d. 1402 AH
One of the Maraji` of Sham
Described by many as, “Zahid, pure soul, faqih, mujtahid, usuli,” he is `Abdul Qadir ad-Dumi al-Hattawi ad-Dimashqi al-Hanbali, born in the city of Duma in the noble land of Sham. He had a strong hand in the fiqh and would sit in the classes of the scholars.
He had high aspirations in fiqh and took a great deal of knowledge from the great marja`, the judge and scholar, the Shaikh, Mustafa ibn Ahmad ibn Hasan ash-Shatti – then the Mufti over Duma and one of its’ marja` when he ceded the post some years later. Shaikh al-Hattawi studied with him until he was licensed and after the time of Shaikh ash-Shatti, he became the most knowledgeable of the people in Duma and a marja`.
The Shaikh also surpassed his contemporaries in the study of fiqh, language, poetry, knowledge of rhetoric and speech. He was the chief scholar and the scholars and the students of knowledge would come to him and seek him out for fatwa. The sheikh used to give fatwa and when he saw it was the best option, he would make ijtihad.
After much prompting, he took responsibility for teaching and preaching in Jami` us-Saliq. He preferred that the stand in preacher – on occasions when he was not there – as he was not a marja`, should carry a khutbah the same way that he did. This was by writing it down and even headlining it subject by subject so that he did not deviate from the topic.
Some thirty years before his death, he was teaching advanced classes in fiqh in al-Jami` ul-Kabir, the main masjid in Duma, in the hope of producing the next age of marja` people. Just ten years before he died, he busied himself to the utmost in authorship of works to do with fiqh, Arabic language and current disputes and their solutions. This was while he was in residence at Masjid Hasibah.
Students and staff at the masjid often tried to give him a wage but he refused to take it, stating that the wage and its’ reward was with Allah. Many people forget that the Shaikh lived quite poor his whole life and worked manual labour jobs. His last job was as a researcher in the Islamic Library, located in the Halbuni district of the city of Damascus.
The Shaikh was renowned not only for his knowledge, but also for his generosity and good character. After years of service and striving in the cause of Allah, answering questions in and outside of Sham and as one of the great authorities of the Ummah, Shaikh Al-Hattawi breathed his last in the year 1402 AH.
Meeraath 