Allah Most High also says:
“Indeed, We wrote in the Psalms, after the Reminder, that My righteous servants shall inherit the earth.”
[Surah al-Anbiya: 105]
The Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—said:
“The prophets did not bequeath dinars or dirhams; they bequeathed only knowledge. Whoever acquires it has acquired an abundant share.”
It was narrated by Abu Dawud and others (1).
The same applies to the term “succession.” Hence, it is said that an heir is the deceased’s successor—that is, he succeeds him with respect to what he left behind. Succession may pertain to wealth, sovereignty, knowledge, or other things.
Since this is so, the words of Allah Most High,
“Solomon inherited David”
[Surah al-Naml: 16],
and His words,
“who will inherit from me and inherit from the family of Jacob”
[Surah Maryam: 6],
indicate only inheritance in a general sense; they do not indicate the inheritance of wealth. Thus, anyone who cites these words as evidence specifically for the inheritance of wealth is ignorant of what the wording actually indicates. It is just as if one were to say, “This man is that man’s successor and has succeeded him”: this would indicate succession in an unrestricted sense, without containing anything to indicate
(1) After the phrase “Abū Dāwūd and others,” one folio is missing from manuscript R. The hadith narrated from Abū al-Dardāʾ—may Allah be pleased with him—is found in Sunan Abī Dāwūd, 3/432 (Book of Knowledge, chapter: Encouragement to Seek Knowledge). Its wording there is: “Whoever follows a path in pursuit of knowledge, Allah will lead him along a path to Paradise. The angels lower their wings in approval of the seeker of knowledge. All those in the heavens and on earth—even the fish in the depths of the water—seek forgiveness for the scholar. The superiority of the scholar over the worshipper is like that of the full moon over all the other heavenly bodies. The scholars are the heirs of the prophets. The prophets did not bequeath dinars or dirhams; rather, they bequeathed knowledge. Whoever acquires it has acquired an abundant share.” The hadith is also reported with similar wording in Sunan al-Tirmidhī, 4/153 (Book of Knowledge, chapter: The Superiority of Jurisprudential Knowledge over Worship); Sunan Ibn Mājah, 1/81 (Introduction, chapter: The Merit of Scholars and Encouragement to Seek Knowledge); Sunan al-Dārimī, 1/98 (Introduction, chapter: The Merit of Knowledge and the Scholar); and al-Musnad (al-Halabī ed.), 5/196. Al-Albānī graded the hadith authentic in Sahīh al-Jāmiʿ al-Saghīr, 5/302. Ibn Rajab also wrote a treatise explaining the hadith of Abū al-Dardāʾ, which has been published more than once.