The Story of the Lost Page.
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Al-Huwayni: All right; we had stopped last time at the page.
The Shaykh: The lost paper.
Al-Huwayni: The lost page, - and upon you be peace, the mercy of Allah, and His blessings -.
The Shaykh: - And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah and His blessings -
Another questioner: - And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah and His blessings -
The Shaykh: Is it not enough that I refer you to the book that has come into your possession, or must you hear it from my mouth?
The questioner: Yes.
The Shaykh: That is how you wish it, the truth is that I had been afflicted with a condition in my right eye. When I looked at a white wall, I would see the image of something in my eye like a fly moving. When I presented myself to the doctor, he said: This is called by them the flying fly, and it is a fine blood vessel that has disintegrated, and a very fine drop of blood came out of it and fell on the eye, so that is what you see going and coming. He asked me: What is your work? I said to him: My hours. He said: That is it, and this came to you from fatigue. I clarified to him my reality that my hours are long and I read a lot, so he asked me to rest for a period of six months, and some drops and treatments.
I returned to my shop and began to sit in the shop, doing nothing, neither in the trade nor in reading and studying. About a week or two passed, and boredom began to creep into me, so I began to console myself and justify it with various justifications. It occurred to me that in the al-Zahiriyyah Library there is a collection of many treatises, one of which is "The Dispraise of Amusements" by Ibn Abi al-Dunya, so I planned in my mind to have the calligrapher there, the scribes, copy this treatise, and while he was finishing the copying, I would have rested and recovered some of my rest and the health of my eye.
And I went to the al-Zahiriyyah Library and tasked our man with copying the treatise, and he actually began. When he reached the middle of it, he came to me to say that the treatise has a gap, there is a deficiency in it, so I went there to the library and looked at the treatise, and indeed there was a deficiency. I said to him: Proceed on your way, and Allah creates what you do not know. The man finished copying the treatise, and as they say, my subconscious was working day and night in searching where this deficiency went. I hypothesized that when these treatises were collected in this volume, like other volumes, perhaps the binder of this volume dropped the one or two missing pages, so he stitched them into another collection. So there is no way but to search in the collections present in the al-Zahiriyyah Library. The manuscripts of the al-Zahiriyyah Library are arranged by sciences, which was the general system in all libraries of the world, except that there are about 150 volumes called the Collections, and it is a name that fits its description; because every collector collects many treatises of different systems, arrangements, and topics, and therefore they placed them under the title of Collections. So I said in my heart, the best is to start with these collections, so I began. And what facilitates the search is that these collections, as they are different in topics and authors, are also different in the quality of the paper; you find something long and something short, something white and something gray, something blue sometimes, and so on. So it is easy for a person to flip through these collections. All of this facilitated my method of searching.
So I began with the first volume, second, third, I no longer remember exactly, and lo and behold, I came across the title of a treatise; by Allah, this is an important treatise, but I found the second part. If it had been the first part, the matter would have been complete, and I would have recorded it with me for a day when we copy it and benefit from it. So when I found the second or third part, I turned away from it. And after many volumes, lo and behold, I came across the first volume of a treatise from those treatises; so I regretted and repented and said, if only I had written the title and number of the second part, and here is the first part. So I took it as a lesson and began to record anything that pleased me, even if it was incomplete. And you notice here that I was in one thing and became in another; I was searching for the lost page, and now I am recording titles that are considered treasures, even if they are not complete. So the important thing is that I finished the 150 volumes and did not obtain the lost page, but I came out with a very great profit from the scientific side.
So I said to myself: You must complete this journey; and that is by searching for the page in the volumes of hadith. The volumes of hadith with us in the al-Zahiriyyah Library are more than 500 volumes. So I began to search. And here, searching for the lost page is much easier; because the collections remain small in size in terms of length and shortness, whereas the subject of the science of hadith, most of it is large, and the lost page is short. But I entered into another search, which is obtaining such topics and precious books. I began to take titles, even if it was a large volume book, and record them with me in drafts. And I finished the 500 volumes without finding the lost page.
