The Garden of Hadith Scholars: Bustan al-Muhaddithin

About the author

Shah Abdul Aziz Dehlavi: Shah Abd al-Aziz al-Dihlawi rahimahullah (1159-1239 AH / 1745-1822 CE) was among the most influential Muslim scholars of the Indian subcontinent in the thirteenth Islamic century. Born in Delhi into a family of great Islamic learning, he received his education under his illustrious father Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi and the latter's celebrated students, Shah Muhammad Ashiq and Mawlana Khwaja Aminullah, deepening his grounding in hadith and the rational sciences. His training in fiqh was completed under his father-in-law, Mawlana Nurullah. Upon the death of Shah Wali Allah in 1762, Shah Abd al-Aziz succeeded him at the helm of the Madrasah Rahimiyah in Delhi, and quickly emerged as the foremost Muslim scholarly authority in India. His students were numerous and scattered across the entire subcontinent. He is the author of 'Bustan al-Muhaddithin,' a biographical work on the masters of hadith, as well as other celebrated works in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.

About the translators

Mohammad Akram Nadwi: Mohammad Akram Nadwi (b. c. 1963 CE), born in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, is a contemporary British Islamic scholar working in the Hanafi tradition. He received his classical training at the Nadwat al-ʿUlama in Lucknow, the institution associated with his teacher Shaykh Abu al-Hasan ʿAli Nadwi, completing the ʿalimiyya degree and a master's in hadith studies, and went on to earn a doctorate in Arabic literature from Lucknow University. In 1989 he moved to England as a research fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, a post he held until 2013, when he left to concentrate on his own writing and teaching. His specialties span hadith, Islamic jurisprudence, Qurʾanic studies, and Arabic grammar. He is best known for al-Wafaʾ bi Asmaʾ al-Nisaʾ, a multivolume biographical dictionary documenting thousands of women scholars and narrators of hadith across Islamic history, a labor of many years whose findings he introduced to English readers in al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam. His other works include a study of Abu Hanifa's life and legal method, the multivolume al-Fiqh al-Islami on Hanafi law, a translation of Bustan al-Muhaddithin, and a biography of Abu al-Hasan ʿAli Nadwi. He directs research at the ASI Research Centre and serves as principal of Al-Salam Institute and dean of Cambridge Islamic College.

Aisha Bewley: Aisha Bewley (b. 1948 CE) is one of the most prolific and respected translators of classical Arabic Islamic literature into English. Born in the United States, she earned a BA in French and an MA in Near Eastern languages at the University of California, Berkeley, and undertook further study at the American University in Cairo. She embraced Islam in 1968 and has since devoted more than four decades to rendering the texts of the Islamic tradition into clear, accessible English. Her best-known work is The Noble Qur'an, a translation of the meanings of the Qur'an produced with her husband, Abdalhaqq Bewley, and first published in 1999. Among her landmark translations are the Muwatta' of Imam Malik ibn Anas (1989), a foundational early collection of hadith and Maliki fiqh, and the multi-volume Tafsir of al-Qurtubi (2003 onward). Her wider output spans creed, law, and Prophetic biography, including abridgements and renderings of works such as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's writing on the soul after death and classical descriptions of the noble character and appearance of the Prophet, peace be upon him. WorldCat records her as author or translator of dozens of works across many editions, and in 2023 she was named Muslim Woman of the Year by The Muslim 500, which recognizes the world's most influential Muslims. Her translations are valued for fidelity to the Arabic and readable English, and remain in steady use among English-speaking students of the tradition.