91 — Ibrāhīm ibn Mūsā al-Jawzī also informed us, saying: Abū Bakr ibn Zanjawayh narrated to us, saying: ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us, from Maʿmar, from al-Zuhrī, who said: I heard Abū Idrīs al-Khawlānī say:

“I met Abū al-Dardāʾ and retained what I heard from him; I met ʿUbāda ibn al-Sāmit and retained what I heard from him; and I met Shaddād ibn Aws and retained what I heard from him. But I did not meet Muʿādh ibn Jabal, so Yazīd ibn ʿAmīra informed me that Muʿādh would say at every gathering he attended:

“Allah is the Judge, perfectly just and equitable. Blessed is His name. Those beset by doubt are doomed! Ahead of you lie tribulations in which wealth will abound and the Quran will become widely accessible, until it is taken up by men and women, free persons and slaves, young and old. A man will soon recite the Quran in that time and say, ‘I have recited the Quran, so why do the people not follow me, even though I have recited the Quran?’ He will then say, ‘They will never follow me until I introduce something else for them besides it.’ Beware of whatever he introduces as an innovation, for whatever he introduces is misguidance.

“Beware a scholar’s deviation, for Satan may put a word of misguidance into the mouth of a wise man, while a hypocrite may utter a word of truth.”

He said: We asked, “May Allah have mercy on you, how can we tell that a hypocrite is uttering a word of truth and that Satan has put a word of misguidance into the mouth of a wise man?”

He replied, “Avoid every equivocal utterance of a wise man—the kind that makes you say, when you hear it, ‘What is this?’ Yet do not let that estrange you from him, for he may well reconsider and give voice to the truth when he hears it. Truth indeed has a light.”