Padda said, "O elephant. tell us about the story of Uzair!" The elephant said, "I don't really understand the story, but, would you like to hear the story from him whom I consider appropriate to convey it to you?" Padda replied," Of course, tell him to come forward!" The elephant said, "O my brother, please come forward! " And lo! it was the donkey! He said, "Yeah I'm just a donkey!" Padda said, "O my brother, please convey the salaam!" The donkey said. "Ups sorry! Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakaatuh!" The birds replied, "Wa alaykumu as-salam warahmatullahi wabarakatuh!" The donkey said, "Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. The Hereafter is for the pious, and there is no enmity except towards the unjust. I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except Allah Alone, and I bear witness that Muhammad (ﷺ) is His Slave and Messenger. May Allah bless him (ﷺ), his pure Household, his noble Companions, and all those who follow them in goodness up to the Day of Judgement.
O my brothers and sisters, donkeys are a patient species and I am proud to belong to them. Our kind is clearly different from our wild relatives. For humility changes the creature's outside appearance as well as his internal reality. Our ears have become longer, our heads bigger, our teeth have lost their sharpness, our backs stronger and our stomachs bigger. In order to fill these huge stomachs, we have to endure painful lashes over our heads and backs. This dangerous transformation that occurred in the life of a donkey happened about twelve thousand years ago, and it seems to me that Allah wanted to honor the human and serve him so He entrusted our patient kind with this difficult mission of serving man.
Nobody in this universe has made use of the donkey like the human being. Despite all that there is no thanks, no praise and no confession of gratitude. The human's main problem, from our objective point of view, is that he measures everything in this world according to his own interests. He considers himself the center of this universe and the most important thing in it. Moreover, he exercises this sovereignty spontaneously from the time he was born. This is not what we agreed to. My head becomes dizzy whenever I remember what happened. How about starting the story from its very beginning? Good idea, right? So, listen the story from the ancestor of the donkey. I wil begin with what my anchestor said,
"I am a reddish-white donkey. I live in a rural city in Palestine. Most people say that donkeys are slow and stupid! I will not pause to debate about that! I simply continue wagging my tail. My master is a good, white-haired man called 'Uzayr. But before we continue, I want to assure the audience, whether he is a donkey or a human, that I am not tellingthis to show off or to seek glory and pride. I do not want to prove that I am more important than all the other donkeys. It is just that I had a strange experience; an interesting and astonishing one. The experience I had was such that if anyone were to experience and tell me about it, I would probably not believe him. The problem is, that this experience happened to me personally and I am going to narrate it exactly as it happened. Can you imagine that I died? That my musical bray stopped! That my bones turned into dust! And then, by the Mercy of Allah, I carne back to life again and I began to bray.
My master Uzayr is a kind man who has never hit me either with his staff or his hand. He feeds me the best of what he has and eats the rest himself. He treats me with mercy and comforts me while being hard on himself. I have been living with him now for two years. And after having lived with him for a year and a half I discovered that the man was a very pious person, the opinion of the majority of scholars is that he was a prophet of Allah. He had a garden outside the village. He worked with his own hand as the prophets did. He worked on his farm, plowed his land, watered his plants, gathered fruit, watched his trees and trim their branches. My master Uzayr had a donkey, that was me. He went to the garden and to return home with me. He grazed his animals and had mercy on them; he did not lash them with a whip or a stick. He loved people and was kind to them. He advised them, preached to them, and taught them religious law, the Torah and how to live their lives.
It was very hot when my master Uzayr rode me and went to his farm. The farm was distant. When my master Uzayr went to his farm, he passed through the ruins of a forgotten city and ancient scattered cemeteries. We made our way through the green fields, and then it passed through the ruins of the forgotten city and the ancient graveyards. The sun rose high in the sky and sent its hot rays to the earth. The ruins of the city appeared.
We came closer to the graveyard and I saw the shadows of its ruins take the form of a beautiful garden. I ran towards the shade and entered the city of the dead. My master smiled and let me go wherever I pleased. I felt frightfully hot. Uzayr climbed down, took the fig and grape baskets off my back and sat on the ground. Everything was worn out from the heat; me, my master, the ruins and the ants of the area. Uzayr sat down and squeezed some grapes into a bowl and then he broke off some pieces of dry bread and put them in the grapes so his teeth could chew them.
I watched him prepare his food in amazement. Human beings eat small proportions of food, and it seemed that my master Uzayr was also absorbed in his meditations. I noticed to life... Look how the dust seeks the dust and becomes bones and look how they were covered by blood and veins, observe how skin grows over them and how the hair covers the skin. Your donkey is still dead so look at how he awakes from the dead.
"Awaken! O, donkey that has been dead for a hundred years." The last order was directed at me. I was listening to this Light without seeing neither Him nor Uzayr. As soon as I had heard the order I awoke suddenly from my sleep. I raised my head and found that the weather was nice and all the heat had gone. I did not see anybody except my master 'Uzayr. He stood in front of me amazed as if I was corning back from the dead. I got up trembling and tried to bray... I discovered that my musical voice was still in action. Uzayr said while he was examining me and trembling, "I know that Allah has power over things."
My master's food was unspoiled. How could it be that even though we had died for a hundred years and my body had decomposed to dust and the grape juice remained unspoiled! Usually this juice spoils after a couple of hours in the heat! I saw Uzayr immersed in deep prayer. He reached out for his food but his emotional state did not allow him to eat more than a mere morsel. After that, he climbed onto my back and steered me towards the village. This first surprise I encountered on that mysterious day was that there was no longer any village! I mean the village we had left before we went to sleep in the graveyard.
The houses had changed, people's clothing had changed and the donkey bridles had changed... everything had that he was contemplating the ruins, the bones and the deathly silence that surrounded him. Then, I heard him say in amazement as if was assuring himself of Allah's omnipotence… I heard him say, "Oh! How shall Allah bring it to life, after its death?" Uzayr had hardly spoken these words when he was invaded, just like I was invaded, by a sudden deep sleep; a drowsiness that is associated with fever and makes you feel tired to the extent that you decompose into dust.
I slept deeply. It was a sleep that was different from any other. All this occurred before I had even noticed that I had been asleep. I tried to bray and warn my master that if he slept, the squeezed grapes would be spoiled from the heat and then when he woke up he would not find any food to eat. But I could not ... I slept. I slept a deeply and strangely. Really it was very strange. Usually, in my normal sleep I dream of walking among the bean fields or I dream of meeting my grandfather the zebra or I dream that I am still a little donkey without any burdens or responsibilities. But this sleep, to my surprise, was different. It was a sleep completely devoid of dreams.
Then, I suddenly felt His Presence. I am not talking about my master for I did not see my master Uzayr or feel his presence. But, I felt the presence of Light. This Light asked my master, "How long did You remain dead?" I did not hear my master's response nor did I see him. I heard this Light after a moment of silence say, "Nay, you have remained dead for a hundred years. Look at your dead donkey Uzayr... Look at how his body has decomposed to dust... Look at what is left of his bones... Then look at how Allah orders the dead to come back changed."
I tried to sniff the ground in search of the scent of Uzayr's home but I could not find its scent. I stood in my place feeling scared. I started to realize what had happened. I realized after we had reached the center of the village that I had died and came back to life. This scared me a great deal. Were it not for Uzayr, I would have gone mad. This fear was not without reason. For I noticed that the sleep we had slept had separated between me and the donkey kind. When donkeys saw me they did not approach me in a usual friendly way. Instead they brayed in fright and turned away. Uzayr announced that he had returned and so the people made fun of him. They said that Uzayr had gone out a hundred years ago and did not come back. Uzayr is dead. He said, "I am Uzayr and Allah has brought me back from the dead after a hundred years ...Where are my grand children?"
They told him where his grand children were and he found the youngest of his grand children sixty years old. This old grand child refused to believe that this aged man was his grandfather. There was only one woman was alive from the people that were there when Uzayr had left the village... Hanim our little maid. She was twenty years old when We had left and now she is one hundred and twenty years old. The maid came when she had heard about Uzayr. She was feeling her way on the road with her stick as she had lost her sight due to old age. I hurried towards her when I smelled her scent, brayed happily and wagged my tail.
It was the only smell I had recognized in the village and the woman said to Uzayr, "Who is this person that is talking about Uzayr and remembers him when people have forgotten him?" Then, she started crying. She said while she was crying, "Uzayr's prayers were accepted... So if you are Uzayr, then pray to Allah to give me back my sight." And so, Uzayr prayed for her to see again, and the blindness went away and she saw him. She recognized him and yelled out a greeting then threw herself to the ground and kissed his feet while crying. Uzayr died as a forty year old, and Allah resurrected him at the same age on the day of his death.
I cried with her and Uzayr's grand children said, "Uzayr had a copy of the Torah in his house and we have been searching for it after he had left but we never found it. If you aloe 'Uzayr, then where is the Torah? Its pages had been lost and torn in the war and we had completely forgotten it." Uzayr pointed to his head and heart and said, "I still keep the Torah safely in my heart, and I have hidden a copy in an old tree trunk so let us look for it."
We went to an old forsaken tree that had long weeds growing around it and there Uzayr put in his hand and brought out the pages of the Torah. The people cried out in surprise. Amidst the people's excitement with Uzayr, I was totally forgotten. It was over and I left the scene. Everybody gathered around their Prophet whom Allah had brought back from the dead but they had forgotten me. I stood by myself away from the people for a good while. I heard one of them whisper to his friend, "'Uzayr is the son of Allah." My bones trembled from the shock. Verily, Allah has made of Uzayr, a sign for the people. This compelled me to write my memoirs and testify before the Court of History.
"No matter how much spiritual progress a person makes and no matter how much nearness he acquires to Allah, that person still only remains one of Allah's servants. He never becomes Allah's son. This is the biggest deviation that a man should see such deeds emanating from a person which normally are impossible or miraculous and then to consider that person as super human and then establish a wrong belief with regard to him. And this is for your information!"
