Al-Layth narrated—through one man from another—
“I saw Abū al-Dardāʾ enter the Prophet’s Mosque, attended by followers fit for a sultan: one person was asking about a farīḍa (an obligatory ruling), another about ḥisāb (inheritance calculations), another about a hadith, another about a thorny legal problem, and yet another about poetry.

Rabiʿah ibn Yazīd al-Qaṣīr said, “Whenever Abū al-Dardāʾ transmitted a report from the Messenger of Allah, he would add, ‘O Allah, if it is not exactly as I have said, then let it be something akin to it.’” (1)

Mansūr—on the authority of Sālim ibn Abī al-Jaʿd—reported that Abū al-Dardāʾ said, “Why do I see your scholars passing away while your ignorant folk are not learning? Learn—for the scholar and the learner share equally in the reward.” (2)

It is also related from Abū al-Dardāʾ with an interrupted chain: “You will never be a scholar until you first become a student, and you will never be a true student until you act upon what you know. Indeed, what I fear most when I stand for the Reckoning is to be asked, ‘What did you do with what you knew?’” (3)

Jaʿfar ibn Burqān—on the authority of Maymūn ibn Mihrān—reported that Abū al-Dardāʾ said, “Woe to the one who is ignorant, once; and woe to the one who knows yet does not act, seven times over.” (4)