Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Alī ibn Ādam al-Ityūbī (D. 1442/2020 رحمه الله) was a great scholar of Hadith who resided in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. He mentioned:

One of Allah’s blessings upon me is that He made the science of Hadith beloved to me since I was young; when I was a child, when my father taught Ṣahih al- Bukhārī, I would hide behind the wall to hear the recitation of the reader. My heart would be filled with yearning and desire when hearing Ṣahih al-Bukhārī.

When I was studying the Islamic sciences, I used to look for the authentic narrations so that I could act upon them. For example, I used to raise my hands for rukū’ and other positions in the prayer even though the madh-hab in our area was predominantly Hanafi and its followers did not consider a hadith if it opposed the madh-hab.

When I migrated to Makkah, I began to study in the Haram Institute and I read the books of Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim and Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Abdul-Wahhab (رحمهم الله). I found in them what contradicted the books of ‘aqidah that were studied in my country (Ethiopia) and so I began to follow the methodology I was upon when I was younger – following authentic evidence. What I found in those books was in accordance with authentic texts so I abandoned what I used to believe i.e. what I learnt from my Ash’arī teachers in my country.

When I travelled to my country to visit my father, a person said to me, “You have become a Wahhābī!” I responded, “No, rather I adhere to the texts and you know that I already used to adhere to authentic narrations before I travelled to Makkah.” He said, “I know that but you have become more extreme!” I responded, “Do you not know that Imām al-Shafi’i had a madh-hab when he was in Hijāz (modern day western Saudi Arabia) and ‘Iraq but when he went to Egypt and found abundant evidence, he left his old madh-hab and established a new madh-hab? Likewise, when I found evidence unknown to the people of our country, I followed the evidence, acting in accordance with them, and this will be the path I remain on my entire life in sha’ Allah.”

Source: taken from the Shaykh’s autobiography via www.aletioupi.com