Al-Imaam Adh-Dhahabee - rahimahullaah - is not a stranger to learners of Islam. His Siyar A'laam Nubalaa remains a book to beat ever since it came out. No Islamic library is complete without this compendium. Its author was a scholar of hadeeth of repute whose like is hard to find.
But what spurred him into learning?
He said about himself in Siyar (1/169) that one of the teachers, Al-Imaam al-Bar'zaalee - rahimahullaah - saw his handwriting one day and said: 'This your handwriting resembles that of the scholars of hadeeth.'
And that was it, Allaah endeared the field of hadeeth to his heart.
