Ash-Shifa of Qadi ‘Iyad

"This is another extraordinary book. It was written by Qadi (judge) ‘Iyad, who lived in Spain in the 12th century CE, when it was ruled by Muslims. He was a great scholar, and by this time there were so many collections of hadith and commentaries on the Qur’an that it could be bewildering for a seeker who wanted to know more about the Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be on him. As today, there were questions of: where do I begin and how do I know what’s reliable? As with Imam Malik, who was 100 per cent reliable, with confirmed sources, Qadi ‘Iyad had read it all, and had considered it all, and was intimate with the events that happened in the lifetime of the Prophet – and he puts these events together in a way that makes it digestible. What Qadi ‘Iyad was able to do was somehow translate his love of the Prophet into an account that was not limiting or limited and was reliable. You have a section of the book, for example, about the Prophet’s miracles – and we say that his greatest miracle was the Qur’an, because he was illiterate, and yet had this revelation in pure Arabic that he couldn’t have made up, which contained knowledge he couldn’t possibly have had unless it was revealed to him. But, in fact, he had many other well-documented miracles. For example, Qadi ‘Iyad talks of events in the Prophet’s life like the well-known miraculous night journey, where he travelled on a winged beast called the buraq from Makka to Jerusalem and prayed there with all the Prophets who’d preceded him, and then travelled through the Seven Heavens, beyond the limit of forms in the Unseen, and beyond that into the realms of no-form, and into the presence of Allah – although we know from the Qur’an that Allah is not ‘far away’, but nearer to us than our jugular veins – and then returned to Makka, all in an instant. This journey has been debated for the last 14 centuries, but in the Shifa you have an account of it with all the evidences and proofs and what has been recorded, and he puts it together in a way that you can arrive at an understanding of what actually happened as best you can. All these five books are reliable books, and inspirational books, for people who want to ask, what is Islam really about? As they say, the nearer you get to the source, the purer the drink. If you go to the source of the Thames it doesn’t taste the same as where it reaches the sea."