It is narrated from Sayyiduna Abu al-Darda' (may Allah be pleased with him) that he said: We were with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him); he raised his gaze towards the sky and then said: "This is the time when knowledge will be snatched away from people, until they will have no power over any of it." Sayyiduna Ziyad bin Labid al-Ansari (may Allah be pleased with him) said: O Messenger of Allah! How will knowledge be snatched away from us when we have read the Qur'an? By Allah, we will certainly read it and teach it to our women and children. He (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "O Ziyad! May your mother be bereaved of you (an Arab idiom). I used to count you among the learned men of Madinah. Look, the Torah and the Gospel are with the Jews and the Christians; so what benefit have these books been to them (when they abandoned acting on them)?" Jubayr says: Then I met Sayyiduna Ubadah bin al-Samit (may Allah be pleased with him) and said to him: Have you not heard what your brother Abu al-Darda' is saying? And I told him what he had said. Ubadah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: Abu al-Darda' has spoken the truth. If you wish, I will tell you of the first knowledge that will be taken away from people: it is khushu' (humble devotion). Soon you will enter the congregational mosque and not see even one man there with khushu'. This is a sahih (authentic) chain from the narration of the Egyptians, and in it is a fourth shahid (supporting witness) to the authenticity of the hadith, namely Sayyiduna Ubadah bin al-Samit (may Allah be pleased with him). Someone might imagine that Jubayr bin Nufayr narrated it once from Awf bin Malik and once from Abu al-Darda', which would make the hadith defective (ma'lul), but that is not so, because the narrators of both chains are trustworthy, and Jubayr bin Nufayr is among the senior Successors of Syria. So when the hadith is authentically established from him through both chains, it is clear that he heard it from both Companions. The clear proof of this is that this same hadith is also narrated with a sahih chain from Ziyad bin Labid al-Ansari (may Allah be pleased with him), whose exchange with the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) is mentioned in both hadiths.

It is narrated from Sayyiduna Ziyad bin Labid al-Ansari (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "This is the time of the departure of knowledge" (Shu'bah says that he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "It is the time of the cutting off of knowledge"). The Companions said: How so, when we have the Book of Allah, which we teach to our sons and our sons teach to their sons? He (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "O Ibn Labid! May your mother weep over you. I used to think that you were among the most intelligent people of Madinah. Do the Jews and the Christians not have the Book of Allah, the Torah and the Gospel? Yet they derived no benefit whatsoever from it." With this clear chain of Ziyad bin Labid, this hadith is established beyond doubt.