"A drunkard was sitting outside the house he was about to be evicted from, he had divorced his wife, lost his children and job. He picked up the empty bottle of beer near him , smashed it into the wall as he shouted, You’re the reason I don’t have a wife.'To the 2nd bottle he scolded, 'You’re the reason I lost my children and job,' then smashed it!He saw the 3rd bottle was sealed and still fulled of beer. He put it aside and sayid to it, 'Stand aside my friend; I know you were not involved.'""Every civilization in human history recognized and understood the importance of water in their natural state for the sustenance of life," said Jasmine while opening wide her leaves greeting raindrops falling down to the earth and invoking,اللَّهُمَّ حَوَالَيْنَا وَلاَ عَلَيْنَا'O Allah! Let it rain around us and not on us.' [Sahih Al-Bukhari]"Water is the origin of life.It is not only gives us life, it goes beyond to our relationship with dignity and justice, within the survival of our body. Religious, spiritual, and cultural practices as well as of purification and hope, values that are a common denominator that unites us, for centuries have been symbolized by water. Psychologically, water symbolizes profound or elusive ideas like when you say something as 'deep as the ocean,' you’re likely describing it as mysterious or important. Astrologically, pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio are water signs that represents the most emotional of the star signs. Water comes out of your eyes when you cry, so water symbolizes tears and deep sorrow. Nothing can live without water, water is essential for all life, across cultures past and present, life is represented by water. And how it moves can symbolize specific emotions or feelings in literature and metaphorically represents flow. Water is used to clean things literally and spiritually, so water is a sign of purity and holiness. People use water as a symbol of renewal, rebirth, and enlightenment, as the story of the Flood of Noah or other flood-myth occurs in many cultures, including the manvantara-sandhya in Hinduism, Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greek mythology, the Mesopotamian flood stories, and the Cheyenne flood story, usually sent by the Divine, destroys civilization, often in an act of divine retribution. The flood are described as a measure for the cleansing of humanity, in preparation for rebirth, so water represents healing and new beginnings. Water also is reflective, a mirror of self-awareness, and often used in literature and pop culture to represent superficiality, deception, or a person’s ability to change. In Greek mythology, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection after looking in a pool of water, emphasizing the vanity of humanity. In mythological tales and folklore, water is used to represent universal wisdom, a symbol of knowledge and truth and is a literary metaphor for the subconscious mind. Like deep water, the subconscious mind is a mystery—no one knows what lies underneath. Water is also symbolizes metamorphosis and change. It has 3 forms: liquid, solid, and gas. The element has the ability to transform and move between all 3 in the right conditions. This phenomenon mirrors your ability to change and transform your own life as long as you have the motivation.Water—particularly in its earthbound, chthonic manifestations—carries powerful intimations of fertility and increase. The same element can be a force of death and destruction. Its symbolism is interesting precisely because it is binary. Water is life and death. It nurtures and it kills; it strengthens and it enfeebles. Beneficial in measured amounts, it is lethal in excess. Apportioned and contained, it is malleable, obedient, compliant. Unleashed in volumes, it is arbitrary, aggressive, minatory, lethal. Water connotes radical alterity—and so it mediates, on the one hand, poetic inspiration, and on the other, knowledge of dark and hidden things.The symbolism of water, for all its delights, has always been laden with intimations of danger and mortality. One hardly needs to mention the most famous Mediterranean water myth of them all, the story of Osiris. The Nile—the site of his murder and apotheosis—became an essential point of reference in his cult, because of the associations of the river’s annual fl ooding with ideas of passion and resurrection. The Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117–138) seems to have capitalized on