Dala'il al Khayrat (The Waymarks of Benefits)

Author: Imam Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Jazuli
Publisher: Nuh Ha Mim Keller
Language: Arabic
Pages: 179
Weight: 250g
Binding: Semi Hard flexi-cover and pocket sized

Dala'il al-Khayrat, the most celebrated manual of Blessings on the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in history, was composed by the Sufi, wali, Muslim scholar of prophetic descent, and baraka of Marrakesh Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Jazuli (d. 870/1465). Born and raised among the Gazulah Berbers of the Sus region in southern Morocco, he studied the Qur'an and traditional Islamic knowledge before travelling to Fez, where he memorized the four-volume Mudawwana of Imam Malik and met scholars of his time such as Ahmad Zarruq, and Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah Amghar, who become his sheikh in the tariqa or Sufi path.

The book is divided into chapters to be read daily and it continues to be recited throughout the world.

The Chain of Gold edition of the Dalail Al Khayrat has the shortest authorising chain from Imam Jazuli. Each edition comes with the ijaza’  or authorisation to read.

"We began in June 2003 with a survey of ninety-five manuscripts of the Dala’il from several countries. Their minor textual variants led us back to the work’s excellent and detailed commentary Matali‘ al-masarrat by Imam Muhammad Mahdi al-Fasi (d. 1109/1698), not the least because of his exhaustive comparisons of major early copies, particularly the Sahliyya recension, read with Jazuli seven years before his death by his disciple Muhammad al-Sughayyir al-Sahli and widely acknowledged as the most authoritative. Perhaps no author can resist a few changes in his work when read aloud to him, and differences between the earliest sources are probably due to this. The Sahliyya however enjoys the greatest celebrity of those copies actually checked with the author, and our edition follows it almost without exception.

After many steps to prepare the materials, we printed the work at National Press in Jordan. They were recommended by their proven excellence in color work in previous art calendars and other projects, and by being able to produce a sufficiently opulent imitation of the gold used in the original ornamentation. Our typesetter and computer graphics artist Sohail Nakhooda assured us that he could get the best cooperation out of the staff there in the final steps of combining the many electronic elements of each page.

We bound a few hundred copies in Jordan, but then met with Fu’ad al-Ba‘ayno in Beirut, the largest bookbinder in the Middle East, to see his samples and agree upon the materials to be used for both the rest of the printing, and the deluxe limited edition, with its special handmade oak presentation boxes. Everything was finished by July 2005, twenty-five months after we began, and may Allah be praised." 

-Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller

Read more about its history, the text, the calligraphy, the illumination, the hadiths, the ijaza, the design, and the printing, written by Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller:

https://www.dalail.com/index.php/the-story-dalail-al-khayrat/