A bedouin once passed by Basra and asked, “Who is the Master of this city?”

It was said to him, “Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.”

He asked, “And how did he become their master?”

They replied, “He had no need of their worldly effects but they were in need of his knowledge.”

(Read on pg 70, Ibn al-Jawzi, Sincere Counsel to the Students of Sacred Knowledge. Daar as-Sunnah Publishers. Birmingham: 2011.)