this ancient belief by instituting the cult of his young lover Antinoös, who drowned in the Nile in A.D. 130.Earth and water are vital to life. As a simple observation, this fact is so self-evident as to require no comment. On the other hand, when a fact of obvious significance is used as a political emblem, it assumes a new level of meaning. Herodotus names earth and water as tokens of submission demanded by the Persians from their intended subjects. They appear to signify human life, especially the life and livelihood of orderly human communities dependent on agriculture, an order that the Greeks called the oikoumenē, ‘the settled world’.Herodotus names earth and water as tokens of submission demanded by the Persians from their intended subjects. They appear to signify human life, especially the life and livelihood of orderly human communities dependent on agriculture, an order that the Greeks called the oikoumenē, ‘the settled world’.Water has held a fascination for some of the greatest minds in history. Drawings and memoranda scattered through the papers of Leonardo da Vinci show that it was the major preoccupation of his intellectual attention throughout his life. ‘Water’, he held, ‘is the driver of nature, the vital humour of the terrestrial machine. He felt that he might solve the mysteries of creation by studying the laws of its movements.Water plays a central role in the foundational scriptures, myths and stories of the major religious faiths. This is hardly surprising given its fundamental importance and particular preciousness in those parts of the world in which the world’s first cultures and major faiths arose. The earliest human civilisations grew up around rivers. The area often considered as the cradle of civilisation and known as Mesopotamia–a Greek word meaning the land between the rivers–encompasses the delta marshes of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in what is now Iraq. From before 5000 BC the plain between these two great rivers was transformed by the first known drainage and irrigation works into the granary of the Middle East and the most densely populated part of the ancient world, accommodating successively the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. The great Egyptian civilisation that emerged around 3000 BC was built on the fertile alluvial plain created by the regular annual flooding of the Nile, which was held to be sacred. The ancient Egyptians constructed nilometers, vast crypts under their temples, to measure the rise and fall of the water and symbolically recreate the springtime flood, which was seen as marking the annual rebirth of the river. They also invented the 365-day calendar on the basis of the Nile’s inundation. The Harappan civilisation, the first of the great Indian cultures, which flourished from c. 2600 BC, was located in the 1000 mile flood-washed valley of the river Indus. The first great Chinese civilisation was centred around the basin of River Hwang Ho or Yellow River. Not surprisingly, water was central to the beliefs and rituals of these ancient peoples. So it was for the adherents of the great monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam that arose slightly later in the harsh desert regions of Palestine and Arabia. In their case, it was a critical shortage of water that made it so precious and wonderful.In the Arabian lands, as elsewhere, springs and wells were a common source of water. Water comes naturally to the surface in a spring, or 'ayn in Arabic, whereas a well is an artificial excavation dug down to withdraw water from an aquifer, although the distinction is sometimes difficult to determine. In Islamic civilization, the most important spring or well was undoubtedly Zamzam, the sacred source located at the perimeter of the sacred complex at Mecca. An angel caused an inexhaustible supply of water to spring up for Ibrahim's wife Hagar and her son Isma'il, who were on the verge of dying of thirst. The water source is said to have dried up later because of the misconduct of the Jurhum tribe, only to be rediscovered by the Prophet's (ﷺ) grandfather.From the second century of Islam, various caliphs established way stations with wells and cisterns along the Darb Zubayda, the pilgrimage route between Iraq and the Holy Cities of the Hijaz named after Zubayda, the wife of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid. Its main section spanning 1,400 kilometers has fifty-four recognized stations. Elsewhere