FROM THE BOOK JACKET:
Extensive as is the reputation of the Suyuti as a distinguished author and scholar, and unsurpassed for the number and range of the works which in every branch of literature known to his age, his unwearied pen never ceased to produce, we are indebted to the malice or envy of but one of his contemporaries and to his own testimony, for the few details of his life and studies that we possess. Reference to one or other of his multitudinous volumes is made by writer of his own and succeeding times where the kindred subject of which they treat naturally calls for it, but only one contemporary biographical notice of him besides his own, is extant.

Many circumstances instigated the composition of this work: among them, that a collection of the biographies of the chiefs of the faith, and those endowed with virtue, was desirable and would be welcome, and in truth, there are those who have complied histories in which they have introduced these distinguished men, but unsystematically, and without giving a full account of them, and their completion would entail prolixity and weariness. For this reason I was desirous of separately detailing each class of men in a work apart, which would be more advantageous for those who wished for particulars any one class, and easier.