Third: His journeys in the pursuit of knowledge

Al-Dhahabī would often lament his inability to travel to other lands, knowing how indispensable such journeys are for obtaining loftier chains of transmission, earlier audition, meeting the great ḥadīth masters, reviewing with them, and drawing benefit from them (1).

Yet his father did not encourage him to travel; indeed, at times he forbade it outright. In the biographical entry for Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Muḥammad ibn Warīdah al-Baghdādī al-Ḥanbalī, lecturer at the Mustanṣiriyyah (d. 697 AH) (2), he wrote: “I was on the verge of journeying to him, but abandoned the idea out of regard for my father” (3). Likewise, in his notice on the same scholar in Maʿrifat al-Qurrāʾ al-Kibār he says: “He surpassed his contemporaries, and I longed to travel to him, yet I did not dare for fear of my father, for he used to forbid me” (4). And in the entry for al-Makīn al-Asmar, the Alexandrian Qurʾān-reciter who died in 692 AH, he recorded: “When our shaykh al-Fāḍilī passed away, my yearning and regret at not meeting him only intensified, but my father would not allow me to travel” (5).

Al-Dhahabī was not an undutiful son who defied his father’s wishes—especially since the etiquette of seeking knowledge requires one to obtain one’s parents’ permission before travelling (6), to obey and honor them, and to forgo the journey if they dislike or resent it (7).

It appears to us that al-Dhahabī