in the Arabian peninsula, wells and springs have long been associated with revered figures, as in the toponyms 'Ayn Jalut (Goliath's Spring) in Palestine, said to be near the site where David slew Goliath, but better known as the site where the Mamluks defeated the Mongols in 1260, and 'Ayn Musa (Moses's Spring), the spring at the entrance to the Siqat Petra, where Moses struck a rock with his staff and brought forth twelve springs. Springs are common in Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. The Chashma Ali, near Damghan in Iran, has a dark stone with a depression that is believed to represent the hoof print of the horse belonging to the Prophet's (ﷺ) son-in-law 'Ali ibn Abi Talib. The Qajar ruler Fath 'Ali Shah built a fine residence there. The Chashma Ayyub in Bukhara in Uzbekistan is said to mark the site where the prophet Job struck the ground with his staff. The Mongol warlord Timur erected a rectangular building with a conical vault over the site in 1379-80. Stepwells, large open wells where the water can be reached by descending a series of steps, were fea- tures in India long before the coming of Islam; in Islamic times their pres- ence is often associated with Sufi shrines of the Chishtiyya order.Water is ubiquitous. Not only does it cover approximately 70 per cent of the world’s surface, but it is considered essential for the survival of all known life forms. The human body is replete with the substance, with a water content as high as 70 per cent. Water aids human digestion, absorbs nutrient, assists blood circulation, removes toxins and regulates temperature. It also transports oxygen to cells and helps to protect joints and organs. Given water’s global omnipresence and its vital role in sustaining health, it might be tempting to presume that acquiring access to it for drinking purposes is relatively straightforward. Yet in reality, says Ian Miller, human societies have faced perpetual difficulties in obtaining consumable water.In essence water is a tasteless mixture of oxygen and hydrogen atoms that are chemically bonded together. Adjust its temperature and it transforms into ice, steam or vapour. When viewed in this somewhat clinical fashion, water hardly presents itself as an appetizing consumable substance. It does little to lift our mood in the way that caffeine-infused drinks do. Nor does it intoxicate us as alcohol does. Instead, thirst and necessity have mostly dictated human decisions to drink water. But water is something more than this strange mixture of elements and has always done something mysteriously fulfilling to our bodies and minds.From around the seventeenth century health promoters have laboriously striven to impress upon the public a sense of the necessity of regular water consumption. They have done so because of their conviction that we need to drink approximately half the amount of water in our bodies by weight each day. This idea evolved, long after the water-mill invented in the reign of Wang Mang, China. At first it seems to have been a vertical wheel, turned by water, activating a horizontal axle which turned a battery of pestles.Can water be transformed into a substance that is safe, as well as pleasant, to consume? Early modern scientists and philosophers pondered this question intently. At that time, collecting rainwater for use as drinking water seemed out of the question. Snow water, if you could find it, was deemed slightly more wholesome, although scientists warned that it often contained minute traces of nitrous acid. Spring waters were also looked upon favourably, although they were known occasionally to contain animal and vegetable mucilage. Scientists deemed sea-water to be an entirely unsuitable drink. Because of its high salt content, seawater intensifies thirst, although some early modern scientists pinpointed an array of other problems with it.Evidently water was historically recognized as a liquid substance with varying properties and content. Water’s suitability for consumption was typically assessed not so much by taste or appearance, but by the potential additions that may have found their way into it. These included aquatic life forms. In subsequent centuries individuals continued to marvel at the manner by which humans choose to consume a liquid substance that once had living creatures swimming in it.Water is of paramount importance in Islamic traditions. Besides its close connection to cleaning and healing, water is praised as the source