Jalaluddin al-Suyuti (d. 911 A.H.) He is considered the mujaddid, the renewer of the faith, at the end of the 9th Islamic century. It’s not necessary to list all his great accomplishments, so I will jump straight to the point about his hadith collections.

Al-Kittani called him “the seal of the Hadith Memorizers (huffaz)”.

His pupil al-Dawoodi said, “He was the most knowledgeable of all the scholars of his time in the science of hadith…and he said of himself that he had memorized 200,000 hadiths and said ‘If I found more I would have memorized it”.

Ali al-Qari al-Makki said, “He is the one who revived the science of tafsir…and he collected all the scattered hadiths in his famous Jaami‘.”

Once he reached the age of 40, he went into seclusion in his house and dedicated all his time to worship and authoring, leaving all his prestigious positions and refusing all gifts from the rulers.

He was seen in a dream asking the Prophet (pbuh) questions about the hadith and the Prophet replying to him, “Ask, oh Shaykh of the Sunna”.

He himself saw in a dream that he was asking the Prophet (pbuh) about hadiths and the Prophet said, “Ask oh Shaykh of the Hadith”.

And he confided to his friend, shaykh AbdulQadir al-Shadhili, that he saw the Prophet (pbuh) in the waking state, saying to him, “Oh Shaykh of the Hadith!” So he said, “Oh Messenger of Allah, am I of the people of Paradise?”, so he, peace be upon him, said “yes”. “Without prior punishment?” So he said “yes.”

So AbdulQadir al-Shadhili asked him, “How many times have you seen the Prophet (pbuh) while awake?” And he replied, “Seventy-some times.”

Al-Sha’rani said, “I saw in Shaykh Jalaluddin al-Suyuti’s own handwriting a letter, (preserved) with his companion Shaykh AbdulQadir al-Shadhili, to someone who had asked his intercession with Sultan Qaytbay. Its text is as follows:

‘Know my brother that I have been united with the Messenger of Allah (pbuh) until now, seventy five times in which I both saw him and spoke to him, in a waking state. And if it were not for my fear that I will be veiled from him, peace be upon him, if I approach the rulers, I would have entered the Citadel and interceded for you with the Sultan. But I am a man among the servants of his hadith, peace be upon him, and I need him to show the (true) hadiths that the hadith scholars have deemed weak as correct, and that is undoubtedly of greater benefit than assisting you, my brother.’ “

Therefore I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when someone like the self-taught modern-day Al-Albani, compiles a list of the “sahih” hadiths in the collection of al-Suyuti! Who does he think he is, correcting the Shaykh of the Hadith, and undoing the work of the Prophet (pbuh), and going against his will, peace be upon him? The Prophet, peace be upon him, appears to al-Suyuti in order to salvage the correct hadiths that have been deemed weak by previous scholars, and so al-Suyuti shows their correctness, and then al-Albani weakens them again!

As for the matter of seeing the Prophet (pbuh) awake and asking him about the correctness of hadiths, that is normal for the greatest awliya. For example, al-Zawawi (d. 1517 CE) said, “We recite the tasliya on behalf of the Prophet so often that he then sits with us while we are in a waking state (hattaa yaseera yujaalisunaa yaqzatan) …. Then we question him about matters of our religion and about hadiths which are held to be weak in the opinion of our religious scholars. Subsequently we base our behavior on his words.”

Shaykh Saleh al-Jaafari (d. 1979 CE) wrote,

“In the year 1385 A.H. a man from Upper Egypt came to me and said, ‘I have something to tell you which, had I not been commanded to tell you by a higher authority, I would not have told it to you: Know my brother that I was sitting in your lesson at the Azhar Mosque after the Friday Prayer, and you were saying in your lesson, “Jalaluddin al-Suyuti used to study the science of hadith with the Prophet (pbuh), and al-Suyuti would ask him about the correctness of the Prophetic hadiths.” And then I saw the Prophet (pbuh) in the waking state, sitting next to me, and he said, peace be upon him, “Tell this son of mine to strive hard as did al-Suyuti in order to see me as he did.” Then a man came and was about to pass between us and I wanted to stop him but he said, peace be upon him, “Let him for I am Light”. ‘

So when he said this to me I was greatly astonished and surprised, so he said to me, ‘I swear by Allah that had I not been commanded to, I would not have told you what I just told you.’ And he said this to me in the courtyard of the Azhar Mosque, so I saw a man sitting called Ahmad Mahmoud from the town of Moosha in Asyut so I took him to him and said, ‘Listen oh shaykh what this man is telling me’, so he repeated what he said to him.”