And as they say with us in Syria: "Without a long story" - meaning in brief: I went through all the manuscripts present in the al-Zahiriyyah Library, and I was hoping that perhaps in such and such science, perhaps, perhaps; because the issue is a mistake from the binder. So I went through the books of biography, books of history, books of literature, books of Sufism, so all of these are the ones that have manuscripts. And Allah - Mighty and Majestic - facilitated this search for me in a way that would not be facilitated for anyone but an official employee tasked with it. The facilitation reached the degree that I was placing the ladder on the cabinets, because the shelves are high and the hand does not reach them, so I stand on the ladder, and the shelf - for example - is one meter long. I begin here, I pull, I finish here, and I am on the ladder. If I find something precious, I come down and record it, then I continue my journey. And so I passed through the entire library and did not find the lost page, but I felt that I was the winner. I had hundreds of names and titles of precious books.
In the end, I learned that they have something called the "Dast" or "Dasht" in language, which is a pile of papers in cabinets that no one hesitates to go to or reaches out to. So I asked the specialized employee, and he was one of those whom Allah facilitated for my scientific service, and he was responsive to me. I said to him: O Abu Mahdi, where is this Dasht? He said to me: Here, show me two or three cabinets. So I began to search in this stray paper and found nothing, but I also found treasures. Among them, in the al-Zahiriyyah Library, we have two copies of "Musnad al-Shihab" by al-Qudai, and both are incomplete; one is Eastern and the other is Maghrebi. The Maghrebi one has a very beautiful Maghrebi script and is cared for by some of the preservers, the people of hadith, and written next to many, if not all, of the hadiths: weak or fabricated, and so on. But the first booklet is missing from it. And the other copy is Eastern, what do we have to do with it now! And lo and behold, I was surprised by this "Dasht," I found the missing booklet from the Maghrebi copy, and thus the precious copy was completed. So I took it with joy and happiness and went to the manager responsible for the manuscripts; I said to him: This booklet is from the "Dasht," and this is the book that is listed in your index as unknown identity, it is not known who the author is and what the book is. So I said to him: This is the book and the author. And he did not care about it; because as they say in Syria: "Everyone sings to their own tune!!", and I was busy with this search, he was not.
Then the years and days turned, and lo and behold, our brother 'Abd al-Majid al-Salafi undertook to print and authenticate this book from this copy. And one thing leads to another, it is mentioned so that you know the natures of people; the book "Musnad al-Shihab" by al-Qudai was printed in the office where Shu'ayb works.
Al-Huwayni: Al-Risalah Foundation.
The Shaykh : Yes?
Al-Huwayni: Al-Risalah Foundation.
The Shaykh : The Message Foundation. I had written the date on this notebook: "Extracted from al-Dasht by Nasser." The word "Nasser" alone. So what did he do? He placed a sheet of paper over it and covered up this fact. And now you find an image of the main title of this book in *Musnad al-Shihab*, which our brother Hamdi edited, and this scientific fact is obscured. What drove him to do that? You know the answer!
The Shaykh: This is one of the treasures I obtained in this research. Finally, I despaired of finding the lost sheet, but I never regretted it; because what was made easy for me was greater than I imagined. The important thing is that I later returned to the names I had recorded for these works and authors, and I wrote them down again on cards. I arranged the cards by the authors' names, listing each author and his works.
The questioner : Is this an individual effort for yourself?
The Shaykh : Of course, of course. I have never worked as an employee in any department, and this is a favor from Allah upon me. Then, after I finished arranging these slips by the authors' names, I arranged the works in alphabetical order. Among them was "An Index of Selected Manuscripts from the Zahiriyah Library." Then came the final stage, which is the blessed fruit of that initial effort. I began to read these manuscripts and extract the hadith benefits from them with their chains of narration. I currently have about 40 volumes containing the hadiths I extracted from these manuscripts with their chains of narration, and I have arranged them to facilitate reference—also—in alphabetical order. So, this is a brief account of the story of the lost sheet. And so that we do not waste any time in... let us see what other question you have.
