These abridged manuals are the pathway to the larger compendia; one simply cannot comprehend the extensive works until he first understands the summaries and moves through them gradually, step by step. For this reason the scholars said regarding Allah’s words, “But be rabbāniyyīn — devout scholars of the Lord — by virtue of what you have taught of the Book and what you have studied” (Āl ʿImrān 79), that the rabbāniyyūn are those who begin with the minor questions of knowledge before the major ones, cultivating themselves and their students from the smaller issues up to the larger. This is only natural, for every matter starts from its roots and foundations and then grows and expands thereafter.

As for the person who barges into knowledge from its uppermost level, he exhausts himself and gains nothing; whereas the one who starts with the fundamentals and climbs upward in stages is, by Allah’s permission, the one who proceeds upon the correct path and sound direction.

Allah the Exalted says: “They ask you about the new moons. Say: They are time-keepers for the people and for the pilgrimage. Righteousness is not that you enter houses from the back; rather, true righteousness is in one who is mindful of Allah. So enter houses by their doors” (al-Baqarah 189). Those questioners wanted to know why the crescent appears small, then grows and grows until it becomes full, and then wanes until it returns to a thin crescent. Allah reproached them and redirected them to ask about what would benefit them, instructing them to approach the houses of knowledge through their proper doors.