Hadith History and Principles

"The Sunna is the first subsidiary source (masdar far`i) after the Qur'an among the sources of Islamic law. We describe it as a subsidiary source because it is the Qur'an that actually indicated that it is a source, and the basis of everything is the Qur'an. The Qur'an commanded us to follow the messenger of Allah: therefore we follow the messenger of Allah."
~Shaykh Dr. Muhammad Sa`id Ibn Mulla Ramadan al-Buti

"The meaning of the expression Binding Proof of the Sunnah is that the Sunna points to the judgment of Allah Most High, either as definitive knowledge (`ilm) or as as probable knowledge (zann), bringing it out and disclosing it for us. We understand the Divine rulings by means of the Sunna and it becomes binding upon us to put its content into practice, So the real meaning of the Sunna as binding proof is exposition and proof-inference necessitating obligatory practice of their results because the latter is the Divine decision."
~Dr. `Abd al-Ghani ibn `Abd al-Khaliq
The book also contains the translation of Imam Ibn Hajar al-`Asqalani's explanation of the Hadith on Islam, Iman and Ihsan also known as Gibril's hadith from the Fathul-Bari.
Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad is author of Four Imams and Their Schools, The Musnad of Ahl al-Bayt and The Muhammadan Light among other works. Among his translations to English from Arabic are: Qadi Yusuf an-Nabahani's The Prophet Muhammad's Knowledge of the Unseen, the acclaimed The Lights of Revelation and the Secrets of Interpretation: Hizb One of the Commentary on the Quran by Imam al-Baydawi, Ibn Khafif's Correct Islamic Doctrine, Ibn `Arabi's Doctrine of the Muslims, Shaykh Muhammad ibn `'Alawi al-Maliki's The Prophet's Night Journey and Heavenly Ascent and many other esteemed works.
Born in Beirut in 1960, Dr. Haddad embraced Islam while a graduate student in French Literature at Columbia University in New York. He studied at the feet of many of the greatest scholars of Sham, Cyprus and Yemen and has ijazas in numerous hadith transmissions. He lives in Brunei Darussalam.