"The Jews say, 'Uzair is the son of Allah'; and the Christians say, 'The Messiah is the son of Allah.' That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved [before them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?" - [QS.9:30]
References :
- Ahmad Bahjat, Animals in The Glorious Qur'an, Islamic e-Books
- Maulana Hifzur Rahman Soeharwy, Qasasul Ambiyaa, Idara Impex
"He was Zur'ah Dhu Nuwas, the last king of the Himyarite. He exercised royal power in Yemen at that time, and he was an adherent of the Judaism. When he became a convert to Judaism, he assumed the name of Yusuf, "said the Elephant. "So, when he heard, in Najran, there were people of grace and honesty, who held fast to the law that 'Isa, son of Mary, peace be upon him, had brought, Dhu Nuwas marched against them with his forces of the Himyarites and the tribes of Yemen. He gathered the people of Najran together, and summoned them to the Jewish faith, offering them the choice between that and being killed. They chose being killed, so he dug out for them the trench (al-ukhdud). He burnt some of them with fire, slew some violently with the sword, and mutilated them savagely until he had killed nearly twenty thousand of them.
Out of them there escaped only one man, called Daws Dhu Tha'laban, on one of his horses, who traveled through the sands until he threw his pursuers off. He reached the Roman Emperor where he flight support against Dhu Nuwas and his soldiers, and told him what they had made The Roman Emperor told him that his country was far. so he would write to the Abyssinian king who was Christian as well and more adjacent to Yemen. Daws went to The Negus, the Abyssinian King, with the Emperor's letter to support Daws to get victory and take revenge.
So, the Negus dispatched 70,000 troops from Abyssinia under the leadership of one of his officers named Aryat, along with another named Abraha. Aryat crossed over the sea and reached the shores of Yemen, accompanied by Daws. Dhu Nuwas came out to meet him with his forces made up from Himyar and the Yemeni tribes under his control. When they engaged, Dhu Nuwas and his men were defeated. When he realized that disaster had befallen himself and his people, Dhu Nuwas turned his horse to the sea and beat it until it entered the water and took him through the shallows and out to the depths of the sea where he perished. Aryat entered Yemen and took control there.
Aryat remained in control over Yemen for some years but eventually Abraha challenged him and the Abyssinian forces split into two sides. Then one of them marched against the other. When the troops drew near and approached each other, Abraha sent a message to Aryat, "You will not wish to cause the Abyssinians to encounter each other in battle to the point that you destroy part of them, so come out against me and fight, and I will come out against you and fight, and whichever of us is able to smite his opponent, the latter's troops will come over and join the victorious." Aryat sent a reply, "You have proposed a just procedure, so come forth." Abraha went forth; he was short, fleshy, and with a stout body, and held fast to the Christian faith. Aryat marched out against him; he was a powerful, tall, and handsome man, and bore a spear in his hand. Behind Abraha, was a hillock that protected his rear, and concealed behind it was one of his slaves called `Atwadah. When the two contestants drew near to each other, Aryat raised his spear and struck Abraha's head with it, aiming at the top of his skull. But the spear-blow fell across Abraha's forehead and split his eyebrow, eye, nose, and lip; for this reason, Abrahah was called al-Ashram. Abrahah's slave boy 'Atwadah sprang upon Aryat from behind Abraha and killed him. Aryat's troops then went over to Abraha, so that all the Abyssinians in Yemen rallied to his side. But later, Atwadah was killed by someone who attacked him.
Everything Abrahah did was without the knowledge of Negus, the king of the Abyssinians. When news of all that reached the latter, he became filled with rage and said, "He has attacked my own commander and killed him without any instruction from me!" He swore an oath that he would not leave Abrahah in power until he had overrun his land and cut off his forelock. When Abraham heard this, he shaved his head and filled a leather sack with the soil of Yemen, and then sent it to Negus with the message. "O King, Aryat was only your slave, and I am your slave too . We disputed about your command; both of us owed you obedience, but I was stronger in directing the affairs of the Abyssinians , firmer and more skillful in statesmanship regarding them . When I heard about the king's oath, I shaved my head completely, and I have dispatched to him a sack of the earth of Yemen in order that the king may put it under his feet and thus fulfill his oath." When this message reached Negus, he showed Abrahah his favor once more and wrote back to him. "I confirm you in your office in the land of Yemen until such time as a further command of mine reaches you."
After Negus had restored Abraha to favor and had appointed him viceroy over the Abyssinian troops and the land of Yemen, he latter built a church at San'a', called al-Qullyas. He made a marvelous building, whose like had never been seen before, using gold and remarkable dyestuffs and stains. He wrote to Roman Emperor, telling him that he intended to build a church at San`a' whose traces and whose fame would last forever and asked for the emperor's aid in this. The Roman Emperor accordingly sent back to him skilled artisans, mosaic cubes, and marble. When the building was completed, Abrahah wrote to Negus, " O king, I have constructed for you a church whose like has never been built for any monarch before you. I shall not give up until I have diverted the Arab pilgrims to it."
Abraha sought to humiliate the people of Yemen by building this ugly church, humbling them in a variety of ways. He invariably amputated the hand of any labourer who arrived for work after dawn. He began to transfer to it, from the Balqis palace, marble, stone, and splendid furnishings. In it, he erected crosses of gold and silver and pulpits made of ivory and ebony. Al-Qullays was built very tall indeed and its spaciousness was amazing. When eventually Abrahah died and the Abyssinians dispersed, spirits would inflict evil on anyone daring to take any of its building materials or furnishings. This was because the building was undertaken in the name of two idols, Ku'ayb and his wife. The height of each of these was 60 cubits. Consequently the Yemenis left the church alone. It remained just as it had been up till the time of al-Saffah, the first of the 'Abbasid caliphs. He sent there a group of men of determination, judgement, and knowledge who demolished it stone by stone; and today its remains are completely effaced.
When Abrahah' s letter to the Negus, one of the men charged with intercalating the calendar (al-nasa'ah) flew into a rage. He was one of the Banu Fuqaym, part of the larger tribal group of the Banu Malik. He set out until he came to the cathedral church and then defecated in it, and then departed and reached his own land. Abrahah was informed about the incident and demanded, "Who perpetrated this deed?" They told him, "A man from that House at Mecca, to which the Arabs make pilgrimage, did it, because he had heard your words 'I shall divert the Arab pilgrims to the new cathedral).' He became enraged, came here, and defecated in it, aiming to show that it was not worthy of that purpose." Abrahah himself became full of ire and swore that he would march against the House and demolish it. He wrote to the Negus informing him of that and asking the Negus to send him his elephant Mahmud-this being an elephant unparalleled in the whole earth for its size, stout body, and strength.
The Negus accordingly dispatched it to him. Once the elephant had arrived, Abrahah set out with his army, accompanied by the king of Himyar and Nufayl bin Habib al-Khath'ami. He ordered his Abyssinian troops to equip themselves and make ready, and then he set forth with his elephant."
Myna interrupted, "O my brother elephant, some say that, in spite of their size, elephants are scared of cats. Some army commanders brought cats into the pitch of battle when fighting the Indians, and so the elephants ran away," he said with a laugh. However, none of the birds joined in laughing. Myna looked around, sat down, then silent. Elephant said, "Nay, but do you know? It was said, according to al-Tabari, that the first person to tame an elephant was Ifridun bin Athfiyan. It was also he who first saddled horses. The first person to domesticate and ride a horse, though, was Fathamurath, who was the third of the world's kings. It was also said that Ishmael, son of Abraham, upon both of whom be peace, was the first to ride a horse, and it is likely that he was the first Arab to ride. But Allah knows best.
The Arabs were highly anxious and alarmed when they heard of this and considered it their duty to do battle with him, when they learned he wanted to destroy the Ka'ba, Allah's sacred edifice. A member of the Yemeni nobility named Dhu Nafr summoned his people and those Arabs who would support him to do battle with Abraha and prevent his destruction of the Ka'ba. Some did respond and they engaged in battle. Dhu Nafr and his supporters were vanquished and he himself was taken prisoner and brought before Abraha. When about to be killed, Dhu Nafr suggested to Abraha that he might well be more useful to him alive than dead. So Abraha kept him prisoner, in chains. Abraha continued ahead to meet further adversaries and in the area of Khath'am came up against Nufayl bin Habib al-Khath'ami with his two allied tribes of Shahran and Nahis, along with other Arab supporting tribes. They did battle, Abraha won, and took Nufayl prisoner. When Abraha was about to execute him, Nufayl pleaded for his life and offered to be his guide in the Arab territory, guaranteeing that the tribes under him would be obedient to Abraha. So Abraha released him and went on ahead, with Nnfayl acting as guide.
Reaching Ta'if, Abraha was met by Mas'ud bin Mu'anib bin Malik bin Ka'b bin 'Amr bin Sa'd bin 'Awf bin Thaqif along with the warriors of Thaqif. They addressed Abraha, saying, 'O king, we are your slaves, fully obedient to you; we have no dispute with you and this temple of ours is not the one you want.' By this they meant the temple devoted to the goddess al-Lat. The temple of al-Lat was one they had there in al-Ta'if that they venerated almost as was the Ka'ba. 'What you want is the building in Mecca; we will send guides to take you there.' So Abraha passed them by unmolested."
So Thaqif sent with Abraha Abu Righal as guide to Mecca. They travelled as far as al-Mughammis where they made a stop. He sent on ahead to Mecca one of his Abyssinian men named al-Aswad bin Maqsud with some cavalry. He brought to him the possessions of the people of Tihama, from Quraysh and others; this included 200 camels belonging to 'Abd al-Muttalib bin Hashirn who was at that time the leader and elder of Quraysh. As a result, Quraysh, Kinana, and Hudhayl, and all those venerating the Ka'ba decided to do battle with Abraha but abandoned this idea when they learned they had insufficient power to match him. Abraha then sent Hunata the Himyarite to Mecca with the following order, "Find the leader and the most noble of these people. Then tell him that the king says, 'I have not come to war upon you, but only to destroy the Ka'ba. If you do not engage in warfare to prevent our access to it, then I shall have no need for your blood.' If he does not want war, bring him to me with you."
When Hunata entered Mecca, he asked after the leader of Quraysh. He was directed to 'Abd al-Muttalib bin Hasyim and so, passed on Abraha's message to him. 'Abd al-Muttalib replied, "By Allah, we do not want war with him and have not the power for it; this house is Allah's sacred house and that of His true follower Abraham, upon whom be peace." He was saying in effect, "If Allah does protect it from Abraha, then it is because it is His holy sanctuary and His house. If he abandons it to him, then, by Allah, there's no way for us to defend it." Hunata then told 'Abd al-Muttalib that he must accompany him to Abraha in accord with his orders.
