmâ-ul-muallifîn by Ismâ’îl Pasha was printed in Istanbul in 1370 and 1374 [1951 and 1955 A.D]. In these two volumes, the authors of the books in Kashf-uz-Zunûn and its supplementaries are written in the order of the Arabic alphabet and under each name are the books written by the owner of the name. Today, another very useful and valuable book listing only the Arabic Islamic books existing all over the world and their authors and in which library they can be found and at which call number they exist in each country is Carl Brockelmann’s German book Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur, which was printed in Leiden in 1362 [1943 A.D.]. The book Miftâh-us-sa’âda by Tashköprüzâde Ahmad Efendî ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ ’alaih’, the author of the book Shaqâyiq-i Nu’mâniyya, which gives the biographies of the scholars educated in the Ottoman Empire, defines and explains nearly five hundred branches of knowledge and gives information about the books written in every branch of knowledge and their authors. His son, Kemâladdîn Muhammad, translated this book from Arabic to Turkish. It lists the Islamic savants and their works, and he gave it the name Mawdû’ât-ul-’ulûm. This book was printed at the printing office of the newspaper Iqdâm in 1313. It is available in bookstores. After seeing Islam’s twenty main branches of knowledge and its eighty–one sub–branches and the scholars of these branches and the books which each of them wrote untiringly and perseverently, an understanding and reasonable person cannot help admiring the great number of Islamic scholars and their skill at diving into the ocean of knowledge.
[In these books of theirs, refuting through documents and argumentations the words of naturalists and materialists and the absurdities which non-Muslims wanted to inject into Islam, they silenced them all, and thus extinguished the fire of instigation and corruption prepared by enemies of Islam. Moreover, exposing the shame of those who tried to give wrong meanings to the Qur’ân and who strove to prepare defiled translations with evil intentions, they, on the one hand, clearly wrote one by one all the facts that have to be believed, and, on the other hand, very correctly presented to humanity the religious aspect of every event and action that has happened all over the world andall those whichwill happen until the end of the world.
The names and biographies of more than eight hundred of Îmâm-i a’zâm Abû Hanîfa’s ‘rahmatullâhi ta’âlâ ’alaih’ followers and those who attended his lectures, are written in books. Five hundred and sixty of these are well known in the knowledge of Fiqh, and thirty-six of them attained the grade of ijtihâd.]
Source: Endless Bliss (Se’âdet-i Ebediyye) by Hüseyn Hilmi Işık, Nineteenth Edition, Hakikat Kitabevi, 20014
