136— Ahmad ibn Ubayd informed us; Ahmad ibn Hamdawayh informed us; Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Bushanjī narrated to us; Mahbub ibn Musa narrated to us; Abu Ishaq narrated to us, from al-Awza'i, from al-Zuhri, who said:

“Those of our scholars who came before used to say: ‘Holding fast to the sunnah is salvation. Knowledge is taken away swiftly; thus, the flourishing of knowledge is the stability of religion and worldly life, while the departure of the scholars is the loss of all of that.’”