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]
- Ahmad Bahjat, Animals in The Glorious Qur'an, Islamic e-Books
- Maulana Hifzur Rahman Soeharwy, Qasasul Ambiyaa, Idara Impex
