Introduction

ʿUmar Sulaymān al-Ashqar (1940–2012) was a Jordanian Islamic scholar of broad learning whose career spanned both traditional religious education and modern academic institutions. He studied at the Islamic University of Madinah and later served as a professor at the University of Jordan and the University of Kuwait, producing over two dozen works in ʿaqīdah, fiqh, and Islamic thought. His landmark series on Islamic creed, of which this volume forms a central part, was composed during a period of renewed scholarly interest in systematising and popularising traditional Sunnī doctrine for contemporary Muslim readers. Al-Ashqar wrote from within the Ahl us-Sunnah wal-Jamāʿah framework, drawing primarily on Atharī sources while engaging respectfully with the broader heritage of Sunnī scholarship.

The Major Resurrection (al-Qiyāmah al-Kubrā) is devoted to the events that follow death on the grandest scale: the blowing of the Trumpet by Isrāfīl, the annihilation and then re-creation of all living beings, the great gathering (al-ḥashr) on the Plain of Resurrection, the presentation of the Records, the weighing of deeds on the Scales (al-Mīzān), the Intercession (al-shafāʿah), and finally the crossing of the Bridge (al-Ṣirāṭ) over Hellfire. Al-Ashqar organises his treatment topically, moving through each stage of the Day of Judgment in sequence. His method is exegetical and hadith-centred: he introduces each topic with relevant Quranic verses, supports and elaborates with authentic narrations graded by classical muḥaddithūn, and addresses variant scholarly opinions where they exist. The work is explicitly non-speculative; the author declines to go beyond what the revealed texts establish and consistently reminds the reader that these matters belong to the domain of the unseen (al-ghayb).

The book occupies an important place in the modern literature on Islamic eschatology. By anchoring every discussion in Quran and authenticated hadith and presenting the material in accessible modern Arabic, al-Ashqar made detailed eschatological knowledge available to a wide readership that might otherwise have encountered it only in dense classical commentaries. The work has been translated into multiple languages and is assigned in Islamic studies curricula across the Arab world and beyond. Scholars have praised its fidelity to the transmitted textual evidence and its care in avoiding the two pitfalls that often distort eschatological writing: excessive literalism that forecloses legitimate scholarly difference, and rationalist re-interpretation that dilutes the plain sense of revelation.

A reader approaching this book will benefit most by treating it as a guided tour through primary sources rather than an endpoint in itself. Al-Ashqar frequently cites the Quran and the major hadith collections, so keeping those texts at hand enriches the study considerably. Because the subject matter concerns realities that lie beyond sensory experience, the appropriate disposition is one of submission to what the texts establish and suspension of judgment where the texts are silent or scholars have differed. The student who works through this volume carefully will emerge with a coherent and textually grounded picture of the Day of Judgment, a heightened awareness of accountability, and a firmer foundation for the hope and fear that Islamic theology teaches are the twin engines of the devotional life.