of al-Ahsa and the other inhabitants of Najd. He goes on to say:

Our shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—was granted, by the opening Allah bestowed upon him, clear insight into the misguidance of those who had taken rivals and worshipped them besides Allah in almost every land and village, save those whom Allah willed. Once he had completed the pilgrimage, he stood at the Multazam and entreated Allah to make this religion manifest through his call and to grant him acceptance among the people. He then set out with the returning pilgrims toward Medina, intending to continue on to Syria. En route he was attacked by a band of highwaymen who preyed on the pilgrims: they beat him, robbed him of everything he carried, split his head open, and prevented him from travelling with the caravan. Consequently he reached Medina only after the pilgrims had left. There he stayed on, attending the circles of the leading scholars of the time—among them Shaykh Muhammad Ḥayyāt al-Sindi—from whom he obtained authorisations for the hadith collections in their entirety and read portions of several of them. He also came across some Hanbalis1, in whose company he personally copied Ibn al-Qayyim’s Kitāb al-Hudā and the text of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, attended grammar lessons, and memorised Ibn Mālik’s Alfiyyah.

Hammād ibn Ḥamd narrated this to me from him—may Allah have mercy on them both. He then returned to Najd, whose people were still in a state that Allah does not approve. That is the sum of the account.2

From this narrative, dear reader, you can appreciate the strength of the means our shaykh employed to acquire knowledge: prolific memorisation, extensive reading and study, wide exposure to books, repeated journeys in search of learning so he could receive directly from scholars, coupled with keen intelligence and a righteous intention. With Allah’s enabling grace, such factors are sufficient to guarantee attainment—and so it was in his case.