The Shaykh spoke about his life.

The questioner : Where are the students of knowledge from this?
Abu Layla : Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest.

The Shaykh : It is the clock that benefited us, teaching us how to correct the clock from Allah. My father had a history regarding this profession; he was a clockmaker, and in addition to that, he was a Shaykh. If I call him a scholar, it is a fair description in Hanafi jurisprudence. Nevertheless, he had, praise be to Allah, good character; he was chaste and of pure soul. He migrated in the path of Allah from Albania to Damascus, to the sacred lands of the Levant.
Abu Layla : This is part of our luck, Shaykh.

The Shaykh : It is my luck, praise be to Allah. The point is that he was an imam in his country and worked in a house. Then, when he came to Damascus and had no savings, he had a house, so he sold it and traveled with his family for its value until he reached Damascus. Due to his poverty, he rented half of a very old shop that was occupied by an elderly Jewish man. What do we call him? A cobbler? A known cobbler? My father covered it and prepared it, and took a corner of it as a very small shop for repairing clocks. Then he moved to another small shop belonging to the endowments. As for me, when I graduated from primary school, my father was strictly opposed to enrolling me in secondary school because it was government-run and did not concern Islamic education and religious sciences. Therefore, I had no choice but to take up carpentry. This also had a connection to primary school. My language and history teacher, whose name was Ahmad Halimi, may Allah have mercy on him, used to say to me, "You are an Arnaut, and as soon as you graduate from school, you will be a woodcutter." He was indicating that all of our people who were migrants in Damascus did not have a trade; they were either woodcutters or stonecutters. The roads at that time were paved with stones, so one would either be an employee of the municipality or join the farmers who brought wood from the villages to break it. You would find the animal, whether a mule or a camel, loaded with walnut wood or apricot wood.

Another questioner : ... Bees were not around at that time.

The Shaykh : No. The point is that you would find this woodcutter walking with the camel, with the animal, and unloading the load. The buyer necessarily needs a woodcutter, so he finds a woodcutter. That is how they lived. So the teacher says to me, "You will end up as a woodcutter." I tell him, "No, that is how I felt in my heart; I wanted to become a carpenter." And indeed, when I got my primary school certificate, I worked with two teachers: one was my uncle, a carpenter, and the other was a Damascene. But carpentry is Arab carpentry, meaning the repair of old houses that were built with brick and wood, with wooden pillars. These quickly deteriorate due to snow and rain, so they need a carpenter to patch these things. So I worked for these employees, these carpenters. When it was winter, with snow, cold, and rain, there was no work. What do I do? I would pass by my father in the morning, go to the teacher, and he would say, "Today, as you can see, the ground is wet with rain, there is no work." I would return to my father. "Peace be upon you," "And upon you peace." He knew there was no work. One day he would say to me, "My son, I do not like this job. I mean, for a day or two you do not work. What do you think about working for me?" I said to him, "Father, as you wish." From that day, I was consistent with him for years and mastered the trade, praise be to Allah. Later, I became independent in work due to the methodological disagreement between me and my father. My father was a strict Hanafi, and I, glory be to my Lord, by His grace, generosity, and bounty, settled on the path of the Sunnah without a guide or director. On the contrary, the directors were against me. It is enough for you to know, and I ask Allah to forgive my father, that he used to say to me, "The science of hadith is the trade of the bankrupt." Praise be to Allah, the point is that my news spread among the Albanian Arnauts that this young man, they used to say, needs forty lashes. Why? Because he left his madhhab. And one thing reminds me of another: a Shaykh named Bakhitar invited me, if you know him.The Shaykh : Bakhitar said to me, "I have a wall clock, I want you to look at it." I said to him, "Okay, when do you want it?" He said to me, "Either after Maghrib or after Isha." I went to him, and he had a lesson with three students in a large room. I sat by the door, and he was in the corner teaching the students. After the greeting and small talk, "How are you?" "How is it going?" and so on, he initiated by saying to me, "Why did you leave your madhhab?" I said to him, "I do not know from myself that I left my madhhab." He said, "Yes, you raise your hands in prayer." I said, "But if one takes an issue in a madhhab that is attributed to this madhhab rather than the madhhab one lives by and follows, with hundreds, if not thousands, of issues, would he become a Shafi'i for one issue and not remain a Hanafi for the other issues?" And the discussion began between me and him. Glory be to Allah, I remember well; he was here and I was there. He said, in his enthusiasm and heat, walking like a child without realizing it, until he came to me and was hitting my thigh.
Abu Layla : Praise be to Allah.

The Shaykh : Allah is the Greatest. May Allah have mercy on you.
Abu Layla : May Allah guide you and rectify your affairs. May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : This is how they used to broadcast about me: that this man left the madhhab of the fathers and grandfathers, and that he needs to be whipped, and so on. My father endured, endured, and then his patience ran out. So one night, we were at the dinner table, when he said, "My son, I am now in a state where I cannot bear the talk. You are now given a choice: either agree or separate." He said it in Arabic; he had standard Arabic, but with a dialect accent. And I said to him, "If I am to go, give me three days, for I have studied the matter." You know, many fathers and sons are afflicted with what I was afflicted with. Many questions arise here: the son has rectified his affair and returned to his right mind and to his religion, he prays with the congregation in the mosque, but his father prevents him. In Algeria, repeatedly, incidents of this kind occur. Ask about them. I ask one of them, "My brother, are you asking me if you can separate from your father?" He says, "No, I cannot, because I live off his livelihood." I said to him, "If so, why do you ask me? I tell you: what prevents you from walking on the correct 'aqidah and the Muhammadan Sunnah, separate from him. But you will say, 'I cannot.' If so, why do you ask me about something you cannot do?" And so on. So from that day, I thought about this choice: either separation or agreement. Where would I go? I was with him as an employee, receiving a salary of one French franc at that time. France was the colonizer of Syria, so I had no savings at all. Where would I go? So I turned the matter over in my mind and consulted some of my companions whom I had started to gather, a group of Salafis, in my own way. I secured some money or Syrian pounds as a loan, a benevolent loan. And finally, I said to him, "Since you gave me a choice, I choose separation." I rented a house for myself and a brother of mine, and I also rented a shop. And Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, as they say in our Levant: "The family of the noble takes the noble," meaning customers came to me because I was on the path of the farmers who came from the Eastern Ghouta. And Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, guided me. The important thing was my transition from carpentry to this clock trade, which was on my father's suggestion. As for me, my obsession was carpentry. Carpentry does not have much mechanics, not much mental engagement, but it has muscle. So I moved to repairing clocks, and indeed I excelled in this trade completely. But it was not the trade that gave me what you are impressed by from what you have heard about me; rather, it is Allah, the Mighty and Majestic. The completing proof of this is that two of my brothers, my elder brother Najib and Muhammad, worked for my father for months. They did not succeed. My father, may Allah have mercy on him, when he would sit in a gathering in the evening, would complain about his eldest son, who is two years older than me. "My brothers, he has been with me for so many months and cannot drive a nail." I mean, Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, opened this trade for me and I excelled in it, but my whole heart is And the traces of this trade are still very clear, and you may have seen something of this.
Abu Layla : But it is just like this, our Shaykh, but these things.

The Shaykh : ... But the ultimate reference is to Allah.
Al-Halabi : The hijab of the Muslim woman. He said, "And the trade of clocks taught me precision." Meaning, he specified this.The Shaykh : .

The questioner : And the service of the Sunnah also gathered together. It gathered, praise be to Allah, by the grace of Allah, the Mighty and Majestic.