The Pure Ancestry of the Prophet

About the authors

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti: One of the most prolific scholars in Islamic history, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (849-911 AH / 1445-1505 CE), whose full name was Abu al-Fadl ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr al-Khudayri al-Suyuti, was born and raised in Cairo. Orphaned in childhood, he memorized the entire Qurʾan by the age of eight and went on to study under many of the leading teachers of Mamluk Egypt, gathering ijazas from scholars across the Muslim world. He was a Shafiʿi in law and Ashʿari in creed, and at one point regarded himself as the mujaddid, the renewer, of his age. Biographers credit him with close to six hundred works, from brief epistles to large reference compilations, spanning tafsir, hadith, fiqh, Arabic grammar and rhetoric, history, and more. He is best remembered as co-author of Tafsir al-Jalalayn, completing the concise verse-by-verse Qurʾanic commentary begun by Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli, and for al-Itqan fi ʿUlum al-Qurʾan, a landmark survey of the Qurʾanic sciences. Among his other enduring works are al-Jami al-Saghir, a much-used collection of Prophetic hadith, Tadrib al-Rawi on hadith methodology, Tarikh al-Khulafaʾ on the caliphs, and Husn al-Muhadara on the history of Egypt. In his forties he withdrew from teaching and public life, secluding himself on Rawda Island on the Nile to write, where he remained until his death in Cairo in 911 AH.

Ishaq Azuz al-Makki: Shaykh Ishaq 'Azuz al-Makki rahimahullah (1330-1415 AH) was a prominent scholar from Makka who devoted several decades of his life to the administration of Islamic education. His scholarly work centered on the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, as evidenced by his co-authorship of a work on the noble ancestry of the Prophet. The nisba al-Makki indicates his deep connection to the sacred city. He lived through much of the modern period of Islamic scholarship in the Arabian Peninsula, spanning approximately the mid-twentieth century until his passing in 1415 AH.

About the translator

Amjad Mahmood: Amjad Mahmood is a contemporary translator and annotator of classical Islamic texts, working chiefly with Heritage Press in the United Kingdom. His renderings give English readers careful access to works of Sufism and Hanafi law, with attention to footnoting, source references, and the Qurʾan and Sunna citations embedded in the original texts. Among his best known works is The Refinement of Souls, a translation of Taj al-ʿArus al-Hawi li-Tahdhib al-Nufus by Ibn ʿAtaʾ Allah al-Iskandari, the Shadhili master. The book gathers spiritual instructions, aphorisms, and intimate discourses with the Divine, treating themes such as repentance, the effects of sin, the struggle against the lower self, envy, and reliance on divine planning. Mahmood has also translated devotional and juristic primers, notably the "A Believer's Guide" series on prayer, fasting, and zakat, which render treatises by scholars including Muhammad Hisham Burhani and Ahmad ibn Zayni Dahlan, and he has worked on creedal material associated with the Hanafi and Maturidi tradition. Working from within the traditional Sunni scholarly current, his translations are valued for plain, faithful English and useful annotation rather than paraphrase. Detailed biographical information about him is not widely published; he is known primarily through his body of translation work.