233. A number of our companions, from Ahmad Bin Muhammad Bin Khalid, from Ibn Fazzaal, from Al-Hassan Bin Asbaat, from Abdul Rahmaan Bin Sayaabat who said: I said to Abu Abdullah (asws), ‘May I be sacrificed for you (asws), the people are saying that it is not permissible to study the stars, and this has surprised me. So if it is harmful for my Religion, so there is no need for me to do anything which harms my Religion, and if it is not harmful to my Religion, by Allah (azwj) I love it and it is my desire to study it’. So he (asws) said: ‘This is not as they are saying it to be. It does not harm your Religion’. Then he (asws) said; ‘You are studying something, a lot of which you are unaware of, and a small amount of it is not beneficial. You are calculating the rise of the Moon’. Then he (asws) said: ‘Do you know how many minutes there are in between Jupiter and Venus?’ I said, ‘No, by Allah (azwj)’. He (asws) said: ‘Do you know how many minutes there are in between the Venus and the Moon?’ I said, ‘No’. He (asws) said: ‘Do you know how many minutes there are in between the Sun and the Virgo?’ I said, ‘No, by Allah (azwj), I have not heard from any one from the astrologers at all’. He (asws) said: ‘What is in between each one of these at its counterpart are sixty or seventy minutes’. Abdul Rahmaan expressed his doubt. Then he (asws) said: ‘O Abdul Rahmaan, this is a calculation, which if the man calculates, he would come to know the reed in the middle of the bush, and the number (of reeds) which are on the right of it and the number (of reeds) which are on the left of it, and the number (of reeds) which are behind it, and the number (of reeds) which are in front of it, to the extent that there would not remain hidden from him a single reed from the bush’.