He relates that the shaykh was reared in the pursuit of knowledge and completed his initial studies while still a youth. Thereafter he travelled time and again to Basra, to al-Ahsa’, and then to Medina in search of further learning. Expounding on this, he says:

Our shaykh distinguished himself under the tutelage of his father and his uncle. He memorised the Qur’an at a young age, studied the various branches of the religious sciences, and was endowed with sharp understanding and lofty aspiration. He would debate certain issues with his father and uncle, adducing proofs from some of the reports traced back to Imam Ahmad and the positions of Hanbali authorities. Having graduated under them in jurisprudence, he went on to discuss questions he had encountered in al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr, al-Mughnī, and al-Inṣāf, where those works diverged from the base texts al-Muntahā and al-Iqnāʿ. His ambition then turned to the disciplines of tafsīr and ḥadīth.

He journeyed to Basra more than once, each time residing among its scholars, and Allah disclosed to him foundational matters of creed that had remained hidden from others—especially the doctrine of Ahl al-Sunnah regarding the unity of the Divine names and attributes and the reality of faith. While in Basra he authored Kitāb al-Tawḥīd, a work whose excellence was acknowledged both near and far; he compiled it from the hadith collections housed in the madrasas of Basra.

After his Basra sojourn and the benefits he had gained on returning to Najd, our shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—travelled to al-Ahsa’, home to leading scholars such as ʿAbd Allah ibn Fīrūz, Abū Muḥammad al-Kafīf. There he discovered volumes of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim that delighted him, and he praised Ibn Fīrūz for his grasp of Imam Ahmad’s creed. He attended the gatherings of the scholars of al-Ahsa’, foremost among them the jurist ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Qāḍī, requesting that he read with him the first volume of Fatḥ al-Bārī on Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and clarify the points at which Ibn Ḥajar had erred in the matter of faith. He also showed how the Ashʿarīs had departed from the very hadiths and reports with which al-Bukhārī opened his book. He debated and discussed these issues with them—a matter well known to the people of that land.