The Muslims once built the greatest libraries in the world. Today, our manuscripts sit in cities like Berlin and Princeton, catalogued by orientalists who've spent years learning our language while we scroll past our own history. In this lecture, Ustadh AbdulRahman Hassan walks through how the salaf approached books, why Yusuf ibn Tashfin crossed the sea at ninety years old to rescue Andalus, and why one Muslim ruler was humiliated into receiving letters from his enemy dictating the terms of his own defeat.
The argument is simple and uncomfortable: if you don't read, your understanding of history will be whatever someone else decided to teach you such as Henry VIII and his wives, the Romans, the Tudors. Everything about who you are as a Muslim, what your civilisation built, and the ideological war being waged on your ummah right now, sits in books that are collecting dust. This lecture is a call to pick them up.
Timestamps
00:00:00 Precap
01:50 Introduction: The Importance of Reading
02:46 Why Allah Swore by the Pen
03:30 The Two Types of Bayan (Ibn al-Qayyim)
04:00 How the Salaf Treated Their Books
04:30 Ibn al-Mubarak: "I'm Sitting With the Companions"
05:57 Al-Zuhri's Wife: "Worse Than Three Co-Wives"
07:14 Reading Through Illness
08:30 Al-Hasan al-Lu'lu'i: 40 Years With a Book on His Chest
09:38 Even the Call of Nature Didn't Stop Them
10:32 A Flight From Egypt Showed Me the Problem
11:15 The Orientalists Are Reading Our Books
11:52 Who Published Our Manuscripts?
12:25 4 Books Every Muslim Must Read by Mahmud Shakir, Ibn Ashur, Qabawa & Shakib Arslan
17:10 "He Would Not Put a Book on His Shelf Except That He Read It"
17:52 How to Read a Book Properly: 3 Techniques
20:39 One Foundational Book Per Science
20:53 Aqeedah → Sharh Ibn Abi al-Izz al-Hanafi of Aqeedah al-Tahawiyyah
22:44 Tawheed → Fath al-Majeed
23:33 Nahw → Sharh Ibn Aqil of Alfiyah Ibn Malik
25:02 Mustalah al-Hadith: 2 Books
29:17 The Cost of Not Reading
33:16 Why We Read as Muslims
35:50 Some Books Must Be Read on Repeat
37:23 ChatGPT vs the Dictionary
39:02 Where to Start in Arabic Studies: Al-Misbah al-Munir
40:01 Reading as a Refuge From Falsehood
41:48 The Fall of Andalus
45:47 Read Your History, or Learn Someone Else's
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abdu...
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AMA...
Telegram: https://t.me/+c87I9vy6kqkxOWZk
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@rahmaniyyahofficial
WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0...
X (Formerly Twitter): https://x.com/UstAbdulrahman
#abdulrahmanhassan #AlMadrasatuArRahmaniyyah #AMAR
UK