The Shaykh recounts the beginning of his pursuit of knowledge.

The Shaykh : I am telling you about myself. When I first began seeking knowledge, I was an apprentice to my father, learning the trade of repairing watches. I would get permission from him—stay close to me, because you have tired me out with all this—permission to leave the shop. By the grace of Allah upon me, in the early days of my youth, I did not go here and there. I would leave the shop and go to a market near the Great Mosque, known there as the Umayyad Mosque. Either I would enter the mosque and attend a lesson by one of those Shaykhs whom I later learned had no knowledge of the kind we now seek, or Allah (Mighty and Majestic) sent a simple Egyptian man who rented a small shop facing the western wall of the Umayyad Mosque. The shop was less than a meter deep and about less than two meters wide, with an iron shutter. This Egyptian man, whenever he heard that a man had died and his family wanted to sell his library, he would go and buy it. I do not know where he put it, because the shop was small. In the morning, he would open the shop and spread these books on the floor. Subhan Allah! The floor. They call it the "Matahir" in our area, meaning the restrooms of the Great Umayyad Mosque. An ordinary person would be disgusted to sit and rummage through books with the smell right next to him; he would only have to walk two steps to enter. This man was poor, and where would he find a shop to rent for such a price? He was content with it. The man would spread out these books, and I would get permission from my father to either go to the mosque or go to him. I would rummage through the books. At that time, my allowance from my father was a French franc, which had no value then. If I found some small treatises that I could afford to buy, I would buy them; otherwise, I would rent them from him. I remember that among the things I rented from him were the story of *One Thousand and One Nights* and the story of *Dhat al-Himmah al-Batal*, and so on. The point is, I began in this way, acquiring a kind of general culture that had no specific methodology, more like entertainment and passing the time, or wasting time as they say. Then one day, while rummaging, I found a number of *Al-Manar* magazine by Sayyid Rashid Rida (may Allah have mercy on him). I was browsing through it; of course, I had no knowledge of this magazine at all. I was only sixteen years old, very young. I saw an article in which Rashid Rida (may Allah have mercy on him) spoke about the book *Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din* by al-Ghazali, discussing its benefits and harms. Its benefits were from the educational and moral aspect; its harms were from the hadith aspect, and also from the Sufi aspect. Among its benefits were the fiqh and hadith aspects, but from the hadith aspect, he narrates whatever comes to mind. He says, "Then after him came al-Hafiz Abu al-Fadl al-'Iraki, who extracted the hadiths of al-Ghazali's book and distinguished which are authentic, which are good, and which are weak." My heart was drawn to this book. For the first time, I heard of a book that critiques the hadiths of *Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din*. He had nothing but these excerpts.

The questioner : The book *Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din* previously, my Shaykh.

The Shaykh : How?

The questioner : Did you have any prior knowledge about the book *Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din*?

The Shaykh : I did not have any knowledge of it, of course, but I did not know the value of the book, its benefits, or its harms, except through this article. I went down to the market, and the market itself... Do you have the book *Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din*? There is a narrow entrance, and there is a bookstore. I clearly remember the owner, Shaykh Ismail. Ismail... what was it? By Allah, I have forgotten now. Later, I got to know his son at the Muslim Brotherhood center in... The point is, do you have it? He said, "Yes," and asked me to bring it so he could see it. He brought it to me, and it was written "Egyptian edition," edition...Al-Halabi : And it had the extraction by al-Hafiz al-'Iraki. This was my request. How much is it worth? Gold lira. Where am I going to get that? I agreed with him to rent it for the price of the book. Yes.

The questioner : You rent it from him.

