Indeed, the Shaykh—may Allah have mercy on him—could not even tell the difference between the various denominations of paper currency. He would say, “I have come from my homeland carrying a treasure that is seldom found: contentment. Had I wished for high office, I know the road that leads to it. Yet I will never prefer this world to the Hereafter, nor will I trade knowledge for worldly gain.”

The Shaykh cared least of all people about outward appearance; he might go out wearing two mismatched sandals, one red and the other green.

Shaykh Muhammad al-‘Uthaymin—may Allah have mercy on him—relates: “We were students at the Scientific Institute in Riyadh, sitting in the classroom, when a shaykh entered. If you had seen him you would have said, ‘This is a Bedouin Arab who has nothing of learning!’ His clothes were shabby, he bore no air of dignity, and he gave no thought to his appearance, so he immediately fell in our estimation. I remembered Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sa‘di and said to myself, ‘Shall I leave Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sa‘di and sit before this Bedouin?’ But when al-Shinqiti began his lesson, pearls of scholarly benefit rained down upon us from his vast ocean of knowledge. We then realized that we were before a towering authority among the scholars, a champion among their champions. We benefited from his knowledge, his composure, his character, his asceticism, and his scrupulous piety.” (1)

On one of his visits to Riyadh, when he came to the Higher Institute of the Judiciary, he arrived wearing a robe