What is the meaning of the Prophet’s (peace and blessings be upon him) hadith: “It is better for me to fill my belly with pus than to fill it with poetry”?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. It is established from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in Sahih Muslim a hadith to the effect that: “It is better for me to fill my belly with pus than to fill it with poetry.” What is the meaning of this hadith?
Answer:
Its meaning is that poetry other than the obscene poetry that contains evil is disliked. Also, it is disliked for a person to have no concern for anything but poetry, where all his effort is in poetry. However, it is permissible for him to take a portion of poetry from which he benefits, without making it all his work and all his attention, and turning away from other sciences and other benefits. This is what is disliked. Yes.
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. It is established from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) in Sahih Muslim a hadith to the effect that: “It is better for me to fill my belly with pus than to fill it with poetry.” What is the meaning of this hadith?
Answer:
Its meaning is that poetry other than the obscene poetry that contains evil is disliked. Also, it is disliked for a person to have no concern for anything but poetry, where all his effort is in poetry. However, it is permissible for him to take a portion of poetry from which he benefits, without making it all his work and all his attention, and turning away from other sciences and other benefits. This is what is disliked. Yes.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، [131 -954] ما معنى حديث النبي ﷺ «لأن أملأ بطني قيحا خير من أن أملأه شعرا»؟ الشيخ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.