So 'Abd al-Muttalib set off along with some of his sons. Arriving at Abraha's encampment, he asked to see Dhu Nafr, who was a friend of his. When he met Dhu Nafr, still in confinement, he asked him whether he had any solution to their predicament. Dhu Nafr replied, "How can a man have a solution when he is a king's prisoner and is expecting to be killed at any time? I have no advice to give you, except to say that Unays, the elephant keeper, is a friend of mine. I will send him a message strongly commending you and ask him to seek permission for you to address the king. Speak to him as you see fit, and Unays will intercede on your behalf as well as he can." Abd al-Muttalib agreed and Dhu Nafr sent Unays the following message, "'Abd al-Muttalib is lord of Quraysh and custodian of the zamzam well of Mecca; he feeds both men in the plains and wild animals on the mountains. The king seized 200 of his camels. So seek permission for him to see the king and intercede for him as best you can." Unays responded that he would. Unays then spoke to Abraha, saying, "O king, here at your door seeking audience is the lord of Quraysh and keeper of the zamzam well of Mecca; he feeds both men in the plains and the wild beasts in the mountains. Allow him in to see you to discuss a matter with you." Abraha let him in.
Abd al-Muttalib was the most dignified, handsome, and impressive of men. When Abraha saw him, he wanted to honour him by not making him sit below himself. But he did not want the Abyssinians to see him sitting next to himself on the throne. So Abraha descended, sat down on a carpet, and had 'Abd al-Muttalib take his place beside him. He then told his interpreter to ask why he had come and he did so. 'Abd al-Muttalib replied, "What I want is for the king to return the 200 camels he took from me as compensation." Hearing this, the king told his translator to reply as follows, "You impressed me when I saw you, but you displeased me when you spoke. You want to talk to me about 200 camels I took from you in compensation, but not about the building which is your religion and your ancestors' religion that I have come to destroy?"
Abd al-Muttalib replied, "I am the owner of the camels; the House has a lord of its own who will defend it." Abrahah said, "He won't be able to defend it against me!" But `Abd al-Muttalib retorted, "That's your own affair; just give me back my camels!" Abd al-Muttalib was not a coward, as Abrahah said. But he knows, which area belongs to him and where the territory belongs to Allah. And he realized, whoever violates the boundaries of Allah's property, will deal with Him.
When Abd al-Muttalib went in to see Abraha, he was accompanied by Ya'mur bin Nafatha bin 'Adi bin al-Dil bin Bakr bin 'Abd Manat bin Kinana, leader of Banu Bakr tribe, and Khuwaylid bin Wa'ila, leader of Hudhayl. These men offered Abraha one-third of the produce of Tihama if he would withdraw and not destroy the building. But Abraha refused their offer. And Allah alone knows whether or not that happened. At any rate, Abrahah had meanwhile restored to 'Abd al-Muttalib the camels he had seized.
Abd al-Muttalib went back to Quraysh and told them the news. He ordered them to go forth from Mecca and seek refuge on the mountain tops and in the defiles , fearing violent behavior from the Abyssinian army. `Abd al-Muttalib then arose and took hold of the door-ring, that of the door of the Ka'bah, and a group of Quraysh stood with him praying to Allah and imploring His help against Abrahah and his troops. `Abd al-Muttalib recited at the time when he took hold of the door-ring of the Ka'bah,
O Rabb, I don't hope for any one but you against them!
O Rabb, defend your sacred area from them!
Indeed, the enemy of the House is the one who is attacking You!
Repel them lest they lay waste Your settlements!
Then he further recited:
O Allah, a servant of You defends his dwelling, so protect Your dwelling places and their people
Let not their cross and their cunning craft prevail over Your cunning craft on the morrow!
But if You do that, then it may be something which seems most appropriate for You and an affair which appears best to You.
And if You do that, well, it is an affair which will complete Your divine plan of action.
When some person comes to You seeking peace, we hope that
You will act toward us in a like manner.
Then they turned back, having gained nothing but humiliation;
perdition was coming upon them there.
I never heard of the most reprobate of men who desired glory and who then violated the sanctity of Your sacred enclosure
They brought into action the assembled host of their land and the elephant, in order to capture and enslave members of your families
They attacked your sacred area with their cunning, out of sheer savagery, and paid no heed to Your exaltedness.
Then `Abd al-Muttalib let go of the ring of the door, the door of the Ka'bah, and set off with his companions of Quraysh to the mountain tops and sought refuge there, in expectation of what Abrahah was going to do in Mecca when he entered it.
Next morning, Abrahah prepared to enter Mecca, got ready his elephant whose name was Mahmud, and drew up his army. Abrahah was determined upon destroying the House and then returning to Yemen. When they drove the elephant forward, Nufayl bin Habib al-Khath'ami came up and stood by its flank. He then got hold of its ear and said, "Kneel, O Mahmud, and go then straight back whence you came, for you are in Allah's sacred territory!" Then he let go its ear; the elephant knelt down, while Nufayl bin Habib made off at top speed and clambered up the mountain. The soldiers beat the elephant to make it get up, but it refused. They beat its head with a battle axe to make it get up, but it still refused. They stuck hooks into its soft underbelly and scarified it to make it rise, and yet again it refused. But then they turned it round to face back to Yemen, it got up and trotted off. They pointed it in the direction of Syria, and it behaved exactly the same. They pointed it in the direction of the East, and it again did likewise, but when they made it face Mecca, it knelt down.
Allah now sent down on them a flock of birds that follow one another hither and thither in groups, like swallows, each bird bearing three stones like chick peas and lentils, one stone in its beak and two in its claws. The birds flew in from the sea successively. Everyone whom the birds hit with the stones, perished, although not all of them were in fact hit. And everyone who was hit suffered either a severe wound or else that spot erupted into blisters and pustules. That was the first time in that year, measles and smallpox were seen in the land of the Arabs, as also the first tme for bitter shrubs like rue, colocynth, and gigantic swallow-wort to be seen. Thus the stones snuffed them out completely, and Allah sent a torrential flow of water, which swept them all away and hurled them into the sea.
They retreated in haste along the road they had come, asking Nufayl bin Habib to guide them along the way to Yemen.When Nufayl bin Habib saw what Allah had sent down on them as punishment, he said,
Where can a man flee, when Allah is pursuing? Al-Ashram is the conquered one, not the conqueror!
O, Rudaynah, may greetings be upon you ! When we went forth this morning, our eyes rejoiced at you!
A seeker after fire from among you came to us yesterday evening, but he was unable to get anything from us.
If you had been able to see, O Rudaynah-but you were not able to see it-what we saw in the vicinity of al-Muhassab
You would have exonerated me and praised my good judgment, and not have grieved over what has passed and gone between us.
I praised Allah when I saw with my own eyes the birds, but feared that the stones might be rained upon us.
All the people are asking for Nufayl, as though I owed the Abyssinians a debt.
As they retreated, the Abyssinian troops were continually falling by the wayside and perishing at every halting place. Abrahah was smitten in his body; they carried him with them, with his fingers dropping off one by one. As each finger dropped off, there followed a purulent sore in its place, which exuded pus and blood, until they brought him to $an'a', with him looking like a newly born chick, plucked and emaciated. They allege that, as he died, his heart burst out from his breast.
As for Mahmud, the Negus's elephant, it lay down and would not venture into the Sacred Enclosure and was thus preserved in safety; but regarding the other elephants, there were thirteen elephants, they ventured into the Sacred Enclosure and it suffered a hail of stones.
Some say that the events of the elephant occurred on the first day of Muharram. Some say that sixty thousand men did not return to their land, even their sick did not live after their homecoming. 'Abd al-Muttalib went down from Mount Hira' and two of the Abyssinians came up to him, kissed his hand and said, "You were more knowledgeable than us." After Allah hurled back the Abyssinians from Mecca, the Arabs treated Quraysh with great honor."
Then the Elephant said, "O my brothers and sisters, this story, is a wonderful sign for the illustrious birth of our beloved Prophet (ﷺ). This is so because the history of this world has shown us that every time and auspicious event is to take place in this world or when an important revelation is to occur, then some important natural signs in the celestial spheres are shown, which if man sees them takes them as warnings.
This incident took place a couple of days before the birth of the Prophet (ﷺ). It was such a time when practically every part of the world was deprived of the worship of Allah. At that time claimants to Allah’s true religion were present everywhere but the true teachings had become missing. The true features of Deen had become interpolated and changed so that very little of its origins were left. Shirk and Kufr were present everywhere. At one place there was idol-worship, at another there was worship of the heavenly bodies and somewhere else there was fire worship. At some place there was the aim of worship, then somewhere else there was the worship of the elements as the main aim of religion. Some places saw the doctrine of trinity where prohet 'Isa, alayhissalam, was worshipped as the Son of God. At another place people called Uzair the son of God. The whole world either rejected Allah or worshipped idols, the heavenly bodies or the elements of nature or animals. At that time apart from Allah’s worship all other things were being worshipped.
At such a time Allah’s decision was that one should come who was to be the bringer of Guidance and right for all the people of the world to show them the right path and to remove them from the worship of things to the worship of the Creator and to join man with his True Master. His coming was to break the chains of ignorance. He is the fruit of the du'a of prophet Ibraheem, alayhissalam and the promise of prophet 'Isa, alayhissalam. It has now become necessary that the Ka'ba which is the symbol of the worship of Allah in His Oneness and which was originally errected by prophet Ibraheem nd Ismaeel should now be honoured and respected with its due respect. Now the trust which had up to now been entrusted to Bani Israel and wherein they had committed treachery, is being taken out of their hands and is being handed to their cousins, the off-spring of Ishmael, alayhissalam. This is being done because these children of Israel had forgotten the covenant of their elders.
