This book belongs to the traditional genre of Islamic 'sacred history' sources known as sira (biography). It contains a famous and a most indispensable collection of authentic traditions (ahadith), listing the main texts from which to glean the beautiful attributes, both moral and physical, of the Holy Prophet – Peace and Blessings be upon Him; attributes to which Muslims in all ages referred over and over, for the purposes of both meditation and edification. At no time is this sacred collection of traditions more needed, as an object of knowledge and as food for thought, than in ours, when the excesses of worldly concerns and the superfluity of material distractions seem to make people forget that the greatest fruit of life, and thus of religious faith, is beauty of soul.

The hadith of the Prophet provide the role model for all Muslims and give an example of how Qur'anic doctrine was actually to be lived in daily life. Therefore this huge corpus of 10 volumes is central. Here the reader is able to go back 14 centuries and be in the very presence of the Prophet, Peace and Blessings be upon Him, through the authentic recorded sayings transmitted by the recognized transmitter al Tirmidhi who died in 912, some 350 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. This particular collection is of the recorded sayings of the Prophet's contemporaries, regarding his very person and presence, down to the color of his eyes and skin.

Read PDF sample from Book: Ch. 1: What has come to us concerning the physical constitution [khalq] of Allah’s Messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace)

About the Author:
al-Tirmidhi (died 912 AD) was born to a family of the widespread Banu Sulaym tribe in Bugh, a suburb of Termez. Starting at the age of twenty, he traveled widely, to Kufa, Basra, and the Hijaz, seeking knowledge from Qutaiba ibn Said, Bukhari, Imam Mulsim, and Abu Dawud, among others. He wrote the Sunan al-Tirmidhi, one of the six canonical hadith compilations used in Sunni Islam, and nine other books, of which "Shamail" is best-known. He played a major part in giving the formerly vague terminology used in classifying hadith according to their reliability a more precise set of definitions. Tirmidhi was blind in the last two years of his life.

About the Translator:
Muhtar Holland was born in 1935, in the ancient city of Durham in the North East of England. In the years since graduation from Oxford and Her Majesty's Senior Service, Mr. Holland has held academic posts at the University of Toronto, Canada; at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, England (with a five-month leave to study Islamic law in Cairo, Egypt); and at the Universiti Kebangsaan in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (followed by a six-month sojourn in Indonesia). He also worked as Senior Research Fellow at the Islamic Foundation in Leicester, England, and as Director of the Nur al-Islam Translation Center in Valley Cottage, New York. His freelance activities have mostly been devoted to writing and translating in various parts of the world. He made his Pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca in 1980. Published works include: The Muslim Mind on Trial (Justice and Spirituality Publishing, 2003), Emanations of Lordly Grace (Al-Baz Publishing, 2000), and The Call to the Believers in the Clear Qur'an (Al-Baz Publishing, 1999).
 

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