-Praising the One who created man, and ennobled him with knowledge and clarity. Salutations and blessings upon the choicest of His creation, the Master of the children of Adnan, upon whom was revealed ‘Recite and your Lord is most generous’.
To proceed: the loftiest of objectives is the adornment with knowledge and embellishment with manners (adab) accompanied by following that which has been ordered and leaving that which has been prohibited. For one of those who who kept his eyes awake in its attainment, and spent him time in knowing and completing, the striving student, Muhammad bin Allamah Abi Bakr al-Mulla al-Ahsai. He received and studied the sciences mentioned above in our school ‘Al-Sawlatiyyah al-Hindiyyah’ in Makkah the protected, established by the erudite and righteous, the deceased Mawlana al-Sheikh Rahmatullah bin Khalil al-Rahman al-Hindi. Appreciating his efforts this certificate was awarded to him from the the school so that reliance may be placed on it. And by Allah is success.
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Salam, the above is a very rough translation of the meaning of the main paragraph of the above certificate. Some of us went through a basic reading of the whole of Mukhtasar al-Quduri last year with Sheikh Bandar Abdullah al-Mulla in the Dawsari masjid located in the the Gold Belt area of al-Khobar. Sheikh Bandar is credited (Allah reward him) with helping us in meeting the hanafi scholars from al-Ahsa belonging to the Mulla family. He also gifted us with a number of works in fiqh which can only be described as ‘Tarjuman al-Qalb’.
After the seminar on the four madhabs in al-Ahsa which took place in Dammam, and at which Sheikh Bandar presented a brief history of the hanafi school, he gifted a book to me by his father in law on the history of the different schools in al-Ahsa. The work contained amongst other things a copy of Sheikh Muhammad al-Mulla’s certificate of graduation from Madrassa al-Sawlatiyyah in Makkah. I had been meaning to scan it and place it on the internet for others to benefit from, but was delighted find that someone else had already done so.
This certificate emphasizes the important point that tasawwuf is not divorced or alien to the studying and teaching of sacred knowledge. This is what scholars such as Sheikh Muhammad al-Mulla dedicated their life to and this is what they passed on to their students, and this is what we witnessed ourselves and were told by them.
We have recorded evidence of Sheikh Abu Bakr (Sheikh Muhammads father) being presented with poetry written by his students expressing their happiness and joy at the return of their teachers son from the Hijaz after completing his studies.
Sheikh Muhammad al-Mulla’s son Sheikh Yahya mentioned to us that his father was: ‘An ocean in both outward sacred knowledge and tasawwuf’.
May Allah (the exalted) have mercy on all those mentioned in this post.