The Ka'ba is called the Baitullah— Allah's House. This does not mean that Allah lives in a House or that He is in need of a house, naudhubillah. The matter is that for the peoples of the various areas of the world, and for His true worshippers, He has made the Ka'ba as their Qiblah towards which they should pray. And seeing that He is free of any specific direction while man is at all times in need of direction it was necessary that such a direction be establish for mankind to bring about unity and uniformity of their worship. But, it is not permissible for any Muslim to honour the Ka'ba because it is worthy of worship in itself. The Ka'ba is in fact being honoured because it is one of the special sign of Allah and is the centrifugal point of Tawheed. And Allah knows best."
"Have you not considered, [O Muhammad], how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant? Did He not make their plan into misguidance? And He sent against them birds in flocks, striking them with stones of hard clay, and He made them like eaten straw." - [QS.105:1-5]
References :
- Ibn Kathir, The Life of the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), Volume I, Garnet Publishing
- The History of Al-Tabari, The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen, Volume V, translated by C.E. Bosworth, SUNY Pres.
- Maulana Hifzur Rahman Soeharwy, Qasasul Ambiyaa, Idara Impex
Shama' then said, "O my brothers and sisters, the story of the young mage, as we discussed before, took place many times in history in different parts of the world. Ibn Kathit, with reference to Ibn Abi Hatim, specifies three particular incidents, first, a trench in Yemen. This incident took place during the period of fatrah, the interval between Prophet 'Isa, alayhissalam, and our beloved Prophet (ﷺ), about seventy years before the advent of the Prophet (ﷺ). Second, a trench in Syria; and, third, a trench in Iran. He further states that the incident, also mentioned the Qur'an, in Surah Al-Buruj, is the first one that occurred in Najran, known as the story of Ashab al-Ukhdood. Imam at-Tabari, in his history book, after this incident, followed by the incident the People of the Elephants, who came with an army of elephants for the purpose of destroying the House of Allah in in Makkah. This event took place in the very year in which the Prophet (ﷺ) was born at Makkah. The scholars of hadith have taken this event as a special type of mu'jizah (miracle) of the Prophet (ﷺ). And if we look back further, there were some events which showed signs that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) will be sent." Sparrow said, "Tell us, O Shama'!"
Shama' said, "It has been said that all Arabs trace their origins to Ishmael, the son of Abraham; upon them both be peace, salutation, and homage. However, what is well known to be true is that the 'arab al-'Ariba (the original Arabs) came before Ishmael. Among them were the peoples of Ad, Thamad, Tasm, Jadis, Umaym, Jurhum, and the 'Ameliq, as well as others known only to Allah. Also, these peoples both came before and were contemporaries of al-Khalil.' Yet the 'arab al-musta'riba (the Arabized Arabs), the Arabs of the Hijaaz, were descendants of Ishmael, son of Abraham; upon both of them be peace.
The Arabs of the Yemen, the Himyar, are well known to have been from Qahtan, whose name was Muhzam. They were a group of four brothers; Qahtaan. Qaahit, Muqhit, and Faaligh. Most consider that all the Arabs are divided into two strains, those of Qahtaan and those of 'Adnaan. Those of Qahtaan consist of two peoples: Saba' and Hadramawt. Those of 'Adnaan are also from two peoples: Rabi'a and Mudar, the two sons of Nizaar bin. Ma'ad bin 'Adnaan.
Saba' encompasses all these tribes. Saba' 'Abd Shams bin Yashjub bin Ya'rub bin Qahtaan, was the first of the Arabs who was Saba' and that was why he was called Saba'. He he was the first person to he crowned. Some stated that he was a Muslim and that he wrote verses predicting the advent of the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ). In that poetry are the lines,
"He will control after us a mighty domain,
A prophet who will give not licence to evil.
After him, other kings from among them will hold sway
Ruling all men, with no dishonour nor disgrace.
After them, rulers of ours will control
And our kingdom will be fragmented.
After Qahtaan a prophet will rule,
Pious, humble, the very best of mankind.
He will be named Ahmad, and I wish
I could be given to live a year after his coming
To supporthim and award him my aid
With all fully-armed warriors and all marksmen.
When he appears, become his helpers
and let him who meets him pass on my greeting."
Among them there used to be kings in the lands of Yemen called the tabaabi'a; tubba' in the singular. Their kings would wear crowns during their reign, as also did the Chosroes, the kings of the Persians. The Arabs, used to apply the word tubba' to each king who rules Yemen, alongwith al-Shahr and Hadramawt, just as they applied qaysar to kings rulimg Syria and the peninsula, kisra to those ruling Persia, far'un to Egypt's rulers, al-najaashi to those over Abyssinia, and batlaymuus to India's kings. Balqis was one of the Himyarite rulers of Yemen. They used to he in a state of great felicity, with abundant prosperity and a plenitude of local fruits and produce. However, they lived in rectitude, propriety, and right guidance. But when they replaced God's blessings by disbelief, these kings brought their people to ruin.
When their wealth was gone and their lands were in ruin, they were forced to depart. So they scattered into the lower areas and into the higher reaches of the country, in all directions, aydi Saba' (in disarray that is) as the common idiom goes. Some of them settled in Hijaz, the Khuza'a tribe among them; they migrated to the suburbs of Mecca. Others went to Yarhrib, what is now Medina, being the first to settle there. They were later joined by three tribes of Jews: Banu Qaynuqa, Banu Qurayzah, and Banu al-Nadir. These made a pact with the tribes of Aws and Khazraj and stayed with them. Other groups from Saba' moved to Syria and it was later they who became Christian; these were the Ghassaan, 'Aamila, Bahraa', Lakhm, Judhaam , Tanakh, Tanuukhb, and others.
Not all of Saba' left Yemen when they were aftlicted with the torrent of al-'Arm; the majority of them remained. The people of Ma'rib, who had the dam, moved into different parts of the country. All the tribes of Saba' did not leave Yemen, but four went to Syria, while six remained. These were Madhhij, Kinda, Anmar, and the Ash'aris. Anmar was the father of Khath'am, Bajila, and Himyar; so these were the six tribes from Saba' who remained in Yemen. They continued retaining the rights of power and the tabaabi'a kingship until the king of Abyssinia took that position from them through the army he sent under his two generals Abraha and Aryaat. The Abyssinian rule lasted some 70 years until Sayf bin Dhu Yazan, the Himyarite, regained control, and that was a short time before the birth of the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ).
Rabi'ah bin Nasr was one of the tubba' kings of Himyar, he was of the Lakhm tribe and about him is told the tale of his contacts with the two soothsayers, Satih and Shiqq, and how they warned him of the coming of the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ).
Rabi'ah had a dream that alarmed him and that continued to disquiet him. So he gathered every single soothsayer, magician, bird prognosticator, and star foreteller in his kingdom and told them, "I have seen visions that amazed and scared me. Tell me what they were and how to interpret them." They replied, "Relate them to us and we will interpret them." He responded, "If I do tell you what they were, I won't feel secure with your explanation; the only one capable of interpreting them will be someonewho knows what they were before I tell them."
One of the wise men then suggested, "If that is what the king wants, then he should send for Shiqq and Satih. No one is more knowledgeable than they; they will tell him what he asked for."
So the king sent for them, and Satih arrived before Shiqq. he king summoned him and said, "O Satih, I have had a dream which has alarmed me and disquieted me, so tell me about it, for if you comprehend the dream correctly, you will know correctly its interpretation." Satih replied, "I will do so. You saw fire emerge from the darkness, fall on low ground, and consume every living being with a skull (jumjumah)." The king said, "O Satih, you have got it exactly right; so what, in your opinion, is the interpretation of it?" Satih answered, "I swear by the serpent which is between the two harrash, will certainly swoop down on your land, and will then rule over all the land from Abyan to Jurash."
The king said to Satih, "By your father! O Satih, this is indeed distressing and painful for us; but when will this take place-in my own time, or subsequently?" Satih replied, "Nay, indeed, a good while after it-more than sixty or seventy years will elapse." The king said, "Will that dominion of theirs endure, or will it be cut short?" he answered, "Nay, it will be cut short after seventy-odd years have gone by-and then all of them there will be slain or will be expelled from it as fugitives." The king said, "Who, then, will assume that task of killing and expelling them?" Satilh replied, "Iram of Dhu Yazan-who will come forth against them from Aden-and not leave a single one of them in Yemen." The king enquired, "Will Iram's dominion there endure, or will it be cut short?" He replied, "It will indeed be cut short." The king said, "And who will cut it short?" He replied, "A prophet-a pure one-to whom the inspired revelation (al-wahy) will come-from on high." The king asked, "Who will this prophet spring from?" He replied, "[He will be] a man from the progeny of Ghalib bin Fihr-son of Malik b. al-Nadr-his dominion over his people shall last until the end of time." The king said, "O Satih, will time (al-dahr) have an end?" He replied, "Yes, a day on which the first generations and the last generations wil be assembled-the righteous will be joyful on it-but the evildoers shall be made wretched." The king said, "Is what you are informing us true, O Satih?" the latter replied, "Yes, by the redness of the dying sun at evening-and the beginning of the darkness of night-and the dawn when it is complete-what I have told you is undoubtedly true."
When Satih had finished, Shiqq arrived, so the king summoned him. He said, "O Shiqq, I have had a dream that has alarmed and disquieted me, so tell me about it, for if you comprehend the dream correctly, you will know correctly its interpretation," just as he had said to Satih. But he concealed from him what Satih had said in order that he might see whether the two interpretations agreed or differed. Shiqq said, "Yes, you saw a skull-which came forth from the darkness-and fell upon all the land, meadows, and thickets-and devoured everything there with living breath." When that king perceived that the words of the two soothsayers agreed with each other totally, he said to Shiqq, "0 Shiqq, you have got it exactly right, so what, in your opinion, is the interpretation of it?" Shiqq replied, "I swear by the men living between the two barrahs-the blacks will certainly come down on your land-and will seize custody of every tender one from your hands-and will then rule over all the land from Abyan to Najran."
The king exclaimed, "By your father! 0 Shiqq, this is indeed distressing and painful for us; but when will this take place-in my own time, or subsequently?" Shiqq answered, "Nay indeed, a stretch of time after you-then a mighty one, lofty of status, shall rescue you from it-and will make them taste the deepest abasement." The king said, "Who is this person mighty of status?"
