Imam Abu Ja'far at-Tahawi

Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Muhammad at-Tahawi (239-321 AH) was a scholar of hadith and fiqh from the village of Taha in Upper Egypt. He studied under his maternal uncle Isma'il al-Muzani, a leading student of Imam ash-Shafi'i, before turning to the school of Abu Hanifah, and he transmitted from the major Egyptian and Syrian scholars of his generation. He is remembered chiefly as a muhaddith and a careful compiler, and his larger works, including Sharh Ma'ani al-Athar and Mushkil al-Athar, remain reference texts on the reconciliation of apparently conflicting narrations.

His best-known work by far is al-Aqidah at-Tahawiyyah, a short creed he wrote to record what he described as the belief of Ahl as-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah following the way of the scholars of the religion. Its brevity and its grounding in the texts have made it one of the most widely studied and commented-upon statements of creed in Islamic history, taught and explained by scholars across the centuries down to the present day.

Below is our full collection of Imam Abu Ja'far at-Tahawi's works translated into English, available at The Islamic Book Cafe.