The Shaykh : Yes, I rented it, and I actually took the book. I was in my father's shop, and there was free time, especially when he would go to rest and pray Dhuhr, and he would not return until after 'Asr. I would stay in the shop. Our shop was small, about two meters by two meters, and my father had raised it off the ground because of the humidity. So he would sit in the Arab style, meaning at a small table where he repaired watches. And I, of course, when he would go to the house, and I was alone in the shop, it was in the shade after noon, meaning it faced west. To avoid the sun's rays and the heat, I would lower the shutter, leaving a small opening for customers. And I would sit and read this book. It occurred to me that I must copy the extraction of *Ihya'* by al-Hafiz al-'Iraki. What is its name? It is a long name, but it indicates its subject: *Al-Mughni 'an Haml al-Asfar fi al-Asfar fi Takhrij ma fi al-Ihya' min al-Akhabar*. I said, I must copy this book, because I am only renting it; how long will I be renting it? And I cannot afford to buy it. I went down to the market and bought yellow paper, because I did not have money to buy white paper. Yellow paper. This trace is still with me, and it is the first trace, of course, of an ignorant person, more ignorant than those who are now writing and publishing treatises. I bought yellow paper. I had some information about what is called papermakers. In the old days, there was no paper with faint lines to keep the writing straight. What did the old papermakers do? I had a bit of general culture. They would take a cardboard box. For example, how much do you want between the lines? Two centimeters, two and a half centimeters. Yes. And how long do you want the line? For example, ten centimeters, twelve centimeters. I took a cardboard box and punched holes in it, evenly spaced geometrically. The length of this cardboard was, for example, ten centimeters. I punched a hole here, a hole here, and a hole below it, less than a centimeter wide, meaning also here, a centimeter, and so on. I finished the cardboard. I got a strong thread and sewed it from both sides, so there was a thread here and a thread opposite it, and so on, and the cardboard was sewn from both ends. This has no benefit other than just dating and knowing how this young man, who is now a Shaykh, walked the path of knowledge. I would take this cardboard and open the tray, which consists of four parts. I would clamp it between the two trays and press down on the thread like this, and like this, and a lined page would come out. With what? Not with black ink, but with a white mark, and I would write a straight line. I had care for my handwriting, and I still do, but now, of course, age has its effect. I used to take care of my handwriting, and we used to have lessons in primary school called "Good Handwriting." They would distribute notebooks to us with examples of good handwriting for us to learn from, and... So my handwriting was beautiful and still is, to some extent. The point is, I made a plan for how to copy the extraction of *Ihya'*. Why a plan? Because al-Hafiz al-'Iraki placed the extraction alongside the book *Ihya'*. In the book *Ihya'*, the hadith is mentioned at length. For example, the hadith of intercession. I, for example, . They said: "No, O Messenger of Allah." He said: , and so on. A hadith in *Sahih al-Bukhari* of about a page and more. In *Ihya'*, the hadith comes long. Al-Hafiz al-'Iraki, in the extraction, gives us the beginning of the hadith , . That is another hadith. He does not mention the whole hadith. Why? Because it is like a commentary on the book *Ihya'*, as we do today. I do not have the book. So if I wanted to mention the hadith, I would need to know the full hadith. I do not have a library.

The questioner : This is a second problem.

The Shaykh : So, what happened? I had to transcribe the hadith from *Ihya* in its entirety, and after that, I would mention the *takhrij* following al-Hafiz. But I didn’t attribute anything to al-Hafiz al-‘Iraqi; instead, I adopted a convention using square brackets, which I didn’t know about at the time. Do you know what square brackets are? I ended up with two lines. For example, al-‘Iraqi brought the hadith I deleted the word "hadith," opened a bracket, and wrote where the hadith came from? From *Ihya*. Once the hadith was done, I closed the bracket with another one, and then al-Hafiz al-‘Iraqi’s *takhrij* would follow. I proceeded, my friends. It is four volumes. I almost finished transcribing the *takhrij* of *Ihya* in this manner. I finished the first volume, and before I was done with it, something new occurred to me. What was it? Words in the hadith I was transcribing would pass by me that I didn’t understand. There is nothing strange about this, as I am, first, like al-Albani now, and second, a beginner student of knowledge. So how am I transcribing these hadiths? Words or phrases would come to me that I didn’t understand. That was the plan.
The student : What do you mean al-Albani is not Arab?

The Shaykh : ... .
The student : He criticized us.

The Shaykh: Why?
The student : ... .

The Shaykh : Haha. The point is, this is the plan. So, whenever a word passes by you that you don’t understand, you must review some sources that clarify to you the meaning of that word. And sometimes a phrase will pass by you; this is a word, or a phrase passes by me that I don’t understand. Yes, I understand its individual words, but as a phrase, I don’t understand it. It needs explanations. My father’s hadith—may Allah have mercy on him—was one of the scholars of the al-Albani family in Damascus, and perhaps he was the most knowledgeable of them. He had a simple library. I benefited from only two books in it. One was a very large book, I no longer remember, three or four volumes. Each volume is like this. What is it? The translation of *al-Qamus* by al-Fayruzabadi into the Turkish language. So I started using this dictionary, because the original is in Arabic, and I don’t know Turkish, but my father knew Turkish, so I relied on this dictionary, which is the text of this translation. This is from my father’s books—may Allah have mercy on him. The second book is well-known even today, titled *Mirqat al-Mafatih Sharh Mishkat al-Masabih*. So, if a term was difficult for me, I would return to the dictionary and annotate the word that was coming up in the hadith that I didn’t understand. And if a phrase in the hadith passed by me that I didn’t understand, I would return to *Mirqat al-Mafatih*, quote it, and say, "So and so is in *Mirqat al-Mafatih*." I started to make up for the deficiency I had missed. When I finished, I said, this is a defect. Most of the volume I transcribed has no annotations. At the end, there are annotations. This requires us to redo it. I went back and transcribed it from the beginning, fresh, the first volume, and so on, until I finished transcribing.