Shiqq retorted, "A young man who is guilt-free and faultless and will emerge from the line of Dhu Yazan." The king said, "Will his dominion endure, or will it be cut short?" He replied, "Indeed, it will be ended by a prophet who will be sent who will come with right and justice-among the people of religion and virtue-the dominion will remain among his people until the Day of Separation. One may ask, 'What is the Day of Separation? The reply is, the day on which those near to Allah will be recompensed-invocations from the heavens will be made-which both the quick and the dead shall hear-and on which the people will be gathered together at the appointed place-on which there will be salvation and blessings for those who fear Allah." The king said, "Is what you say true, O Shiqq?" The latter replied, "Yes, by the Lord of heaven and earth-and the highlands and the lowlands which lie between them-what I have communicated to you is indeed the truth, in which there is no dissimulation."
When Rabi'ah bin Nasr died, all kingship in Yemen reverted to Hassan bin Tubban As'ad Abu Karib. Imam Tabari mentioned from Muhammad Ibn Ishak, when Al-Aakhar or Tubba' II, that is, Tubaan As'ad Abu Karib, came back from the East, he traveled via Yathrib. When he had passed by it at the beginning of his expedition, he had not aroused any feelings of disquiet among its people, but had left behind there in their midst one of his sons, who had subsequently been slain.
Hence, he now came to the town with the intention of reducing it to ruins, extirpating its people and cutting down its date palms. When they heard of his plans, the tribes of Yathrib banded together against him in order to defend themselves. Their chief at that time was 'Amr bin al-Tallah, one of the Banu al-Najjar, and then of the Banu 'Amr bin Mabdzul. They sallied forth to attack Tubba'. When Tubba' had encamped with his troops by the Yathribes, one of the latter from the Banu 'Adi bin al-Najjar, called Ahmar, had killed one of Tubba's followers whom he had found cutting down the date clusters of a tree that belonged to him. He had therefore struck him with his reaping hook and killed him, saying, "The fruit belongs to the one who nurtures it and makes it grow!" After killing him, he had thrown the corpse into a wellknown local well called Dhat Tuman; this naturally increased Tubba's rage against them, and the two sides became engaged in making war and fighting other. The tribes of Yathrib used to fight Tubba' by day but treat him as a guest each night. Tubba' was amazed at this and used to say, "By Allah, these people of ours are generous of heart!"
While he was engaged thus, there came to him two rabbis from the Jews of the Banu Hadl, learned scholars with firmly grounded knowledge, who had heard about Tubba's intention of destroying the town and its people. They told him, "O king, don't do it, for if you persist in carrying out your plan, something will intervene to prevent you, and we fear that you will bring down on yourself speedy retribution. "He said to them, "How can that be?" They replied, "It is the place to which a prophet, who will arise out of the tribe of Quraysh at the end of time, will migrate, and it will be his home and resting place." After having heard these words, Tubba` desisted from what he had intended to do regarding Yathrib, perceiving that the two rabbis had special knowledge and being amazed at what he had heard from them. He departed from Yathrib, took them with him to Yemen, and embraced their religion. The names of the two rabbis were Sukhayt and Munabbih, both from the Banu Hadl and paternal cousins of each other. They were the most knowledgeable persons of their age.
Tubba' then set off towards Mecca on his way to Yemen. When he arrived between Usfaan and Amaj, he was approached by some men of the tribe of Hudhayl. They asked him, "O king, may we lead you to an ancient treasury overlooked by kings before yourself, in which there are pearls, chrysolite, sapphires, gold, and silver?" "Certainly yon may," he replied. They said, "It is a building in Mecca whose people worship it and offer prayers there." Actually the Hudhaylis sought to destroy him by this, since they knew that any king wanting this or being disrespectful there would perish. After agreeing to their suggestion, Tubba' sent word to the two rabbis asking their advice. They replied, "Those people wished only your death and the destruction of your army. We know of no other building than that in the land that Allah The Almighty and Glorious has taken for Himself. If you do as they suggest, you will perish, as will all those with you."
Tubba' asked what he should do when he approached the building and they said he should do the same as those who lived there, that he should circumambulate it and venerate and honour it, shaving his head and acting with humility before it until he left it. The king then asked, "What is it that prevents you both from doing the same?" They replied, "It certainly is the house of our father Abraham, on whom he peace, and it is as we told you, but the people there have created a barrier between us and it by the idols they have set up about it and the blood they shed there. They are unclean and polytheists." This was the gist of their words.
Tubba' saw the good of their advice and the truth of their words and so he summoned the men from Hudhayl, cut off their hands and feet, and continued to Mecca. There, he performed the circumamhulation of the build'ig, made sacrifice, and shaved his head. He remained in Mecca for six days, so they say, providing sacrificial feasts for its people and giving them honey to drink. In a dream he was shown that he should cover the building, so he clothed it with palm fronds. Then, in another dream, he was shown that he should clothe it in something better, so he dressed it with a Yemeni tribal fabric. Again he had a vision that he should clothe it even better, so he covered it with fine sheets and striped cloth. People claim that Tubba' was thus the first to clothe the building. He ordered its guardians from the Jurhum tribe to clean it thoroughly and to prevent any blood, dead bodies, or menstruating women from coming close to it. He also made for it a door and a key.
Subay'a, daughter of al-Ahabb, spoke the following verses for her son Khalid, telling him to avoid sinning in Mecca and reminding him what Tubba' had done there,
"O my son, in Mecca, neither do wrong to the young nor to the old.
Preserve its sanctity, my son, and let not conceit confuse you.
Whoever sins in Mecca, my son, meets extreme disaster.
His face, my son, shall be beaten, his cheeks consumed by fire.
I have tested this there, my son, and found those harming it perish.
Allah made it secure, though no towers are built in its courtyards.
Allah made its birds inviolate and also the white-footed crows on Mount Thabir.
Tubba' raided it, but dressed its buildings with new, smooth cloth.
My Rabb humbled his power there, so he made proper sacrifice,
Walking barefoot towards it, in its courtyard,
And offering two thousand camels,
Well-feeding its people the flesh of Mahry camels and cattle,
Giving them strained honey and barley-water to drink.
And Allah destroyed the army of the elephants, casting rocks amongst them,
Ending their rule in far distant lands, in Persia and Khazir.
So hear when this is told, and understand how things ended."
Shama' then said, "O my brothers and sisters, the scholars of hadith have taken these events as a special type of mu'jizah (miracle) of the Prophet (ﷺ), but the term mu'jizah, in its real sense, refers to an abnormal event shown by Allah to prove the claim of a prophet to having been sent by Him. Therefore, a mu'jizah is shown after a prophet's Divine commission. However, sometimes, it happens that a miraculous event takes place before a prophet's claim to prophet-hood. This, in the parlance of the scholars of hadith, is called irhaas, which means 'prologue or introduction'. The word rahs means a 'foundation stone' (Qamus). As the miraculous events taking place before the advent of prophets or before their claim to prophet-hood are meant to introduce and affirm that soon a particular prophet will be Divinely commissioned, they are referred to as irhas. Many irhasat occurred before the birth and the advent of the Prophet (ﷺ). One of the signs of the coming of our Prophet (ﷺ) is that when his mother became pregnant with him, she saw in a dream that a light came out of her that reached Syria. It was narrated from Khaalid ibn Ma’daan that the Companions of the Messenger of Allaah (ﷺ) said, “O Messenger of Allah, tell us about yourself.” He (ﷺ) said, “I am the answer to the prayer of the father of Abraham, and the glad tidings of ‘Eesa, and when my mother became pregnant with me, she saw something as if a light came out of her and illuminated the palaces of Busra in the land of Syria.” The Prophethood of our beloved Prophet (ﷺ) is proven by definitive evidence which no fair-minded person can deny. And Allah knows best."
"And [mention] when Jesus, the son of Mary, said, 'O children of Israel, indeed I am the messenger of Allah to you confirming what came before me of the Torah and bringing good tidings of a messenger to come after me, whose name is Ahmad. 'But when he came to them with clear evidences, they said, 'This is obvious magic'." - [QS.61:6]
Reference :
- Ibn Kathir, The Life of the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), Volume I, Garnet Publishing
- The History of Al-Tabari, The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen, Volume V, trasnlated by C.E. Bosworth, SUNY Pres.
Season passed, the birds gathered again. But, this time, they gathered in a learning cyrcle. As usual, the Parrot acted as a moderator, and this time, the White-rumped shama acted as a volunteer who shared a story. The Shama began the story by saying, "O my brothers and sisters, verily, any government is in charge of the end result of all dimensions of society; it forms the basis of its customs and the framework of its manners and etiquettes. So what would be the end of this society, the basis of its customs and the framework of its manners, when it all stemmed from subjugation and sorcery?
Such a government reprents tyranny, because all types of government are a form of control over the human state of affairs. If the government is sound, it will strive to build and form the human structure, and the ruler himself will benefit if his people are sane, intelligent and strong. But if the government is ignorant, it will try to fragmant the human structure and disperse the society, because an ignorant government is after nothing more than continual control, even if it causes the destruction of society. In this situation, the ruler will benefit if the people following him are foolish, ignorant and weak.
Insofar as magic is a form of deception and falsehood, it can help achieve the goals of a tyrannical ruler. Any methodology that is not from Allah and where the people do not submit to Him, will also achieve the same results as magic; the only difference is in name and form, but what both have in common is that they desire for there to be no rational force or strong mind in society. This end can be achieved either through magic or through any man-made system of government. Magic presents itself by instigating fear and exploiting ignorance. Any man-made system that leads a person to believe that he is safe, by instigating fear that imposes the desired methodology upon him through his ignorance and weakness, has achieved the same results as magic.
And so is my story. It was said, in a land, in an earlier age, there was once a king that had employed a sorcerer. When the sorcerer grew old, he told the king, "I have grown old. Send a young boy to me so that I may teach him sorcery," so the king sent a boy to him for training.
Everyday on his way to the sorcerer, the boy would pass by a monk. One day, he decided to sit with the monk and listen to what he had to say. After sitting with the monk, he became greatly impressed by his words. From then onward, it became his habit to sit with the monk on his way to the sorcerer. However, whenever he arrived late, the sorcerer would beat him. When the boy complained about the beatings to the monk, he told him, "When you feel afraid of the sorcerer, say, 'My family delayed me.' And when you feel afraid of your family, say, 'The sorcerer delayed me.'"
