Medieval · Arabic

Bayān zaghl al-ʻilm wa-al-ṭalab

al-Dhahabī

A short, unsparing treatise on the corruption of learning: al-Dhahabī, himself among the most prolific scholars of his age, sets out how the pursuit of knowledge turns into a pursuit of standing, and works through the disciplines one by one — hadith, law, logic, grammar, exegesis, poetry — asking what each does to the man who takes it up. The 1928 Damascus volume binds a second text after it, al-Naṣīḥah al-Dhahabīyah, a letter of admonition addressed to Ibn Taymīyah whose attribution to al-Dhahabī some scholars dispute; it is carried here as the volume's final chapter, as printed.