The righteous forebears
group · 2 works · 2 mentions · 3 anchored passages
al-salaf al-ṣāliḥ · the best of the righteous forebears · the forebears of the community · السلف الصالح · سلف الأمة
in the texts
Risālah fī ʻilm al-akhlāq
The pious ancestors, held up as narrative models of character for the untrained.
and the calling of women and children and those of their rank, who do not grasp argument and demonstration, is by praising fine actions and making them seem good to them, and by blaming base actions, disparaging them and making them loathsome to them, and by recounting the fine qualities of the best of the righteous forebears, the excellence of their conduct and the fair outcomes they met, and the …
Risālat al-Wāridāt
The salaf, the earliest Muslim generations, cited twice in the apparatus as the authority for God's bāʼin distinctness from the world and for the efficacy of human acquisition under divine creation.
And the meaning of the Lord’s being exalted above place and direction is that He, Mighty and Majestic, is above the totality of the world, of whose relations the two of them are — distinct from it, as the righteous forebears said.
And the doctrine of the people of the Sunnah among the forebears of the community is that the servant’s acquisition is efficacious in his deed, like all other causes, but by God Most High’s creating — for it is He who created for him the limbs, the sensory faculties and the intellect, who bestowed upon him knowledge, will and power, and who made the causes subservient to him;