While he was in that routine, a huge beast blocked the people's way, and the boy said, "Today I will know whether the sorcerer or the monk is superior." He picked up a stone and said, "O Allah, if the way of the monk is dearer to you than the way of the sorcerer, kill this animal so that the people can pass." He threw the stone at it and killed it, and the people were able to pass. The boy then came to the monk and informed him, and the monk said, "Son, today you have surpassed me. I see that your affair has reached a stage where you will soon be put to trial. If you are put to trial, don't tell them about me."
The boy then began to treat the blind and lepers, and by the permission of Allah, he began to cure people from all kinds of illnesses. One of the king's courtiers who had gone blind heard about him. He came to him with many gifts and said, "If you cure me, all of these things will be yours." He said, "I do not cure anyone by myself. It is Allah Who cures, and if you believe in Allah, I will pray to Allah to cure you." The courtier affirmed his faith in Allah, and Allah cured him. He came to the king and sat by his side as he used to do before. The king asked, "Who restored your sight?" He replied, "My Lord." The king said, "And do you have a Lord beside me?" He answered, "My Lord and your Lord is Allah." The king seized him and had him tortured until he told him about the boy.
The boy was brought and the king said to him, "O boy, you have become so proficient in your magic that you cure the blind and lepers, and you do such-and-such and such-and-such." He said, "I do not cure anyone; it is Allah Who cures." The king seized him and had him tortured until he told him about the monk. The monk was brought and told, "Renounce your religion!" but he refused to do so. The king called for a saw to be brought, had it placed on the middle of his head, and had him sawn in half. Then the courtier was brought and told, "Renounce your religion!" but he refused, so the saw was placed on the middle of his head, and he was sawn in half.
Then the boy was brought and told to renounce his religion, but he refused to do so. The king handed him over to a group of his courtiers and told them, "Take him to such-and-such mountain and climb to the top of it with him. When you reach the top, he either gives up his religion or you throw him off." So they took him to the top of the mountain, and he said, "O Allah, save me from them by whatever means You like."
The mountain then began shaking and they all fell off the mountain except the boy who came walking back to the king. The king asked him, "What happened to your companions?" He replied, "Allah saved me from them." He again handed him over to some of his courtiers and said, "Take him on a boat into the middle of the sea. Then he must either repudiate his religion or you throw him off." So they took him, and he said, "O Allah, save me from them by whatever means You like."
The boat overturned; they were drowned, and the boy came walking back to the king, who asked him, "What happened to your companions?" He replied, "Allah saved me from them."
Then he told the king, "You will not be able to kill me unless you do as I instruct you." The king asked, "What's that?" He said, "You gather the people on open ground and hang me on the trunk of a tree. Then take an arrow from my quiver, put it in the bow and say, 'In the name of Allah, the Lord of this boy,' then shoot me. If you do that, you will be able to kill me.
So the king gathered the people in an open field and hung the boy from the trunk of a tree. He took an arrow from the boy's quiver, placed it in the bow and said, "In the name of Allah, the Lord of this boy." He shot the arrow, which hit the boy in his temple. He laid his hand on his temple where the arrow had hit him and died. The people said, "We believe in the Lord of this boy! We believe in the Lord of this boy! We believe in the Lord of this boy!" The courtiers came to the king and said, "You know what you feared? By Allah, the very thing you were afraid of has just happened! The people have believed in Allah!"
The king commanded that ditches be dug along the roads. When the ditches had been dug, fires were lit in them. The people were told, "Anyone who does not repudiate his new religion will be thrown in the fire or told to jump into it." The people did just that, until a woman came with her child, and she wavered about jumping into the fire. The child told her, "Mother, be steadfast, for you are upon the Truth."
And verilly, Allah is the One Who cures. Allah is the One Who saves. Allah is the One Who gives life and death, truths that were not repeated by the boy for the sake of dialectics and words. But rather he mentioned them as eternal truths established in reality in such a way that none is able to reject or argue with them.
The King tried to remove the esteem that the people had for the boy, by trying to attribute his ability to cure them to the magic that he had learned from the King's sorcerer. This is always the reaction of those who refuse to acknowledge the truth — they try to interpret it in others ways."
The Parrot said, "Interesting story!" then he said, "O my brother and sisters, are there any of you could grasp the moral lesson of the story?" The Sparrow asked, "It was like the story of Moses and the Paraoh with the sorcerers. O Shama, was it a real story?" The Shama replied, "Yes, actually, it was a story from our beloved Prophet (ﷺ), reported on the authority of Suhayb, it was transmitted by Imam Ahmad, Imam Muslim and An-Nasa'i from the Hadith of Hammad Ibn Salamah. According to Ibn Kathir, some scholars claimed that the incident of the ditch was recurred or repeated in the past more than once. Ibn Abu Hatim said: I was told by my father after Abul Yaman after Safwan Ibn 'Abdur Rahman Ibn Jubair as saying: the incident of the ditch took place in the Yemen during the lifetime of Tubba'. And, it took place in Constantinople during the lifetime of Constantine who set the fires in which he threw the Christians who were sticking to the religion of Isa in Islamic Monotheism. It also took place in Iraq, in the land of Babylon during the lifetime of Bikhtinassar who erected an idol and ordered the people to prostrate themselves before it. Hananiah, 'Izrya and Mashayl refused and thereupon, he set a great fire and threw them into it. However, Allah saved them from the fire and caused the nine men who transgressed over them to fell into the fire they themselves made.
Ibn Abu Hatim narrated that concerning Allah's Statement that reads: "Cursed were the people of the Ditch" in Surah Al-Buruj[85]:4, As-Sadiy said: There were three ditches: one in Sham (Syria), another in Iraq, and the third in the Yemen."
The Eagle said, "This indicates that the King had employed a sorcerer to use sorcery as a means by which to maintain his rulership. Sorcery was not simply a phenomenon that happened to be present in society, but rather it was a force that presided over and ruled the society. This factor can lead us to understand the reality of that time - it was a corrupt reality founded on oppression and ruled by desire, at the head of which was a King who believed in magic and whose power lay in subjugating his people.
There is a new dimension to light here: after the sorcerer had become old and had lived out his life working to make the state of affairs advantageous to the King, he was no longer interested in personal benefits. Rather, he himself wanted his work to continue through the young boy - he had been a sorcerer all his life, and had to keep his work alive through a new life, so he requested a young apprentice. But our analysis should not stop here - we can also see that what propelled him to make this request was the shaytan that presided over all the ages of ignorance; the shaytan has experienced all stages of human existence from the beginning of time, thereby enabling him to link together all the generations of ignorance one after another so that he may utilise them in his propagation of evil and corruption."
Woodpecker said, "In this story, Allah selected the boy to be the reason his people found true faith. The divine message had become marginalised in that society and was only taught secretly by the monk. Through the boy's efforts and martyrdom the True Religion, Islam, became known to the people and many of them accepted it.
The plans of the forces of evil are not greater than Allah's plans. The evil king selected the boy to be his master sorcerer who would further strengthen the foundations of his kingdom, but Allah wanted him to be a righteous servant who would destroy the evil kingdom and guide its inhabitants to Islam.
The lesson in this is that Allah prepares people for the defence of His religion who may even grow up in the homes of tyrants. Prophet Moses is a classical example of this principle. Pharaoh was aware that an Israelite was destined to destroy his kingdom, so he had all new-born Israelite males slaughtered. Moses' mother was inspired by Allah to put her new born child in a basket in the Nile River, and Pharaoh and his wife found him, adopted him and raised him in their own home."
The swallow said, "It could not have been easy for the boy, for he was learning magic from the sorcerer at the same time as learning religion from the monk, and there is a clear contradiction between the two: religion is about clear realities and ordered thought, while magic is about deep deviancies and concocted lies; religion develops the mind, while magic murders it; religion is a cure for the illnesses of the time, while magic causes one to deviate from them; and religion builds life, while magic destroys it. Thus, it was very difficult for the boy to continue learning both religion and magic with peace of mind, and we should note that he would sit with the monk as a matter of choice, but with the sorcerer as a matter of compulsion."
The Crow said, "The boy explained to the king how he could be killed in order to disprove the king's claim to divinity, to make belief in the true God, Allah, known to the king's subjects and to provide living proof of its reality. In the story, some of the believers from the town were thrown in the fire, while others rushed into it on their own. However, their rushing into the fire was not suicide; rather it was open confirmation of their belief in Allah which enraged the king and his supporters and pleased the Lord of all the worlds.
Although, the incident of the boy and his followers has been used by some modern movements to justify suicide bombing in certain parts of the Muslim world, the circumstances are completely unrelated. The reasons are different and the lives of innocent non-combatants were not destroyed in the process."
The Owl said, "Strong faith does not necessarily take a long time to develop. Firm belief can settle rapidly in the hearts of those who accept Islam or awaken to Islam and revive their souls.
True patience is itself the product of complete trust in Allah at the time of calamity. Trust in one's Lord is the natural consequence of real faith. Since belief in Allah means accepting that nothing takes place in the universe without His permission, then only Allah deserves humankind's complete trust. For, it is only Allah's promise which is never broken."
The Stork said, "The believer should not deliberately expose himself to hardships and trials. It is somewhat extraordinary that the monk asked the boy not to reveal his name when he is tortured. He apparently did so because he was afraid that he would also be exposed to the same trial. However, when his turn came, even though he was sawed in half, he did not turn back from his religion. So, why did he request the boy not to expose him in the first place? The answer is comprised of two points: firstly, one must try to keep himself away from trials, since he cannot be sure about the outcome; and secondly he should not hope for trials because, in hoping for trials there is an element of arrogance which may invalidate his good deeds. And that is why the Prophet (ﷺ) discouraged people from hoping to meet the enemy, as stated in the following hadith: "O People! Do not wish to meet the enemy. Instead, ask Allah for safety from trial. And if you meet them, then be patient and know that Paradise is beneath the shade of swords. "
The Shama then said, "O my brothers and sisters, magic is real, and it is a science that has fundamental principles and rules. The boy went to the magician daily to learn the principles of magic. However, magic is among the forbidden sciences. Imam al-Dhahabl said, “Among the forbidden sciences are magic, alchemy, evil omens, natural magic, illusion, astrology, geomancy. Some of these are outright acts of disbelief.
