The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi Translated by Hamza Yusuf

DESCRIPTION:

In an age of bewildering spiritual and intellectual confusion, creed has never been more important. Every Muslim is obliged to learn it and is promised protection from deviant beliefs by following the unassailable texts of the scholastic community of Islam. Of them all, The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi is the simplest, the most effective, and the least controversial. It serves as a sound basis for Islamic faith and is the most reliable of the early articulations of Muslim belief. Because Imam al-Tahawi avoided involutedly theological issues and systematically presented the most fundamental aspects of dogmatic theology, his creed has achieved an unusual degree of acceptance in the Muslim milieu.

In the thousand years since it was written, many great Muslim scholars have penned commentaries on it. It is still studied roughout the Muslim world and increasingly in the West.

Out of several translations of Imam al-Tahawi's creed available in the market, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf's is, in my opinion, by far the best rendition to date of this famous and very important treatise. We can expect no less of a scholar of the caliber of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf due to his command over his native tongue, English, as well as his acquired and well-learned Arabic.

DETAILS:

ISBN: ​9780970284396
AUTHOR: Imam Abu Ja'far Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Salamah al-Tahawi
TRANSLATOR: Hamza Yusuf
LANGUAGE: Bilingual (Arabic & English Translation Text)
BINDING: Hardback 
PAGES: 167 Pages
DIMENSIONS: 15.5 x 23.4 x 2.1 cm
WEIGHT: 0.74 kg
PUBLISHER: Zaytuna Institute

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Imam Abu Ja'far al-Ṭaḥawi or simply al-Ṭaḥawi (843 or 853 to 933) was a famous Sunni Islamic Scholar who followed the Hanafi madhhab.

Taḥawi was born in the village of Taha in upper Egypt to an affluent family. He began his studies with his maternal uncle Isma`il ibn Yahya al-Muzani, a leading disciple of Shafi`i. When Tahawi was about 20 years old he abandoned the Shafi'i school and transferred to the Hanafi School.Different versions are given by his biographers of his conversion to the Hanafi school, but the most probable reason seems to be that the system of Abu Hanifa appealed to his critical insight more than that of Shafi'i.Tahawi then studied under the head of the Hanafis in Egypt, Ahmed ibn Abi Ibrahim, who had himself studied under the two primary students of Abu Hanifa, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad al-Shaybani. Tahawi next went to Syria in 268/882 for further studies in Hanafi Law and became the pupil of the chief judge of Damascus.

Tahawi gained an extraordinary knowledge of hadith in addition to Hanafi jurisprudence and consequently his study circles attracted many scholars who related hadith from him and transmitted his works. Among them were al-Da'udi, the head of the Zahiris in Khurasan and al-Tabarani well known for his biographical dictionaries of hadith transmitters. Tahawi's extraordinary knowledge of hadith in addition to Hanafi jurisprudence is evident from his significant book Kitab ma'ani al-athar and his concise creed (aqida) has also achieved a prominent place among most Sunni scholars to this day.

The scholars of his time praised him and mentioned him as being a scholar of Hadith (Muhaddith), one whose report was reliable and an established narrator. He was viewed as a distinguished and highly proficient writer and became known as the most knowledgeable of fiqh amongst the Hanafis in Egypt. This was even though he had a share in the fiqh of all of the madhabs of fiqh and hadith, and he knew of the various sciences of Islam. Ibn Yoonus said of him, '"At-Tahaawee was reliable, trustworthy, a Faqeeh, intelligent, the likes of whom did not come afterward. "

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR:

Hamza Yusuf is the founder of the Zaytuna Institute, which is committed to inspiring a traditional understanding and study of the core Islamic sciences. He has also served as an advisor to President Bush on Islamic affairs. He lives in Hayward, California.