The Greatest Act of a Scholar

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Imam Muhammad Badr ad-Din ibn Yusuf al-Marakishi al-Hasani (q.s.) was one of the great muhaddits.  All the scholars and shuyukh of Syria accepted him as their teacher, and those living in Damascus used to attend his daily lessons.  He had a photographic memory and knew by heart all the ahadits of Swahih al-Bukhari, Swahih Muslim, and the remainder of the six most famous books of ahadits, including the biography of all narrators of all chains of every hadits, their dates of birth and death, and their status of authenticity.  He also used to explain the Qur’an by heart from Imam Naswir ad-Din Abu al-Khayr ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Umar al-Baydawi’s (r.a.) Tafsir.  His ijazah was especially besought by ahadits scholars for being the closest one of his age to the Prophet (s.a.w.), counting the number of men in the chain.  Doctors and engineers who attended his classes used to say, “We exhausted our life learning our profession, and he knows it more than us.”  He was also instrumental in the organisation of the revolution against the French occupation.  But in all this, does not lie his greatness. 

At every ‘Iyd, he would go out, and he would give his students charity from his own pocket.  There were places, particularly in the colonial era, where there were a lot of women that were impoverished and forced into prostitution to support themselves, and he would tell his student to give those prostitutes charity, and he would say to them, “Tell them that Badr ad-Din al-Hasani asks you to make du’a for him.” 

And those women would weep when they heard that: “Who are we to make du’a for Badr ad-Din al-Hasani?”  There were people who repented because of that act.  This is why he is the greatest of his time.