In conclusion, the story includes an outcome that was actualised contrary to the means intended by man: Allah wanted the same boy that the people wanted to be a caller to evil, to be a caller to the Truth. And on the same road that boy took to the sorcerer, he met the monk, sat with him, listened to him, and was impressed by his speech.
The story includes a great outcome by virtue of simple cause: the boy killed the beast that blocked the path using a small stone. This is also the lesson we can learn from the King being defeated, and that what he feared to happen, happened due to this young boy.
The story also includes a variety of outcomes that happen by virtue of a single cause: when the boy and the King's men were on the mountain and the mountain shook causing them all to fall off, the boy went walking back to the King. Similarly, when the boy and the King's men were on the boat and it capsized causing them all to drown, and the boy again went walking back to the King.
From the sum of these truths, we can understand the saying of Allah, "Effecter of what He intends," because this verse is the Truth of all truths. And Allah know best."
"Cursed were the companions of the trench! [Containing] the fire full of fuel, when they were sitting near it and they, to what they were doing against the believers, were witnesses. And they resented them not except because they believed in Allah, the Exalted in Might, the Praiseworthy, to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. And Allah, over all things, is Witness." - [QS.85:4-9]
References :
- Shaykh Rifa'i Surur, People of the Ditch, at-Tibyan Publications
- Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, A Commentary of Surah Al-Buruj, Al-Hidaayah Publishing
O Allah, send blessings upon our leader Muhammad (ﷺ);
and serve the oppresors with other oppresors;
and save us from their evil deeds;
and send blessings upon the family of Muhammad(ﷺ), his companion and his follower.
Shama said, "Happy New Hijri Year, my brothers and sisters. May Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala shower his blessing on the Muslim Ummah and all Islamic countries. May all the praises and thanks be to Allah to Whom belongs all that is in heavens and in the earth. Have a blessed Muharram.
Now, my borthers and sisters, we will listen to a story from our sister, the spider. Please, my sister, come forward." The spider came forward and said, "O my brothers and sisters, I will tell you a story from my mother's mother, from her mother's mother, and from my great-great grand mother. So, my great-great grandmother said, "I am a spider who is higher in rank than other spiders. With all humility, if all the spiders in this world were put in one hand and I was put in the other I would outweigh them in superiority. I am not one to make false claims and show-off, I am simply stating facts. I do not think that I need to introduce myself to the reader, for I am sure you understand that I am the spider of the cave that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ), hid in. I am the one, who was responsible for the Prophet's deliverance. I am the one, who Allah sent to protect him.
My web is very flimsy and light and the slightest breeze can blow it away. However, despite the weakness of my web, I managed to ward off the iron swords of the atheists that went out in pursuit of the Prophet (ﷺ), and moreover, I was able to defeat them! The outcome of the conflict between the spiders' weak silk and the iron of the swords was the defeat of iron. My house is considered a parable of weakness, "Verily, the weakest of houses is the spider's house." I sat in my house protecting the noble house of Islam and guarding the Prophet of Allah, Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah (ﷺ).
That was not all that happened to me. Something even more wonderful happened; I saw the Prophet (ﷺ). I know that after the Prophet's death, millions will visit his grave to cry and pray. Moreover, each one of those who cry and pray will imagine the picture of the Messenger of Allah in his mind. But I saw him. I lived with him for three days. He lived as a guest under my cobweb for three whole days. Ah! My heart spins when I remember these days. They were magnificent. Before I saw him, I only loved spiders, food and life, but after I saw him I could only bring myself to love the truth. I changed after I saw him. Have you ever seen a spider cry before? I did. I, the spider, cried when he,peace be upon him, intended to leave the cave. He left the cave and headed towards the city.
I said to him, "O Messenger of Allah I will miss you." He, peace be upon him, did not hear me. I said to him again, "O Messenger of Allah! Give me your hand to kiss or let me kiss the tail of your Coat." He did not hear me and left. As he was leaving the cave, he was compelled to destroy the house that I had built for him. I did not understand why he did that '" I sometimes say that he had to destroy my house in order to get out. My house was the cave's door, and the door had to be opened. So the Prophet (ﷺ) extended his hand towards my home and gently pushed aside my silken web. I tried to get close to him and kiss his hand '" He did not notice that I wanted to kiss his hand for he pulled back his hand before I could bow down and kiss it. He left.
I bowed over the torn silk that had been my house and said, "The silk touched the hand of Allah's Messenger before I did." Then I cried. I continued to cry until my house dissolved in my tears and the cave went back to how it had been. Let me tell my story from the very beginning. I ask the reader to forgive me for I am not myself.
I was a mountain spider and mountain spiders are extremely unlucky. We feed mainly on flies and insects. I was born in a deserted cave in mount Thawr. It is a mountain in Makkah, a small city that I have never seen in my life. Sometimes we hear the doves glorifying Allah from which we understand that they live under the protection of the Sacred House of Allah in Makkah. I tried to imagine how Makkah or the Sacred House of Allah would look but I could not, for I was imprisoned in the cave of Thawr. It is a desolate cave during the day and scary during the night. The cave is in the direction of Yemen. Nobody visits us. Even the beasts flee from the desolation of the mountains and prefer more habitable places.
In brief, I am the mistress of this mountain and its queen. One day I was dangling by a silken string, which I had made from the cave's ceiling. It was a very hot day so I was swinging myself to and fro. Then I heard an unearthly voice ask, "Who of Allah's creatures inhabits this cave?" Spiritual boundaries were broken and I realized that I was hearing the voice of an angel. I stopped swinging, bowed my whole body and prostrated in greeting. I answered the angelic voice saying, "The spider of this cave Meme the daughter of Muma the granddaughter of Mamu is honored to speak with you." The angelic voice said, "Come out to the door of the cave." I moved the silken string to the door of the cave and came out. The voice said, "After awhile, two of Allah's men will come to this cave, Muhammad, peace be upon him, and his companion in this life and the Hereafter, Abu Bakr."
I asked, "And who is Muhammad, peace be upon him?" The voice replied, "He is the last of the Prophets of Allah (ﷺ) on the earth, the mercy of Allah that He sent to the worlds. You will be the servant of him and his companion for three days in the cave." I was filled with wonder and delight and my surprise increased with every passing minute. I said, "What brings him here to this desolate cave?" The voice again replied, "He has fled his home for the sake of Allah's religion and the atheist tribes want his blood. How much time do you need in order to build your house over the door of the cave?" As I was measuring angles, I said, "Four hours of constant work separated by two periods of rest."
The angelic voice ordered, "Work without resting, Allah has charged you with the responsibility to safeguard His Prophet (ﷺ). Divine Protection has put the seal on the fate of the final Message and the future of an entire civilization in your trust." I deepened my prostration and whispered, "I hear and obey!" The head angel left, and in an atmosphere of silence and desolation, I started working. I examined my seven glands that make silk and they were full. I closely examined the entrance of the cave. The door was wide and I started measuring the angles and quickly calculated from which angle I should begin. "I will need six solid pillars of silk to produce from them twenty-six strings that will act as supplementary pillars. Also, I will need ninety-five strings in order to support the walls," I thought.
After that, I started to make the silk, which looks so flimsy, but which is stronger than anything solid as it turns into a fine string that is one thousandth of an inch in diameter. That is the diameter of the string within my web. People do not know that spiders can measure angles and divide them, and that they can assess the durability of materials and the average of pressure. Moreover, they can calculate thousands of complicated architectural problems that people face in the building process. People do not know that spiders weave many kinds of silk to fulfill their all needs. We use our webs to trap a prey, as a dining table, a bed, a sheet, an alarm system, a getaway, a means of transportation and as a shield for protection. In other words, we spiders produce the most useful of material that can be used for many purposes.
The silk that a spider's gland secretes is undoubtedly like the silk produced by a caterpillar but there are some differences. It is these differences that make the spider's weave better, for it is finer, softer and more solid than any other silk. I was surprised to find the Messenger entering the cave with Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him. I stopped working for a moment and looked at his noble and majestic face that looks like a sheet of gold and felt a deep sense of reverence. After that I said, "Welcome a Messenger of Allah." I had hardly finished my greeting to him when I began weaving my house over the door of the cave. I descended vertically from the cave's opening to its floor while weaving my silk. Then I pulled it and fixed it to the ground with an acidic substance that my gland secretes. After that, I climbed up quickly to the entrance of the cave and started to go up and down leaning to the right and to the left while I was weaving my house. The weaving took three hours, six minutes and twenty seconds. The atheists came to the entrance of the cave with their shiny swords standing face to face with my spidery web.
One of the atheists said, "If he had entered here then this spider's web would not be over the door." I smiled a wide smile inside my house and Abu Bakr said to the Prophet (ﷺ) in a low voice, "If one of them were to look under his feet he would find us." The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, said, "Have no fear for Allah is with us." The Messenger had hardly spoken these words when the place suddenly became full of angels, and it was filled with a voice saying, "If you help him not, it does not matter, for Allah did indeed help him when the disbelievers drove him out, the second of two, when theywere in the cave, and he, peace be upon him, said to his companion Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, "Be not sad or afraid, surely Allah is with us."
Then Allah sent down His Sakinah upon him, and strengthened him with angels which you saw not, and made the word of those who disbelieved the lowermost, while it was the Word of Allah that became the uppermost, and Allah is All-Mighty, All- Wise."
After the voice had subsided, once again the cave became full of angels. I was surprised to find angels standing in front of my spidery house and standing behind it. I asked the one closest to me, "What has happened?" He replied, "We have come by an Order from Allah to protect His noble Prophet (ﷺ)." I was screaming and I said, "But I am commissioned to protect him and guard him! Why are you breaking my heart? No one can transgress against him! He is my guest and I am his servant."
I cried because I was so emotionally worked up and I was surprised to discover that I could cry. I turned towards the Prophet wanting to complain to him. But I found him preoccupied with prayer. He was praying and his companion, Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, was praying behind him. When they prostrated, I prostrated with them.
