You (may you learn what's best, from the best!) should know what a grave hazard that ignorant authorities and misleading sources pose to humankind. This has been humankind's affliction from the earliest and most bygone eras and days, and is only worse in our own time, in which we have wound up at the pinnacle of confusion and the murkiest extreme of turbidity.
Our education comes from those without education, nor judgment, sense, or comprehension. Devoid of understanding, they give explanations, and without learning of their own they give instructions. All their learning is forged and feigned, and there is no slander they won't drum up and pass on. Being ignorant, they think themselves learned, and find fault with those whose learning is sound (meter: majzū’ al-ramal):
Busy in all things,
he masters none of them.
His guidance gives increase
in nothing but misdirection.
Furthermore, his pretensions to being the wisest of men are his only joy in life. In reality, he is a blight on his students, and to those seeking an education he is poison. In his mind, however, even an assembly of his own teachers would be in need of his instruction. When he narrates, he prevaricates, and when questioned he vacillates. When disputed he yells, when contradicted he brawls, and when the proof against him is decisive he answers with foul language (meter: ṭawīl):
"He attacks and advances without awareness or knowledge.
What else is stupidity, if not that?"
The ignorance of such preceptors is off the scale established by al-Khalil when he declared the rankings of men, as related by Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn al-‘Abbas [al-Suli] on the authority of Abu Ahmad Muhammad ibn Musa al-Barbari, on the authority of al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar [ibn al-‘Awwam] who was told by al-Nadr ibn Shumayl:
"I heard al-Khalil say: 'Some people have knowledge, and know that they have knowledge. These are the learned, who should be followed. Some have knowledge without knowing that they have it; such people go astray, and should be led aright. Some do not have knowledge, and know that they lack it. These are the students, who should be taught. And some have no knowledge, and do not know that they lack it. These are the ignorant, and they should be avoided.' "
From Echelons of the Grammarians by Abu 'l-Tayyib al-Lughawi
