Speaking about the verse: (So ask the people of knowledge if you do not know) and who are the ones intended by this verse?

The Shaykh : The Exalted Allah said: The people of knowledge are the people of the Qur'an, as came in the saying of the Exalted Allah in the Qur'an: And as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: So when He said: it means ask the people of knowledge of the remembrance, which is the Qur'an. And when we reach this second point, the first point is that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is the source of knowledge, the second point is that those who followed him (peace be upon him) after him in knowledge, from them knowledge is drawn, and these are the people of the Qur'an, the people of Allah and His special ones. And the people of the Qur'an cannot be those who only concerned themselves with memorizing the Qur'an and studying it without seeking assistance in that with the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and his explanation of it, because Allah (Mighty and Majestic) said in His Book: So this verse indicates to us that there are two things in the Shari'ah or in Islam, the first thing is the Qur'an and its name is made clear by the text of the previous verse So this revealed Qur'an is made clear, and what is the clarifier is the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). So if the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) has been raised by Allah to the highest companion, then his Sunnah remains, and it is by it that he (peace and blessings be upon him) clarified the Book of his Lord. So whoever is knowledgeable of the Book and the clarification, which is the Sunnah, is the scholar and is the one intended by the previous verse So it is not possible for there to be a dispute between two scholars that Islam after his death (peace be upon him) remained alive as it was, and remained in its two sources, the Book and the Sunnah, so whoever is knowledgeable of them is the one who is asked, and this is how the practice of the Muslims proceeded. So his Companions (peace be upon him) would ask the people if they were far from the source of knowledge, which is the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). As came in Sunan Abu Dawud and other books of the Sunnah, that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) sent a detachment for jihad in the path of Allah, so they fought the polytheists, then when the evening came and the night spread its darkness over the people and they slept, one of them woke up in distress and he was wounded, so he asked those around him: "Do you find for me a dispensation that I do not perform the full ritual bath?" because of his wounds. They said: No, you must perform the full ritual bath. So he performed the full ritual bath and it was his death in this bath. So when the news of him reached the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), he became very angry and cursed those who issued this unjust fatwa for him and were the cause of his death, saying: So this hadith is as a detail or as an example of the previous verse Ask the scholars of the Book and the Sunnah, this is a point. Now we move to the core of the question: how is knowledge received after the death of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)? Is it not through the way of these scholars? And let us call these scholars narrators. So what is the meaning of the saying of the one I quoted from earlier: "We take knowledge from whom you said?"

The questioner : From the mouths of men.