"The example of those who take allies other than Allah is like that of the spider who takes a home. And indeed, the weakest of homes is the home of the spider, if they only knew. Indeed, Allah knows whatever thing they call upon other than Him. And He is the Exalted in Might, the Wise." - [QS.29:41-42]
Reference :
- Ahmad Bahjat, Animals in The Glorious Qur'an, Islamic e-Books
Canary then sang a song,
O my sleeping child
the world's so wild
But you've build
your own paradise
That's one reason why
I'll cover you sleeping child
If all the people around the world
They had a mind like yours
We'd have no fighting
and no wars
There would be lasting peace
on Earth *)
Sparrow said to Falcon, "Wait my brother, I want to ask you something!" Falcon said, "What was that?" Sparrow said, "Who deserve to be our friend? Please give us naseehah!" Falcon said, "Islam is the message of welfare. There are obligatory rights and duties among the relatives, neighbors, working partner; nd friends in Islam and these all human rights have described in the Book of Allah and sayings of the Prophet (ﷺ). In Addition, our pious precessors or the Salaf, have many good examples not only for the Muslim society but also for the other religion peoples. Islam is the religion of purity, brotherhood, kindness and affection, as is evident by the many verses in the Book of Allah and the many Hadith in the Sunnah of His Messenger that legislate these types of honorable conduct that Islam brought.
Imam Malik said, "People are of various types, just like birds, pigeons go with pigeons and kites associate with kites, ducks with ducks and small birds with small birds, Similarly, every man associates withhis kind." Imam Ash-Shafi'i said to Yunus bin Abdul-A'la, "O Abu Musa, know that pleasing all people is an unattainable goal and that there is no way to be completely safe from them. Therefore, see where your righteous benefit lies, and adhere by it; and leave people and all that they indulge in."
O my brothers and sisters, know that not everyone is suitable to be a friend. Abu Hurairah, radhiyallahu 'anhu, narrated that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "Man is on the religion of his companion, so let one of you choose whom to befriend." There are signs, qualities and indications that help one distinguish and choose whom to befriend and associate with according to what one desires from friendship or companionship.
There are religious and material gains to look for in any friendship or association. Material gains include earning money, fame or just friendship and companionship. Religious gains from friendship include learning religious knowledge and imitating righteous actions and statements, so that one might be helped to repel all types of impurity that might attack the heart and hinder from performing the acts of worship. Therefore, O my brothers and sisters, choose a friend or a companion who is wise, good mannered and righteous, who is neither a sinner, innovator in the religion or fond of this life.
One's companion is just like the mirror, it reflects his or her image and reveals to the people one's true reality and essence. This is why it is important that each one of us uses special care to choose whomever he or she wants for friend. The Prophet (ﷺ) made an extraordinary parable with regards to righteous and evil company, when he said, "Verily, the example of a good companion (who sits with you) in companion with an evil one is like that of the must seller and the blacksmith's bellows (or furnace). From the first you would either get a gift of his musk's scent, buy some from him, or enjoy its good smell, while the bellows will either burn your clothes, or you give a bad, nasty smell thereof."
Al-Ma'mun once said, "There are three types of companions: one who is as essential as food and cannot be done without. The second type is like medicine, used at some times, but not at other times. The third, is like a disease, it is always unneeded. However, one might be tested with the latter type, even though there is no comfort or delight in accompanying them."
It was said that people are just like trees and plants: some have shade but bear no fruits, and this is the parable of the type that is used in this life but is not beneficial in the Hereafter, just as shade that is soon bound to vanish and dissipate. Some trees and plants bear fruits but offer no shade, and this is the parable of the type that is useful for the Hereafter, but not for this life. Some trees and plants have shade and bear fruits (and this is the best type), and some have none bearing no benefit at all.
This is why it is essential that one chooses his friends carefully, having a stringent screening standard in this regard. One should make sure that his friends are among those who recommend one another to the truth, and recommend one another to patience, who help their friends to obey Allah and go on His Straight Path. Or, are one's friends of the type that leads to misguidance, failure and loss?
There are two purposes to meet with friends and companions, firstly, Spending the time and having company, and this type's harm outweighs its benefit. The least one could say about associating with this type is that they busy the heart and waste precious time. Secondly, associating with those who help one another in piety, truth and patience. Indeed, this type is a prized, precious gain that carries tremendous benefits. However, three types of setback might scale down the benefit one gains from associating with this type: luring each other to say and do improper things, too much association and excessive talking, and this association becoming a habit that gradually brings comfort, but not the religious benefits it started with. Surely, friendship helps either the inner-self that commands evil or the heart and soul that are content with Faith, and the benefit or fruit this type of association brings forth, if any, are tied to its type. As for good souls, they receive encouragement from the angel, while evil souls are enticed by the devil. Allah, with His Eternal Wisdom, has made the good for the good and the opposite for the opposite.
Sincere and righteous friends help each other in this life and in the Hereafter, for their friendship is pure and their brotherhood is true, and thus, it is befitting that their relation continues on to the Last Life.
Another aspect of having righteous friends, is that they remain dedicated to the memory of their deceased friends, give away charity on their behalf and invoke Allah for them to endow them with His Mercy, Favor and Forgiveness. Furthermore, the example of the friend to his friend is like that of the two hands, they wash each other. Friends cooperate in leading and directing each other to righteousness, share good times as well as bad times and help each other in piety through the journey from the life of the world to the Hereafter. Yet, if one is unable to find a righteous friend and a brother in Allah, then loneliness, reciting the Qur'an and reading beneficial books are better for him or her than having evil and wicked persons for friends.
When one is living during difficult times and suffering from hardships, his faithful righteous friend will distinguish himself from others by offering sincere advice and comfort to his aggrieved friend, thus, lessening the effect of the hardship he suffered and the burden he carried. However, when times are easy and life is smiling for one, he will find an abundant supply offriends and companions.
Always think good of what your friend does, unless you hear of something definite about his conduct that would compel you to part with him. Beware of your enemy and be cautious with your friends, except the faithful and truthful among them and certainly, only those who fear Allah are faithful and truthful to their friends. Do not befriend the wicked, because you might learn from their wickedness, and never expose your secrets to this type of people.
There are rights and obligations that come with friendship. For instance, Sa'id bin Al-'Aas said, "My friend has three rights on me: if he draws closer I welcome his closeness, if he talks I listen and if he wishes to sit I make room for him. " Allah mentioned some of these rights and responsibilities when He described the believer's conduct and mannerism towards each other, "Merciful among themselves."
Associating with righteous people, help you in times of need and remind you when you err. They help you in righteousness and piety and recommend patience to you. Therefore, befriend pious people and be neighborly to the righteous. In comparison, the other type of company, the wicked and the sinners, offer this: lures to commit sin, encouragement of ignoring acts of obedience and direction to committing prohibitions. Knowing this type does not help one in this life and only leads to misery and sorrow in the Hereafter. Allah has described companions of this type as being enemies to each other on the Day of Resurrection, thus putting a disastrous end to this evil association and friendship.
Association with fools brings various types of hardships and difficulties. They wake you tiresome; they curse you if you avoid them. If they give you something, they keep reminding you of the favor; if they take you into confidence, they suspect you would expose their secrets; if you say a secret to one of them, he exposes it; if they are above you socially, they look down at you; but if they are below you socially, they defame you.
The Salaf had an exalted standard concerning choosing whom to take as friends, leaving us a beneficial legacy that provides us with the scales to choose those who deserve our companionship and friendship.
Therefore, the religion is the true scale with which you could and should weigh all things, people and statements. Otherwise, one will end up with unsuccessful and evil choices. This neither means that you would be able to find error-free friends and companions nor that one should discard his friends if any error occurs by them."
Then Falcon said, "O my brothers and sisters,the believer is a mirror for his brother, a hasan hadith recorded by Al-Bukhari in Adab ul-Mufrad, from Abu Hurayrah, radiyallahu 'anhu, who said that Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The believer is a mirror for the believer, and the believer is the brother of the believer. He protects him against loss and defends him behind his back." So the description of his being a 'mirror' is very precise and profound showing the culmination of brotherhood and solidarity. So your brother, O servant of Allah, is an image of you yourself. If he behaves badly, it is as if you are the one who has behaved badly, and if he makes a mistake, it is as if you have made a mistake. So he is a mirror for you and then an image of you yourself! So do not treat him except with mildness and gentleness.
If you seek ideal friendship then meet your friends, and your enemies with a beaming face, feeling neither humility nor fear from them. Rather, respect those who deserve it without anoyance or axcessiveness, and be humble with them without disgrace. Take the middle, best way lit all your matters wilh them, for excessiveness is always critisized and rejected. Do not keep looking back or looking around when you are walking or talking to your friends, nor stand close to a group of men sitting. Rather, you should sit down with them or go on your way after saying the Islamic greeting, As-Salaamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullaahi wa Barakaatuh.
When you sit down, be alert and neither cross your fingers, play with your beard or ring, clean your teeth with your fingers, spit, swat at flies, nor yawn in people’ s races or while praying. Let your time spent sitting with them be calm and your speech to them organized. Listen to good words without excessively feeling amazement about them, and do not ask those who uttered these words to repeat them. In case a dispute arises between you and some of your friends, be graceful, do not act hastily and only speak when you are not angry.
When you attend audience, greet them with the 'Salam', and do not cut across the lines and sit where you find space. This way, you will be closer to humbleness and grace and people would like to befriend you because of your good manners.
Do not associate with the foolish, but if you have to, do not indulge in their speech, backbiting, evil words, or associate with them excessively. Do not joke with graceful people or with the foolish, for if you do, the graceful person will despise you, while the foolish will belittle you. Surely, joking lessens one's grace and is distasteful to the pious. Also, excessive joking brings death to the heart, takes one away from the Lord, directs to heedlessness and disgrace, having empty hearts and thoughts, and exposes one's shortcomings and faults.
We ask Allah to make us among those who love each other for Allah's sake, and may He gather us and our parents, children, wives and relatives in Jannat al-Firdaws. Ameen.
And Allah knows best."
"Your ally is none but Allah and [therefore] His Messenger and those who have believed - those who establish prayer and give zakah, and they bow [in worship]." - [QS.5:55]
Reference :
- Abdul Malik Al-Qasim, The Road to Good Friendship, Darussalam.
*) Credited to Michael Learns to Rock for "Sleeping Child"
