Chapter Three: Knowledge — What Was Done With It
The man who knows and does not write
In the back row there is a candidate who has read the whole syllabus. He comes to the third question and smiles; he knows the answer letter by letter. He says to himself: this one is easy, I will put it off and start with the hard one. Then the answer book is taken up, and where that question should have been there is a blank space, and its owner is not excused it by having known.
And the question in the greater hall is not, did you know? It is, what did you do with what you knew? The man of knowledge is shown his knowledge as that candidate is shown his blank space: this is what you knew — where is the mark of it in one day of your days?
Its form in the hall you see: answer on what you have studied. The paper asks only about what is in the syllabus, and holds no candidate to account for a chapter he was never set. This alone makes knowledge, in the hall you see, the boundary of what you answer for: the more you have studied, the more you are asked about; and the man who has read more is not let off lightly — his paper is made longer.
And its form in the greater hall: about your knowledge — what did you do with it? The question does not stop at what you got hold of; it goes past that to what it left behind. Knowledge on this scale is not an ornament to be hung up, nor a subject to be learnt by heart, recited, and then forgotten. It is a charge upon the man who holds it, to the measure of what reached him.
And knowledge in this part does not mean the knowledge of papers and certificates alone. It is everything that reached you, so that the case was made against you by it and you came to know what you had not known. The smallest thing of that kind that reaches a man goes onto his paper, even a word he heard on the road that opened for him a door that had been shut.
And its evidence: the second item of the hadith already quoted. And on the mark of knowledge remaining after the time is up and the writing has stopped: “When a person dies, his deeds come to an end except for three: an ongoing charity, knowledge people benefit from, or an upright child who prays for him.” (meaning; Sahih Muslim 1631 — Abu Hurayra, sound (sahih) — Muslim)