So Short, Yet So Comprehensive

Now, briefly, to introduce the book and the author: the work studied in these chapters. It is called the Creed of Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī, al-ʿAqīdah al-Ṭaḥāwiyyah: Bayān al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah. The real name of it is Bayān al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah: exposition of the Sunnah and the group. So basically, the creed of the Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah, the mainstream Muslims. It is famously known as al-ʿAqīdah al-Ṭaḥāwiyyah, or ʿAqīdah Ṭaḥāwiyyah (ʿAqīdah Ṭaḥāwiyyah, or al-ʿAqīdah al-Ṭaḥāwiyyah): al-Ṭaḥāwī's composition of the main beliefs of the Muslim.

The great thing about this book is that, despite being so short, it is actually very comprehensive. According to the scholars, there are hardly any core, important points of the Muslim belief that are absent from it. Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī has been able to encompass all of the important points that a Muslim needs to believe in, and beyond that: either in detail, or by alluding to them, indicating them. So he has touched on everything. Some things he actually explains in depth, perhaps because of a particular need of the time; and there are some things that he alludes to.

It is more popular than the work by Imam Abū Ḥanīfah called al-Fiqh al-Akbar, though he says at the beginning that this is an exposition based on that of Abū Ḥanīfah, Imam Abū Yūsuf and Imam Muḥammad (may Allah have mercy on them). So he benefited from what came down, and what reached him, from Abū Ḥanīfah (may Allah have mercy on him). But his work became more popular. In fact, it is so popular that nearly all the groups today use it.

There are some groups ("some" meaning one or more: the word "some" in English means one or more; it is most commonly thought to mean more than one, but it does not have to mean that) that use it and take it on wholeheartedly; they just reinterpret one or two of the points in it. A little footnote at the bottom. Everybody else takes it the way it is, and explains it.