By: Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi
If you are proud of your knowledge, you should know that it
is no credit to you, it is a pure gift that Allah has granted you. Do not receive
it in a way that would anger the Almighty because He might wipe it from you by
subjecting you to an illness which would make you forget all that you have
learned and stored in your memory. I have been told that this happened to ‘Abd
al-Malik ibn Tarif [d.400 AH, 1009 CE], who was a scholar, intelligent,
moderate, exact in his researches, who had been allotted by fate such a
prodigious memory that virtually nothing reached his ears that had to be said
to him twice. Now he undertook a journey by ship and experienced such a
terrible storm at sea that he lost the memory of most of what he had learnt and
suffered considerable upset to his mind. He never recovered his full
intelligence. I myself have been struck by illness. When I got up from it I had
forgotten all my knowledge except for a few ideas of little value. I did not
recover it until several years later.
Source: Al-Akhlâq wa’l-Siyar (Morals and Behaviour) By Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi
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