In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
The life of the salaf between speech and action.
High aspirations.
Ibn 'Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him and his father) said:
When the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) passed away,
I said to a man from the Ansar,
"Shall we go and ask the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him)?"
"For they are many today."
He replied,
"How strange of you, O Ibn 'Abbas!
Do you think people are in need of you,
while among the people are the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) in such numbers?"
He said:
So I left that pursuit,
and I began asking the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) about hadiths.
If a hadith reached me about a man,
I would go to his door while he was taking his midday nap,
and I would lay my cloak on the ground as a pillow.
He would come out and see me,
and say,
"O cousin of the Messenger of Allah, what brings you here?
Why did you not send for me so I could come to you?"
I would say, "No,
I am more deserving to come to you and ask you about the hadith."
That Ansari youth lived
until he saw me with people gathered around me asking me questions,
and he said,
"This youth was wiser than I."
Abu al-Zinad said:
There gathered in the Hijr [of the Ka'bah]
Mus'ab, 'Urwah, 'Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr,
and 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar.
They said, "Let each of you state his wish."
'Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr said,
"As for me, I wish for the Caliphate."
'Urwah said,
"As for me,
I wish for knowledge to be taken from me."
Mus'ab said,
"As for me,
I wish for the governorship of Iraq,
and to be married to 'A'ishah bint Talhah
and Sukaynah bint al-Husayn."
'Abdullah ibn 'Umar said,
"As for me, I wish for forgiveness."
He said:
And they all attained what they wished for,
and perhaps Ibn 'Umar was forgiven.
Al-Sha'bi said:
Masruq (may Allah have mercy on him) went out to Basra
to a man to ask him about a verse,
but he did not find any knowledge of it with him.
He was told about a man from the people of Syria,
so he came to us here.
Then he traveled to Syria to that man in pursuit of it.
Sa'id ibn Jubayr (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
I would often go to Ibn 'Abbas
and write in my notebook until I filled it,
and I would write on my sandals until I filled them,
and I would write on my palms.
Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
I would travel for days and nights
in pursuit of a single hadith.
'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
I had a soul that was ever-longing;
I would not attain anything from it
but it would long for something greater.
When my soul reached the ultimate goal,
it longed for the Hereafter.
Al-Hasan al-Basri (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
Whoever among you can be a leader for his family,
a leader for his neighborhood,
and a leader for those beyond that,
then there is nothing taken from you [in terms of knowledge or good]
but that you will have a share in it.
Al-Sari al-Saqati (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
Whoever knows what he is seeking,
finds what he sacrifices easy to bear.
Abu Muhammad, the nephew of al-Shafi'i, said:
My mother said:
We would often bring [the lamp] in one night
thirty times, or less, or more,
the lamp to before al-Shafi'i (may Allah have mercy on him).
He would lie down and reflect,
then call out, "O servant girl,
bring the lamp."
She would bring it, and he would write what he needed to write,
then say, "Take it away."
I asked Abu Muhammad,
"What did he intend by asking for the lamp to be removed?"
He said, "Darkness is clearer for the heart."
Malik ibn Anas (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
A man would frequent another man
for thirty years to learn from him.
Muhammad ibn Yusuf said:
I was with Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari
(may Allah have mercy on him) in his house one night,
and I counted that he got up and lit the lamp
to review things he was noting down
eighteen times in one night.
Qatadah (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
O son of Adam,
if you do not want to pursue goodness
except when you feel energetic,
then your soul is inclined toward weariness,
lethargy, and boredom.
But the believer is the one who perseveres,
and the believer is the one who strengthens himself.
It was said to al-'Attabi,
[like] Thawm ibn 'Umar (may Allah have mercy on him),
"So-and-so has low aspirations."
He said,
"He cannot have a goal short of Paradise."
Some of them said:
"The soul is desirous if you make it desire,
and if you return it to little, it is content."
'Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Hatim
(may Allah have mercy on him) said:
We were in Egypt for seven months,
during which we did not eat any stew.
Our entire day was divided among the sittings of the scholars,
and at night,
[we were occupied with] copying and collation.
He said:
One day, a companion and I went to a scholar,
and they said,
"He is ill."
On our way, we saw a fish that we liked,
so we bought it.
When we reached home,
the time for the sitting of one of the scholars arrived,
so we could not prepare it.
We went to the sitting,
and we remained there until three days had passed.
We had no spare time to give it to someone to grill it for us.
Then he said:
Knowledge cannot be attained with a comfortable body.
Abu Ja'far al-Tabari (may Allah have mercy on him) said to his students:
"Are you energetic enough for a history of the world
from Adam to our time?"
They said,
"How large would it be?"
He mentioned about thirty thousand pages.
They said,
"This is something that lifetimes would end before its completion."
He said,
"To Allah we belong [and to Him we shall return];
ambitions have died."
So he summarized it into about three thousand pages.
And when he wanted to dictate his Tafsir,
he said something similar to them,
then he dictated it in about the same size as the history.
Ibn Hibban (may Allah have mercy on him) said in the middle of his book *al-Anwa'*:
"We have perhaps written from more than two thousand scholars."
Al-Dhahabi (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
"Thus should aspirations be."
This is along with what he possessed of fiqh, Arabic,
brilliant eloquence, and numerous compositions.
Abu Hatim al-Razi (may Allah have mercy on him) said to his son 'Abd al-Rahman:
"In the first year I went out in pursuit of hadith,
I stayed for seven years; I calculated what I walked on my feet
to be more than a thousand *farsakhs* [leagues].
I kept counting,
until when it exceeded a thousand *farsakhs*,
I stopped counting."
Abu Ya'la (may Allah have mercy on him)
would divide his entire night into sections:
a portion for sleep,
a portion for standing in prayer,
and a portion for classifying the lawful and the prohibited.
Imam al-Nawawi (may Allah have mercy on him) adhered to the scholars for correction and explanation;
he would read 12 lessons every day with the scholars.
He was of such asceticism, worship,
piety, caution, and withdrawal from people,
to a great extent,
that no other jurist could match him.
He would fast perpetually,
and would not combine two side dishes [at a meal].
Most of his sustenance was what his father brought him from Nawa.
He would not waste any of his time.
He would enjoin good and forbid evil to kings and others.
Condemning laziness.
'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud (may Allah be pleased with him) said:
"I truly hate to see a man idle,
not engaged in any work of this world nor in any work of the Hereafter."
Muhammad ibn 'Ali (may Allah have mercy on him) said to his son:
"O my son,
beware of laziness and boredom,
for they are the keys to every evil.
If you are lazy, you will not fulfill a right,
and if you are bored, you will not be patient for the sake of a right."
Among what was said:
"Your day, O deluded one, is negligence and heedlessness,
and you tire yourself in what you will eventually hate the consequences of.
Your night is sleep, and your [lack of] provision is inevitable;
thus do the beasts live in this world."
[Someone] passed by a group of people while they were playing,
and said, "What is the matter with you?"
He said, "We have finished today, O Abu Umamah."
He replied, "That is not what the one who has finished is commanded to do."
Yahya Ibn Abi Kathir, may Allah have mercy on him, said:
"Knowledge cannot be attained through bodily comfort."
The lives of the salaf were a bridge between speech and action.