Reading from the author's text with commentary and collation of manuscripts: "And we will mention, if Allah wills, some of what the scholars said
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The reader: "And we will mention, if Allah wills, some of what the scholars said regarding the command to speak Arabic and the dislike of persisting in other languages without need, and that the tongue is accompanied by other matters from knowledge and morals, for customs have a great impact on what Allah loves or what He dislikes. Therefore, the Shari'ah also came with the obligation to adhere to the customs of the earliest predecessors in their words and deeds, and the dislike of departing from them to others without need. The summary of this is that the prohibition"
The Shaykh : And of these customs, the customs that the Salaf had are better than the customs that the Khalaf had, unless there is a need to change the customs. If the customs of the Salaf are better than the customs of the Khalaf, then what if the customs of the Khalaf contradict what the Shari'ah brought? For example, the current habit of people regarding loose clothing, especially for women, which is far from the customs they had and from what women should be in terms of modesty, has become pure evil. Therefore, it is not permissible, for example, for a person to say, "This is an old custom and we want to innovate." We say: Not every new thing is good; rather, some of the new is evil, and some has neither good nor evil. This is a matter we should pay attention to. The Shari'ah came with the obligation to adhere to the customs of the predecessors in their conditions and deeds. Yes.
The reader: "And the dislike of departing from them to others without need. The summary of this is that the prohibition of imitating them is because it leads to missing out on the virtues that Allah the Exalted made for the earliest predecessors, or to acquiring the defects"
The Shaykh : And acquiring
The student: Or
The Shaykh : Or, yes, let us correct it
The reader: "Or to acquiring the defects that were in others. For this reason, when the believers from the sons of Persia and others learned of this matter, those among them whom Allah guided took themselves to strive in achieving similarity with the predecessors. So those became among the best of the followers with excellence until the Day of Resurrection, and many of them became imams for many others. For this reason, they preferred from the Persians those they saw as closest to following the predecessors, until al-Asma'i said, in what Abu Tahir al-Silafi narrated from him in the book (The Virtue of the Persians), he said: 'The non-Arabs of Isfahan are the Quraysh of the non-Arabs.' And al-Silafi also narrated with a known chain from 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn 'Abd Allah ibn Abi Salama al-Majishun from Usamah ibn Zayd from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, he said"
The Shaykh : If I were not
The student: He says, O Shaykh, from Usamah ibn Zayd
The Shaykh : Yes
The student: From Usamah ibn Zayd from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib
The Shaykh : Yes, indeed
The student: ...
The Shaykh : And what is this here?
The student: ...
The Shaykh : how
The student: He says it is Usamah ibn Zayd al-Laythi
The Shaykh : Al-Laythi is not Zayd ibn Harith; it is a name upon a name
The reader: "From Usamah ibn Zayd from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, he said: 'If I were not from Quraysh, I would have loved to be from Persia, and then I would have loved to be from Isfahan.' And it was narrated with another chain from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, he said: 'If I were not a man from Quraysh, I would have wished to be from the people of Isfahan; because of the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him):Musannaf Ibn Abi Shaybah 29:879 They said: And Salman al-Farisi was from the people of Isfahan, and likewise 'Ikrimah, the freed slave of Ibn 'Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both), and others, for the traces of Islam were more apparent in Isfahan than in other places, until al-Hafiz 'Abd al-Qadir al-Ruhawi said: 'I have not seen a land after Baghdad with more hadith than Isfahan.' And the imams of the Sunnah in knowledge and jurisprudence, and those knowledgeable in hadith and other matters of pure Islam, were more numerous among them than among others, until it was said: their judges were from the jurists of hadith, such as Salih ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and such as Abu Bakr ibn Abi 'Asim, and those after them, and I do not know their ultimate state'"
The student: He means he says in the footnote, meaning the final state in the eras that followed
The Shaykh : What do you mean by "Ibsh"?
The reader: "Meaning the final state in the eras that followed the eras of the Tabi'un"
The Shaykh : Meaning the Shaykh.
The Shaykh : And of these customs, the customs that the Salaf had are better than the customs that the Khalaf had, unless there is a need to change the customs. If the customs of the Salaf are better than the customs of the Khalaf, then what if the customs of the Khalaf contradict what the Shari'ah brought? For example, the current habit of people regarding loose clothing, especially for women, which is far from the customs they had and from what women should be in terms of modesty, has become pure evil. Therefore, it is not permissible, for example, for a person to say, "This is an old custom and we want to innovate." We say: Not every new thing is good; rather, some of the new is evil, and some has neither good nor evil. This is a matter we should pay attention to. The Shari'ah came with the obligation to adhere to the customs of the predecessors in their conditions and deeds. Yes.
The reader: "And the dislike of departing from them to others without need. The summary of this is that the prohibition of imitating them is because it leads to missing out on the virtues that Allah the Exalted made for the earliest predecessors, or to acquiring the defects"
The Shaykh : And acquiring
The student: Or
The Shaykh : Or, yes, let us correct it
The reader: "Or to acquiring the defects that were in others. For this reason, when the believers from the sons of Persia and others learned of this matter, those among them whom Allah guided took themselves to strive in achieving similarity with the predecessors. So those became among the best of the followers with excellence until the Day of Resurrection, and many of them became imams for many others. For this reason, they preferred from the Persians those they saw as closest to following the predecessors, until al-Asma'i said, in what Abu Tahir al-Silafi narrated from him in the book (The Virtue of the Persians), he said: 'The non-Arabs of Isfahan are the Quraysh of the non-Arabs.' And al-Silafi also narrated with a known chain from 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn 'Abd Allah ibn Abi Salama al-Majishun from Usamah ibn Zayd from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, he said"
The Shaykh : If I were not
The student: He says, O Shaykh, from Usamah ibn Zayd
The Shaykh : Yes
The student: From Usamah ibn Zayd from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib
The Shaykh : Yes, indeed
The student: ...
The Shaykh : And what is this here?
The student: ...
The Shaykh : how
The student: He says it is Usamah ibn Zayd al-Laythi
The Shaykh : Al-Laythi is not Zayd ibn Harith; it is a name upon a name
The reader: "From Usamah ibn Zayd from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, he said: 'If I were not from Quraysh, I would have loved to be from Persia, and then I would have loved to be from Isfahan.' And it was narrated with another chain from Sa'id ibn al-Musayyib, he said: 'If I were not a man from Quraysh, I would have wished to be from the people of Isfahan; because of the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him):
If the religion were hanging from the Pleiades, men from the sons of the non-Arabs would have reached it; the most fortunate people with it are the Persians and Isfahan
لو كان الدين معلقا بالثريا لتناوله ناس من أبناء العجم أسعد الناس بها فارس وأصبهانThe student: He means he says in the footnote, meaning the final state in the eras that followed
The Shaykh : What do you mean by "Ibsh"?
The reader: "Meaning the final state in the eras that followed the eras of the Tabi'un"
The Shaykh : Meaning the Shaykh.