🧵 How can I tribute a man who was perhaps the greatest scholar of our generation? A man who didn’t need ‘Shaykh’ or ‘Mufti’ before his name. A man who was an entire league his own. Taha Karaan. May Allah have mercy on his soul.
His unparalleled intelligence, sharp memory and impressive credentials aside, Shaykh Taha Karaan was a man whose warmth of character would melt the hardest of hearts.
In 2017, I had the honour of meeting him one evening in Birmingham. He delivered a talk ‘Preserving Faith in Times of Tribulation’ (link below), then sat down to give time to students and scholars.
Without notice, Shaykh was requested to narrate the ‘first hadith I heard from my teacher’ (الحديث المسلسل بالأولية) to us. The Shaykh obliged and narrated the entire chain — spanning 1,400 years — from memory. Thankfully, I recorded this in audio, Alhamdulillah.
I had already heard that Shaykh had a strong command of Arabic. I thus took the opportunity to ask him a question, in Arabic, related to Shafiʿi fiqh. He gave me a detailed answer with full references, all from memory and without hesitation.
One man. One evening. A lifetime’s memory. Rahimahullah.
Shaykh Taha didn’t have a social media presence. He wasn’t ‘famous’ the way we might have expected him to be. He was a seasoned scholar of Islam with a keen eye on priorities. He knew what to focus on and what not to bother with.
He engaged himself in learning, teaching, preserving the faith, building on tradition and contributing to knowledge in an elegant and eloquent way (his poetry alone is a display of beauty).
He wasn’t a man of sectarianism or petty debates. He was a man of knowledge and character. A real man, compared to whom we are nothing but boys.
The eyes shed tears, the hearts grieve, and we only utter what pleases our Lord. And upon your parting, O Taha, we are deeply saddened. 🌹
إنَّا لله وإنَّا إليه راجعون.
إنَّا لله وإنَّا إليه راجعون.
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