One of our Shaykh’s earliest companions—after providing a brief sketch of his life—said: “As for the beginning of his career and his upbringing, he (1) was raised from his very first days in the laps of scholars, (2) sipping the cups of understanding and roaming the meadows of legal insight and the groves of books that embraced every field of learning. He turned to nothing but reading, study, and the pursuit of lofty matters, especially the knowledge of the Noble Qur’an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and all that they entail.

He remained like that: a righteous successor, upon the way of the salaf, wholly devoted to Allah, dutiful to his mother, pious, chaste, devout, ascetic, constantly fasting and praying by night, remembering Allah in every affair and in every state, always returning to Allah in all circumstances and decisions, standing still at the limits set by Allah—His commands and prohibitions—enjoining right and forbidding wrong with propriety.

His soul was hardly ever sated with knowledge, and reading (3) never quenched his thirst; he did not tire of study, nor (4) grow weary of research. Seldom would he enter a discipline through one of its doors without further doors being opened to him, and he would recover points overlooked in that science even by its most adept practitioners, supporting them with evidence from the Qur’an (5) and the Sunnah.

I heard him in his early days say: ‘An issue, a matter, (6) or a situation may come to my mind and remain problematic, so I seek Allah’s forgiveness a thousand times—sometimes more, sometimes less—until my breast opens up and the knot of the difficulty is untied.’”