The Shaykh : From the mouths of men. So then, from where do we take it? There is no revelation after the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). Therefore, we must take it from those who took it from the primary source, namely the Companions of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), who took it directly from him. Then came the turn of the Tabi'un. In fact, before I say "the turn of the Tabi'un," the Companions of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) themselves... and this is a point that I perhaps need to expand on slightly, because it is actually knowledge that is not usually written down, but rather settles in the hearts of the people of knowledge. Were the Companions of the Messenger (peace be upon him), who numbered in the thousands, all scholars? Did every one of them not need to ask another Companion, so that he would issue rulings for himself? Or is the matter as the scholars mention, and foremost among them Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) in his great book *I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in 'an Rabb al-'Alamin*? Among the Companions, who numbered in the thousands as we mentioned, there were about two hundred Companions of the Messenger who were the people of fatwa. So, before the arrival of the second generation, who did not meet the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) and did not take knowledge directly from him, the first generation itself was not all receiving knowledge directly from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); rather, they would take it from those who took it directly from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). It is perhaps good to mention two examples here, which are usually mentioned on other occasions than the one I am currently discussing. The first example is when they write the biography of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), and the second is Ibn 'Abbas. When they write their biographies, they say that when the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) died, Ibn 'Abbas was young, on the verge of reaching the age of accountability. And Abu Hurayrah: the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) died, and he had not accompanied him except for about two and a half years. So why was Abu Hurayrah the Companion with the most hadith, as the books of hadith now attest? And why was 'Abdullah ibn 'Abbas prolific in hadith, even though he was a boy when the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) died? The reason, and here is the point, is that the Companions would take from one another. So Abu Hurayrah: these hadiths that we now read from him in the books of hadith, he did not hear all of them with his own ears from the mouth of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); rather, some were of this type, and the rest were what he received from some of the Companions who had heard those hadiths from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). Likewise, Ibn 'Abbas was eager to connect with the senior Companions to take from them what they had heard from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and for that reason he was prolific in hadith. Because of this and that, we notice—and notice with me—when you read in the books of Sunnah, in the two Sahihs, let alone others, you rarely find or read a sound chain to Abu Hurayrah saying: "I heard the Messenger of Allah." It is rare. Rather, you find him saying: "The Messenger of Allah said." For example, Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib said: "I heard Abu Hurayrah say: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said." It is very rare, relative to the large group of thousands that are narrated from him with sound chains, that you find him saying "I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him)" or "I was present with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him)" or what conveys this meaning. This type exists in his hadiths, but it is a small number relative to the large number of hadiths he narrates from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). And this reality, namely that Abu Hurayrah did not hear all his hadiths directly from the Messenger (peace be upon him), becomes a cause for jurisprudential debate among some scholars in the era of the Companions or after them. For example, it reached one of the Companions that Abu Hurayrah was issuing a ruling that if a man becomes a junub while fasting, his fast is invalid. He was caught by the dawn while fasting, but he was still in a state of major ritual impurity, so his fast was invalid. When he was confronted and opposed with the fact that the Messenger (peace be upon him) would become a junub from intercourse while fasting, then he would perform ghusl and lead the people in prayer as imam, he said: "I heard this hadith from al-Fadl ibn 'Abbas; he did not hear it from the Messenger (peace be upon him)." This happened. Later, in the books of the Hanafis, there was a jurisprudential disagreement on the issue of speaking in prayer while in a state of forgetfulness. All the scholars of fiqh agreed that if a person intentionally speaks in prayer, his prayer is invalid. They differed on whether the prayer of one who speaks while in a state of forgetfulness or negligence is invalid or not. The Hanafis say it is invalid in this state. The Shafi'is and the majority of hadith scholars say no. These people argue with the hadith of Abu Hurayrah narrated in the two Sahihs, which is the well-known hadith of Dhu al-Yadayn. Its summary is that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) led the people in the 'Asr prayer one day for two rak'ahs, then he said the taslim. Then he moved to a side of the mosque, lay down, and placed one leg over the other to rest. Among the people was a man known as Dhu al-Yadayn. He said: "O Messenger of Allah." From among all the people, and this requires, as you hear me, a boldness like that of Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr was present, 'Umar was present, the senior Companions, the completion of the ten promised Paradise, were present, and no one spoke. Dhu al-Yadayn said: "O Messenger of Allah, did the prayer become short, or did you forget?" He said: Complete boldness: "Yes, that was the case, O Messenger of Allah." So he looked at those around him: They said: "Yes." So he moved to the place of prayer, and I am deliberately saying "to his place" and not "to his mihrab," because there was no mihrab in the time of the Messenger (peace be upon him). And the mihrabs in mosques are among the innovations that have crept into mosques from the churches, much to our regret. So the Messenger (peace be upon him) returned to his place of prostration, to his place, and prayed two rak'ahs, then prostrated. That is, the Messenger completed the prayer despite all this talk and back-and-forth, the S and the J. So the Hanafis say no, this means they do not argue with this hadith. Why? They say because Dhu al-Yadayn died at Badr, so this is an old incident, and His saying, Exalted is He: meaning silent, was revealed after that. The Shafi'is responded and said: Dhu al-Yadayn, how do you know that he died in the time of the Battle of Badr? They said: al-Zuhri said that Dhu al-Yadayn died in the Battle of Badr. Many discussions take place here, and we are not in the position to discuss them. And from that, it can be said that al-Zuhri was a young Tabi'i who did not witness the Battle of Badr, so where is the intermediary between him and this incident which he witnessed and witnessed the death of Dhu al-Yadayn, so that we would invalidate the indication of a hadith whose authenticity is agreed upon by the two Shaykhs with such a problematic narration? And they completed their argument, in their claim, after that refuted argument, namely that Abu Hurayrah... and here is the point... was a recent convert to Islam, so he died in the Battle of Hunayn, which can be said to be two and a half years before the death of the Messenger, so he was late, and the incident of Dhu al-Yadayn was much earlier. So the response, and here is the point, was: No. Abu Hurayrah was a witness to this story, because there is a narration in Sahih Muslim with a sound chain, of course: "While we were praying behind the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), he said the taslim after two rak'ahs," and he mentioned the story. So this story is not like most of the hadiths of the Messenger that he heard indirectly. No. He witnessed it. The point is that if the Companions would take from one another, then where do those who came after them and followed them with goodness take their knowledge from? If the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) who were not able to receive everything the others knew from the Prophet directly, but rather took it from whom? They took it from the Messenger (peace be upon him). The Tabi'un had no way to take knowledge except from these Companions, and so on. The Tabi'un: we must imagine this reality, which is also very important. The knowledge that the Messenger (peace be upon him) brought from Allah is limited to the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). All this knowledge passed to the first century, who were the Companions of the Messenger (peace be upon him). Nothing of it was lost at all, but something was lost for some of them, whereas for their collective group, it is impossible for anything of this knowledge to be lost. And this is among the meanings of His saying, Exalted is He: And if you preserve this statement and what will follow, you will be able to refute many doubts regarding the Sunnah, and that it contains authentic hadiths and it contains weak hadiths. It is impossible for any Muslim to believe otherwise than what I am saying, no matter how different the schools of thought are. We are not in the details now, but this generalization means that the knowledge that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) brought, as Book and explanation of the Book, it is impossible for anything of it to be lost from the entire Ummah, and only something of this knowledge may be lost from some of it, and not from its entirety. This first layer, which received the knowledge completely from the mouth of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), transmitted it in turn to the second century, who are the Tabi'un. They transmitted it in its entirety, they did not lose anything of it at all, neither Book nor Sunnah, but some of this may be lost for some of the Tabi'un, and not for all the Tabi'un, and so on until the knowledge reaches our time. It may be lost for me, indeed many things, and it may be lost for this one and that one, but it is not possible for anything to be lost from the collective Ummah, because Allah (Mighty and Majestic) guaranteed its preservation, so He said: If this is the knowledge, then how is it said, how is it permissible for a Muslim, or how can one imagine, that we hear that a Muslim who truly believes in Allah and His Messenger, how do you take knowledge from the mouths of men? So what is the way? This is how the Companions received knowledge, some from some, the Tabi'un from the Companions, the followers of the Tabi'un from the Tabi'un, and so on. If that is a defect in the view of some of them, then what is the way of receiving knowledge in their view? We want to hear the alternative so that we can refute or complete our refutation of them. So what do they say?