The Shaykh: The lost paper.
Al-Huwayni: The lost page, - and upon you be peace, the mercy of Allah, and His blessings -.
The Shaykh: - And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah and His blessings -
Another questioner: - And upon you be peace and the mercy of Allah and His blessings -
The Shaykh: Is it not enough that I refer you to the book that has come into your possession, or must you hear it from my mouth?
The questioner: Yes.
The Shaykh: That is how you wish it, the truth is that I had been afflicted with a condition in my right eye. When I looked at a white wall, I would see the image of something in my eye like a fly moving. When I presented myself to the doctor, he said: This is called by them the flying fly, and it is a fine blood vessel that has disintegrated, and a very fine drop of blood came out of it and fell on the eye, so that is what you see going and coming. He asked me: What is your work? I said to him: My hours. He said: That is it, and this came to you from fatigue. I clarified to him my reality that my hours are long and I read a lot, so he asked me to rest for a period of six months, and some drops and treatments.
I returned to my shop and began to sit in the shop, doing nothing, neither in the trade nor in reading and studying. About a week or two passed, and boredom began to creep into me, so I began to console myself and justify it with various justifications. It occurred to me that in the al-Zahiriyyah Library there is a collection of many treatises, one of which is "The Dispraise of Amusements" by Ibn Abi al-Dunya, so I planned in my mind to have the calligrapher there, the scribes, copy this treatise, and while he was finishing the copying, I would have rested and recovered some of my rest and the health of my eye.
And I went to the al-Zahiriyyah Library and tasked our man with copying the treatise, and he actually began. When he reached the middle of it, he came to me to say that the treatise has a gap, there is a deficiency in it, so I went there to the library and looked at the treatise, and indeed there was a deficiency. I said to him: Proceed on your way, and Allah creates what you do not know. The man finished copying the treatise, and as they say, my subconscious was working day and night in searching where this deficiency went. I hypothesized that when these treatises were collected in this volume, like other volumes, perhaps the binder of this volume dropped the one or two missing pages, so he stitched them into another collection. So there is no way but to search in the collections present in the al-Zahiriyyah Library. The manuscripts of the al-Zahiriyyah Library are arranged by sciences, which was the general system in all libraries of the world, except that there are about 150 volumes called the Collections, and it is a name that fits its description; because every collector collects many treatises of different systems, arrangements, and topics, and therefore they placed them under the title of Collections. So I said in my heart, the best is to start with these collections, so I began. And what facilitates the search is that these collections, as they are different in topics and authors, are also different in the quality of the paper; you find something long and something short, something white and something gray, something blue sometimes, and so on. So it is easy for a person to flip through these collections. All of this facilitated my method of searching.
So I began with the first volume, second, third, I no longer remember exactly, and lo and behold, I came across the title of a treatise; by Allah, this is an important treatise, but I found the second part. If it had been the first part, the matter would have been complete, and I would have recorded it with me for a day when we copy it and benefit from it. So when I found the second or third part, I turned away from it. And after many volumes, lo and behold, I came across the first volume of a treatise from those treatises; so I regretted and repented and said, if only I had written the title and number of the second part, and here is the first part. So I took it as a lesson and began to record anything that pleased me, even if it was incomplete. And you notice here that I was in one thing and became in another; I was searching for the lost page, and now I am recording titles that are considered treasures, even if they are not complete. So the important thing is that I finished the 150 volumes and did not obtain the lost page, but I came out with a very great profit from the scientific side.
So I said to myself: You must complete this journey; and that is by searching for the page in the volumes of hadith. The volumes of hadith with us in the al-Zahiriyyah Library are more than 500 volumes. So I began to search. And here, searching for the lost page is much easier; because the collections remain small in size in terms of length and shortness, whereas the subject of the science of hadith, most of it is large, and the lost page is short. But I entered into another search, which is obtaining such topics and precious books. I began to take titles, even if it was a large volume book, and record them with me in drafts. And I finished the 500 volumes without finding the lost page.
