The Shaykh Al-Albani’s account of his interest in reading fictional books and American novels in his early youth.
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The questioner : Now, here is a point that draws attention: how did you turn to hadith and the Sunnah, and so on, given that, through some of your words and the words of Shaykh Shu'ayb and others, it appears that your father was a Hanafi who held the Hanafi school in very high regard?
The Shaykh : Yes.
The questioner : How did you escape from that?
The Shaykh : That is a favor from Allah.
The questioner : Praise be to Allah.
The Shaykh : But in terms of the causes, or the cause, it is as they say: "When Allah wills a matter, He prepares its causes".
I was actually living in a rigid Hanafi environment. My father was considered, especially among the Arnauts, the most knowledgeable of them in Hanafi jurisprudence, and he was their refuge and reference. So when I graduated from primary school and studied in detail with some of the shaykhs, as mentioned earlier, I had a strange passion for reading. But it was reading that, to an observer, seemed useless, and might even have harmful effects.
But later, the effect of this study became apparent in my language; it strengthened my pronunciation. The strange thing is that I was obsessed with reading modern fictional books, known as novels, especially the stories of the famous American thief, Arsene Lupin. I was truly fond of reading this type of story and novel. Then I found myself moved to a second stage, which may have been better than the first: studying Arabic stories, even though they were fictional. For example, I read *One Thousand and One Nights*, the story of Antarah ibn Shaddad, the story of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, the story of *Dhat al-Himmah and al-Battal*, and so on. I was very passionate about such reading and study.
Then, as part of the planning and mercy of Allah the Exalted and Majestic toward me, when I changed my profession and stayed with my father, I found I had free time. We would sit together in his shop; he would come, and I would be with him in the morning until he prayed the midday prayer. Once he prayed the midday prayer, he would go home to rest, and I would remain in the shop. He would return after the afternoon prayer. We were busy, but sometimes I had free time in the hours I would otherwise spend fixing things. I would ask my father’s permission to go out. And where to? This too was a guidance from Allah. I would go to the Umayyad Mosque and attend some of the public lessons there. I was influenced by some of them intellectually; some were correct, as I later realized, and some were wrong. This error related to two types: taqlid (following a scholar without knowing his evidence) and Sufism. Then, in this free time when I would leave my father’s shop, Allah provided me with an elderly Egyptian man who bought some of the estates of books and displayed them in front of his shop, which was opposite the western door of the Umayyad Mosque. I would pass by the pile of books he spread out in front of his small shop, flip through them, and find whatever novels I wanted. I would rent them from him, read them, and return them, and so on.
The Shaykh : Yes.
The questioner : How did you escape from that?
The Shaykh : That is a favor from Allah.
The questioner : Praise be to Allah.
The Shaykh : But in terms of the causes, or the cause, it is as they say: "When Allah wills a matter, He prepares its causes".
I was actually living in a rigid Hanafi environment. My father was considered, especially among the Arnauts, the most knowledgeable of them in Hanafi jurisprudence, and he was their refuge and reference. So when I graduated from primary school and studied in detail with some of the shaykhs, as mentioned earlier, I had a strange passion for reading. But it was reading that, to an observer, seemed useless, and might even have harmful effects.
But later, the effect of this study became apparent in my language; it strengthened my pronunciation. The strange thing is that I was obsessed with reading modern fictional books, known as novels, especially the stories of the famous American thief, Arsene Lupin. I was truly fond of reading this type of story and novel. Then I found myself moved to a second stage, which may have been better than the first: studying Arabic stories, even though they were fictional. For example, I read *One Thousand and One Nights*, the story of Antarah ibn Shaddad, the story of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, the story of *Dhat al-Himmah and al-Battal*, and so on. I was very passionate about such reading and study.
Then, as part of the planning and mercy of Allah the Exalted and Majestic toward me, when I changed my profession and stayed with my father, I found I had free time. We would sit together in his shop; he would come, and I would be with him in the morning until he prayed the midday prayer. Once he prayed the midday prayer, he would go home to rest, and I would remain in the shop. He would return after the afternoon prayer. We were busy, but sometimes I had free time in the hours I would otherwise spend fixing things. I would ask my father’s permission to go out. And where to? This too was a guidance from Allah. I would go to the Umayyad Mosque and attend some of the public lessons there. I was influenced by some of them intellectually; some were correct, as I later realized, and some were wrong. This error related to two types: taqlid (following a scholar without knowing his evidence) and Sufism. Then, in this free time when I would leave my father’s shop, Allah provided me with an elderly Egyptian man who bought some of the estates of books and displayed them in front of his shop, which was opposite the western door of the Umayyad Mosque. I would pass by the pile of books he spread out in front of his small shop, flip through them, and find whatever novels I wanted. I would rent them from him, read them, and return them, and so on.