The shaykh smiled. “Because a nation forgets its light when it no longer knows the names of those who carried it.”
In the year 718 AH, in the candlelit study of a Damascus scholar, old Shaykh Muḥammad dipped his reed pen into a well of gallnut ink. His students had gathered from as far as Andalusia and Samarqand, seeking to copy from the great Siyar —the biographical encyclopedia of Islam’s most eminent figures. siyar a 39-lam al-nubala english pdf download
One youth, Yūsuf from Bukhara, asked, “O master, why record the lives of so many—caliphs, ascetics, even repentant sinners?” The shaykh smiled