Gifts of Knowledge

Al-Bazzaar said, “And Allaah made his renunciation of the world [zuhd] and its pleasures a symbol of his from a young age.

Someone I trust told me that the Shaikh who used to teach him the Quran said, “When Ibn Taymiyyah was a child, his father said to me, ‘I want you to urge and promise him that if he doesn’t stop reading and memorising I will give him forty dirhams every month,’ and then he gave me forty dirhams, saying, ‘Give them to him, because he is young and will maybe delight at that and become even more eager to busy himself in memorising and studying it, and say to him, ‘You will get the same every month.’”

But he refused and said, ‘O teacher, I promised Allaah, the Most High, that I would not take any payment for [studying] the Quran.’

So I realised that a child does not do this—except someone whom Allaah is guarding.”

Al-Aʿlām al-ʿAliyyah fī Manāqibi Shaikhil-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah, p. 44

Tagged: Ibn Taymiyyah