#3238 Sahl ibn Hammad informed us, Shu'bah narrated to us, from al-Ash'ath, from his father—and he was among the companions of 'Abdullah—who said: I saw a man with a scroll containing: "Glory be to Allah, all praise is due to Allah, there is no deity but Allah, and Allah is the Greatest." I said to him: "Let me copy it," but he seemed reluctant to do so. Later, he promised to give it to me. Then I came to 'Abdullah (may Allah be pleased with him) and found it there before him. He said: "Verily, what is in this book is an innovation, a trial, and a misguidance. Indeed, those before you were only destroyed by this and the likes of this. They wrote them down, their tongues found pleasure in them, and their hearts were saturated with them. Therefore, I adjure every person who knows the location of such a book to point it out. And I swear by Allah"—Shu'bah said: "Did he swear by Allah?" He replied: "I reckon he swore"—"If it [the scroll] were mentioned to him as being at Dayr al-Hind"—we take it to mean a distant location in Kufa—"I would have surely gone to it, even if I had to walk."