of all creation. Allah says,اَوَلَمْ يَرَ الَّذِيْنَ كَفَرُوْٓا اَنَّ السَّمٰوٰتِ وَالْاَرْضَ كَانَتَا رَتْقًا فَفَتَقْنٰهُمَاۗ وَجَعَلْنَا مِنَ الْمَاۤءِ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ حَيٍّۗ اَفَلَا يُؤْمِنُوْنَ'Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and then We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?' [QS. Al-Anbya (21):30]Water is something very valuable to life, and it is a Allah's gift. Allah says,وَاَنْزَلْنَا مِنَ السَّمَاۤءِ مَاۤءًۢ بِقَدَرٍ فَاَسْكَنّٰهُ فِى الْاَرْضِۖ وَاِنَّا عَلٰى ذَهَابٍۢ بِهٖ لَقٰدِرُوْنَ ۚ فَاَنْشَأْنَا لَكُمْ بِهٖ جَنّٰتٍ مِّنْ نَّخِيْلٍ وَّاَعْنَابٍۘ لَكُمْ فِيْهَا فَوَاكِهُ كَثِيْرَةٌ وَّمِنْهَا تَأْكُلُوْنَ ۙ وَشَجَرَةً تَخْرُجُ مِنْ طُوْرِ سَيْنَاۤءَ تَنْۢبُتُ بِالدُّهْنِ وَصِبْغٍ لِّلْاٰكِلِيْنَ وَاِنَّ لَكُمْ فِى الْاَنْعَامِ لَعِبْرَةًۗ نُسْقِيْكُمْ مِّمَّا فِيْ بُطُوْنِهَا وَلَكُمْ فِيْهَا مَنَافِعُ كَثِيْرَةٌ وَّمِنْهَا تَأْكُلُوْنَ ۙ'And We have sent down rain from the sky in a measured amount and settled it in the earth. And indeed, We are Able to take it away. And We brought forth for you thereby gardens of palm trees and grapevines in which for you are abundant fruits and from which you eat. And [We brought forth] a tree issuing from Mount Sinai which produces oil and food [i.e., olives] for those who eat. And indeed, for you in livestock is a lesson. We give you drink from that which is in their bellies, and for you in them are numerous benefits, and from them you eat.' [QS. Al-Mu'minun (23):18-21]Water is a valuable resource in both life and in the ways of Islam, and as such, it is considered a great charitable act to give water to another living thing on earth. A living thing can be another human being, an animal or even a plant; these are all Allah's creations. The Prophet (ﷺ) asked by Sa'd ibn Ubadah about what form of sadaqah is best. He (ﷺ) said, الْمَاءُ (water) [Sunan Abi Dawud; Hasan according to Al-Albani]Water is needed for Taharah or purity. From an Islamic perspective, purity is a word which is general in its meaning. It may mean physical cleanness, which is purity (of the body) from impure substances or states of impurity, or it may mean spiritual purity, which is the purity of one’s self from vices, faults, sins, and replacing them with good deeds, whether in speech or deeds. This comprehensive meaning of purity is indicated in the words of the Prophet (ﷺ),أَرَأَيْتُمْ لَوْ أَنَّ نَهَرًا بِبَابِ أَحَدِكُمْ، يَغْتَسِلُ فِيهِ كُلَّ يَوْمٍ خَمْسًا، مَا تَقُولُ ذَلِكَ يُبْقِي مِنْ دَرَنِهِ ". قَالُوا لاَ يُبْقِي مِنْ دَرَنِهِ شَيْئًا. قَالَ " فَذَلِكَ مِثْلُ الصَّلَوَاتِ الْخَمْسِ، يَمْحُو اللَّهُ بِهَا الْخَطَايَا "'If there was a river at the door of anyone of you and he took a bath in it five times a day would you notice any dirt on him?' They said, 'Not a trace of dirt would be left.' The Prophet (ﷺ) added, 'That is the example of the five prayers with which Allah blots out (annuls) evil deeds.' [Sahih Al-Bukhari]Both philosophically and scientifically water is the most unique material on earth and arguably in the universe. There can be no life without water. Even in bulk form, more than half of every biological cell is water. A single grain of the fiery salt, which in a moment’s time will penetrate through a man’s hand, readily imbibes half its weight of Water, and melts even in the driest air imaginable. Water seems to be diffused everywhere, and to be present in all space wherever there is matter. There are hardly any bodies in nature but what will yield water: it is even asserted that fire itself is not without it.We'll continue our Ramadan reflections in topic about 'Fire', bi 'idhnillah."Jasmine then sang,Raindrops keep falling on my headBut that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turning redCrying's not for me'Cause I'm never gonna stop the rain by complaining *)
Citations & References:
- M. Safiur Rahman & M.R. Islam, Sustainable Water Purification, 2020, John Wiley & Sons
- Ian Miller, Water: A Global History, 2015, Reaktion Books
- Ian Bradley, Water: A Spiritual History, 2012, Bloomsbury
- Cynthia Kosso and Anne Scott (Eds.), The Nature and Function of Water, Baths, Bathing, and Hygiene from Antiquity through the Renaissance, 2009, Koninklijke Brill
- Sheila Blair & Jonathan Bloom (Eds.), Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture, 2009, Yale UNiversity Press
*) "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" written by Burt F. Bacharach & Hal David
