A Book a Friend Asked For
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Welcome. A thousand years ago, in the town of Bust, in what is now Afghanistan, a great scholar of hadith named al-Khattabi received a letter from a friend.
The friend had seen the first pages of a book al-Khattabi had started, a book about solitude, and he urged him to finish it. People were tiring him. Crowds were draining him. He wanted to know what the Prophet ﷺ, his companions, and the wise had said about stepping back from people.
So al-Khattabi finished the book. It is a gentle, honest, and sometimes painful book, full of reports, stories, and lines of poetry about how hard it can be to keep your heart clean in the middle of a crowd.
But from the very first page, he makes one thing clear. He is not telling you to hate people, or to run to a cave, or to abandon your duties. He is telling you to take from people what you need, and to guard your heart from the rest.
In this book, we will walk through his answer to those who object to solitude, the solitude of the prophets and companions, the gifts that solitude brings, how to choose a friend, and at the end, the balanced path he calls the middle way.
So find a quiet corner, and let us begin.
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