The classical Islamic canon
For a thousand years the texts of classical Sunni Islam — tafsīr, hadith, fiqh, sīrah, and taṣawwuf — were written, taught, and transmitted in Arabic. This is a map of the scholars who shaped that canon and the works now narrated, in English, as part of a 68+ audiobook library translated from the original manuscripts.
- 8th–9th century
Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām ibn Ayyūb al-Ḥimyarī al-Maʿāfirī
d. 833 CE / 218 AH · Baṣra, Iraq (Ḥimyarī origin; died in Fusṭāṭ, Egypt) · Grammarian and historian; no fiqh affiliation prominently recorded
Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya — the canonical prophetic biography. His recension of Ibn Isḥāq's lost original is the oldest complete sīrah that has reached us, and the foundation for every sīrah written since.
- 11th–12th century
Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī
1058–1111 CE / 450–505 AH · Ṭūs, Khurāsān · Shāfiʿī in fiqh, Ashʿarī in ʿaqīdah
Reviving the inner life of Islam through the Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn — one of the most influential works ever written in any religious tradition.
- 13th century
Abū Zakariyyā Yaḥyā ibn Sharaf al-Nawawī
1233–1277 CE / 631–676 AH · Nawā, Syria · Shāfiʿī in fiqh, Ashʿarī in ʿaqīdah
The Forty Hadith, Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn, and the most widely read commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim — all produced in a life that lasted barely forty-four years.
- 13th–14th century
Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Dhahabī
1274–1348 CE / 673–748 AH · Damascus, Syria · Shāfiʿī in fiqh, Atharī in ʿaqīdah
Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ — the monumental biographical dictionary of Islamic scholarship, from the companions of the Prophet ﷺ through al-Dhahabī's own era. A working-scholar reference used for seven centuries.
- 14th century
Abū al-Fidāʾ Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar ibn Kathīr al-Dimashqī
1300–1373 CE / 701–774 AH · Bosra, Syria · Shāfiʿī
Monumental history Al-Bidāyah wa al-Nihāyah, the world's most widely read Qurʾanic commentary, and the classical Stories of the Prophets.
- 14th century
Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah
1292–1350 CE / 691–751 AH · Damascus, Syria · Ḥanbalī
Madārij al-Sālikīn — the classical map of the spiritual journey — and a vast body of work on the soul, love, the traps of the ego, and the nature of the heart.
- 14th century
Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh ibn Baṭṭūṭah
1304–1369 CE / 703–770 AH · Tangier, Morocco
The Riḥlah — a 30-year, 75,000-mile journey across three continents, and the most important travel account of the pre-modern world.
Hear the canon.
Every work above is a free English audiobook — translated in-house from the original Arabic.
Browse the library → · All scholars → · The 40 Books of the Iḥyāʾ →