Kathir
ibn Qays said: "I was sitting with Abu al-Darda' in the mosque of
Damascus. A man came to him and said: Abu al-Darda', I have come to you
from the city of Allah's Messenger for a narration I have heard that
you relate from the Prophet (s). I have come for no other purpose." He
said: I heard Allah's Messenger (s) say:
"If
anyone travels on a road in search of knowledge, Allah will cause him
to travel on one of the roads of Paradise, the angels will lower their
wings from good pleasure with one who seeks knowledge, and the
inhabitants of the heavens and the earth and the fish in the depth of
the water will ask forgiveness for the learned man. The superiority of
the learned man over the ordinary believer is like that of the moon on
the night when it is full over the rest of the stars. The learned are
the inheritors of the Prophets, and the Prophets have neither dinar nor
dirham, leaving only knowledge, and he who takes it takes an abundant
portion."
Abu Dawud narrated it in his
Sunan as the first hadith of the book of `Ilm, also Ibn Majah and
Darimi in the muqaddima of their Sunan, all of them with a weak chain
which, however, is strengthened by the fact that Bukhari in his Sahih,
Tirmidhi in his Sunan, Ahmad in his Musnad, Bayhaqi in his Sunan all
narrate various parts of this hadith.
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