Curing Forgetfulness

About the authors

'Abd al-Ghani ibn Isma'il al-Nabulsi: Shaykh 'Abd al-Ghani ibn Isma'il al-Nabulsi rahimahullah (1641-1731) was one of the most distinguished scholars and poets of Ottoman Damascus. Born into a family whose members had served for generations as scholars and judges across the lands of Shaam and Egypt - under both the Mamluk rulers and the Ottoman sultans - he inherited a deep tradition of learning. Throughout his long life he produced over 200 works covering a wide range of Islamic sciences and literary subjects, and his writings continued to be known and studied long after his death. He died in Damascus in 1731 at the age of ninety, leaving behind a substantial scholarly legacy that spans jurisprudence, spirituality, and poetry.

Muhammad ibn Alawi al-Aydarus: A Hadrami scholar of the Ba ʿAlawi sayyid lineage, Muhammad ibn Alawi al-Aydarus (1351–1432 AH / 1932–2011 CE), known also as Saʿd, was born in Tarim, Yemen, in Rabiʿ al-Awwal 1351 AH. He grew up in that city of scholars and took knowledge from its teachers, especially at the renowned Rubat Tarim, the great teaching institute of Hadramawt. Shafiʿi in law and Ashʿari in creed, he stood within the Ba ʿAlawi Sufi tradition of his forebears. He later moved to Aden, and during a period of imprisonment under the communist authorities he committed the entire Qurʾan to memory. Returning to teaching, he served as an imam and founded a school dedicated to Qurʾanic memorization, raising up many huffaz. He lived quietly and modestly, with little appetite for public attention, yet his influence spread through writing: he composed close to one hundred works, brief, useful, and inexpensive, spanning religious, scholarly, and cultural subjects, enriching the libraries of Hadramawt and Yemen. He worked to rebuild scholarly and devotional life in his region after years of upheaval. Several of his treatises have reached English readers, among them Reviving the Neglected Sunnah, The Book of Intentions, Curing Forgetfulness, and Secrets of Tarim. He died in Tarim on 8 Dhu al-Qaʿda 1432 AH (6 October 2011) and was buried in the historic Zanbal cemetery.

About the translator

Talut ibn Sulaiman Dawood: Talut ibn Sulaiman Dawood, also known as Dawood Talut, is an American student of sacred knowledge and translator who has spent more than ten years studying Arabic and the Islamic sciences, with a particular focus on Arabic translation and Hanafi fiqh. He is rooted in the Tijani Sufi tradition and translates classical and devotional texts under the guidance and with the permission of his teacher, Shaykh Muhammad al-Mahy Cisse, a leading scholar of the Tijani community. Working into both English and Spanish, Dawood has brought a substantial body of Tijani and Niassene literature to a wider readership. He is best known for translating works of the West African master Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, among them The Enlightenment of Humanity: On the Supremacy of Knowledge, together with mawlid texts celebrating the birth of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and treatises on intention, remembrance, and the merits of reading about the Messenger. His wider output includes renderings of An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith, Imam al-Suyuti's All the Sultan's Men, al-Sharani's Selections from the Muhammadan Covenants, and The Moon and the Month, a fatwa on moon-sighting for Ramadan. He has served as a translator and director of Spanish outreach with the Imam Ghazali Institute, and his translations appear through publishers serving the Tijani and broader traditional Islamic readership. His work makes accessible a devotional and scholarly heritage that has long circulated chiefly in Arabic.