Dirāsāt Fī Al-ḥadīth Al-nabawī Wa-tārīkh Tadwīnihi by Dr Muḥammad Muṣṭafá Aʻẓamī

I wish to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. R. B. Serjeant, who ‘first introduced me to the University of Cambridge while he was at London University, and later on agreed to supervise my research; Professor A. J. Arberry, who gave me his time generously and offered me much useful advice and assistance, and wrote the foreword for this work; H. H. Shaikh ‘All b; 4Abd Allah Al-Thani, the former Ruler of Qatar and H. H. Ahmad b. 4 All Al-Thani , the Ruler of Qatar, whose personal interest in Arabic manuscripts gave me the opportunity to discover many most valuable ones; while the compilation of this work is due to H. H. Shaikh Qasim b.

Hamad Al-Thani , Minister of Education, who granted me a generous period of leave for study and ordered the Public Library, Doha, to supply all the available material, on the subject. His personal interest ensured that there were no offi¬ cial hinderances to the study: to Professor Muhammad Hamidul- lah, for advising me to benefit from the experience of Western scholars and supplying me with many invaluable microfilms; to Shaikh Nasir al-Din al-Albanl, who placed his extensive know¬ ledge of rare manuscripts at my disposal; to Miss Malak Hanano, who kindly copied some passages for me from Tarikh Dimashq and supplied the photo-copies of various important manuscripts; to Shaikh Ahmad al-Mani4, Cultural Attache, Sa‘udi, Embassy, Cairo, and Mr. Fu wad Sayyed of Egyptian Library Cairo for supplying some important microfilms; to Mr. Ma‘luf for translating some chapters of the French version of Muh. Stud, by Goldziher; to Maulana Sa‘id Ahmad Akbarabadi, Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Muslim University Aligarh, for his sincere advice and supervision of my first research work; to Mr. Martin Hinds of the Middle East Centre, and Miss J.

Thompson of the University Library Cambridge for correcting my English; to Mr. M. A. Baig, Mrs. Taylor and Mrs. Barnes for typing this manuscript; to Mr. Z. Baig and Mr. K.S. Bashir Ahmad of the Eastern Bank, Doha, for going through the proof and indexing the book, to Mr. Adil Aqil of Dar al-Irshad, Beirut, and Mr. Gebrail Fatte of Catholic Press, Beirut, for the service they have rendered in printing this book; and finally to Mr. Abdul Badi4 Saqar the Director and .all the staff of the Public Library, who supplied me with all the required materials, and to Mr. Zuhair al-Shawish for publishing the book.