In The Name of Allaah, The Most Merciful, The Bestower of Mercy.

Al-Allaamah Siddeeq Hasan Khan [may Allaah have mercy upon him] spoke about repelling the harm that maybe attributed to knowledge due to behaviour of some people who seek it for other than its true aim; then he said: “Like the one who learns for the sake of wealth or status. The aim behind the religious sciences is not to earn; rather it is for the purpose of acquainting oneself with realities and rectify one’s behaviour. The one who seeks Islamic knowledge for the purpose of trade cannot be a scholar; rather he only resembles the scholars. The scholars who resided in the lands beyond the river (a) revealed and spoke about it when they learned about the construction of schools in Baghdad; so they established gatherings of reminder regarding knowledge and said, “The pure souls and possessors of lofty ambition used to pre-occupy themselves with knowledge and their intention behind seeking knowledge was due to its nobility and the perfection reached by way of it; therefore, they came to the scholars to benefit from them and their knowledge. And when a wage (or monetary gain) is attached to it, the ignoble (or despicable) and lazy one will approach it, and thus becomes a reason for his elevation, and from here the sciences of wisdom are abandoned, even though they are self-evident in their nobility”. (1)

(a) Beyond the river: It means the area of modern-day eastern Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, parts of southern Kazakhstan, parts of Turkmenistan and southern Kyrgyzstan.

[Ref 1: An Excerpt from Abjadul Uloom. Vol 1. page 77-78. Dar Kotob Al-Ilmiyyah. 1st Edition 1420 (1999)]