Ibn Taymiyyah’s Dars | Flowing Like a River
May 30, 2020 § Leave a comment
Imaam al-Bazzaar said, “As for his lessons, I wouldn’t miss them while I was resident in Damascus. He wouldn’t prepare anything beforehand that he was about to teach or present, instead he would sit after praying two rakʿahs and then praise Allāh and extol Him and send ṣalāh on His Messenger ﷺ, in a pleasant, beautiful manner which I had never heard before.
And then he would begin.
Allāh would aid him in conveying knowledge and subtle, fine, delicate points, and different specialties, and in citing narrations, and in drawing answers from verses and ḥadīths, and sayings of the scholars, examining some of them and expounding on their validity or whether spurious, clarifying his argument, citing the poetry of the Arabs as proof, at times mentioning the name of the poet too—all the while in doing so he would be running forth like a river, overflowing like the sea, and he would, from the time he started speaking until he finished, be as though absent from those around him.
Eyes closed.
All done unintentionally, speaking without haughtiness, or stopping or mistakes, but rather a divine gift bestowed on him, such that whoever was listening or saw him would be dazzled, and he would remain like that until he went silent.
I would see him during all this as though in the presence of one preoccupying him from others, and at that time he would be held in awe which would cause the people’s hearts to shudder and astonish the eyes and minds … and upon finishing his lesson he would open his eyes and turn to the people with a cheerful face, smiling, gentle-mannered, as though he was only then meeting them, and even apologizing for any shortcomings in what he may have said whilst in that state, and a number of notebooks could be written out of the lesson, and what I mention here about it is well-known, everyone present will agree with me on it, and they are numerous, walḥamdulillāh, such that how many they are can’t be counted, reciters, ḥadīth scholars, fiqh scholars, writers, and the general Muslims.”
Al-Aʿlām al-ʿAliyyah fī Manāqibi Shaikhil-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah, pp. 28-30.
Gifts of Knowledge 
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