And as they say with us in Syria: "Without a long story" - meaning in brief: I went through all the manuscripts present in the al-Zahiriyyah Library, and I was hoping that perhaps in such and such science, perhaps, perhaps; because the issue is a mistake from the binder. So I went through the books of biography, books of history, books of literature, books of Sufism, so all of these are the ones that have manuscripts. And Allah - Mighty and Majestic - facilitated this search for me in a way that would not be facilitated for anyone but an official employee tasked with it. The facilitation reached the degree that I was placing the ladder on the cabinets, because the shelves are high and the hand does not reach them, so I stand on the ladder, and the shelf - for example - is one meter long. I begin here, I pull, I finish here, and I am on the ladder. If I find something precious, I come down and record it, then I continue my journey. And so I passed through the entire library and did not find the lost page, but I felt that I was the winner. I had hundreds of names and titles of precious books.
In the end, I learned that they have something called the "Dast" or "Dasht" in language, which is a pile of papers in cabinets that no one hesitates to go to or reaches out to. So I asked the specialized employee, and he was one of those whom Allah facilitated for my scientific service, and he was responsive to me. I said to him: O Abu Mahdi, where is this Dasht? He said to me: Here, show me two or three cabinets. So I began to search in this stray paper and found nothing, but I also found treasures. Among them, in the al-Zahiriyyah Library, we have two copies of "Musnad al-Shihab" by al-Qudai, and both are incomplete; one is Eastern and the other is Maghrebi. The Maghrebi one has a very beautiful Maghrebi script and is cared for by some of the preservers, the people of hadith, and written next to many, if not all, of the hadiths: weak or fabricated, and so on. But the first booklet is missing from it. And the other copy is Eastern, what do we have to do with it now! And lo and behold, I was surprised by this "Dasht," I found the missing booklet from the Maghrebi copy, and thus the precious copy was completed. So I took it with joy and happiness and went to the manager responsible for the manuscripts; I said to him: This booklet is from the "Dasht," and this is the book that is listed in your index as unknown identity, it is not known who the author is and what the book is. So I said to him: This is the book and the author. And he did not care about it; because as they say in Syria: "Everyone sings to their own tune!!", and I was busy with this search, he was not.
Then the years and days turned, and lo and behold, our brother 'Abd al-Majid al-Salafi undertook to print and authenticate this book from this copy. And one thing leads to another, it is mentioned so that you know the natures of people; the book "Musnad al-Shihab" by al-Qudai was printed in the office where Shu'ayb works.
Al-Huwayni: Al-Risalah Foundation.
The Shaykh : Yes?
Al-Huwayni: Al-Risalah Foundation.
The Shaykh : The Message Foundation. I had written the date on this notebook: "Extracted from al-Dasht by Nasser." The word "Nasser" alone. So what did he do? He placed a sheet of paper over it and covered up this fact. And now you find an image of the main title of this book in *Musnad al-Shihab*, which our brother Hamdi edited, and this scientific fact is obscured. What drove him to do that? You know the answer!
The Shaykh: This is one of the treasures I obtained in this research. Finally, I despaired of finding the lost sheet, but I never regretted it; because what was made easy for me was greater than I imagined. The important thing is that I later returned to the names I had recorded for these works and authors, and I wrote them down again on cards. I arranged the cards by the authors' names, listing each author and his works.
The questioner : Is this an individual effort for yourself?
The Shaykh : Of course, of course. I have never worked as an employee in any department, and this is a favor from Allah upon me. Then, after I finished arranging these slips by the authors' names, I arranged the works in alphabetical order. Among them was "An Index of Selected Manuscripts from the Zahiriyah Library." Then came the final stage, which is the blessed fruit of that initial effort. I began to read these manuscripts and extract the hadith benefits from them with their chains of narration. I currently have about 40 volumes containing the hadiths I extracted from these manuscripts with their chains of narration, and I have arranged them to facilitate reference—also—in alphabetical order. So, this is a brief account of the story of the lost sheet. And so that we do not waste any time in... let us see what other question you have.
Source
www.al-albany.com
The Arabic text is copied verbatim from the original source, without any edits.