As you know, whenever you surround yourself by people, and stay near them, you will be influenced by them, and will take on some of their characteristics.

Shams al-Tabrizi (r.a.) says,

“Without doubt, whenever you sit with someone and are with him, you will take on his disposition. On whom have you been gazing that tightness should have come into you? If you look at green herbs and flowers, freshness will come. The sitting companion pulls you into his own world. That is why reciting the Koran purifies the heart, for you remember the prophets and their states. The form of the prophets comes together in your spirit and becomes its sitting companion.”

- Shams Tabrizi

That is in regard to reading the Qur’an, and the same can be said about reading the biographies of the Messenger (pbuh), for the more you sit with him, peace be upon him, and live in his world, the more you acquire some of his dispositions.

In regards to the Salaat prayer, sayyidi al-shaykh Saleh al-Jaafari (r.a.) said,

In the courtyard of the generous we have come to rest, and in their courtyard their generosity overflows onto us. As the peasant saying of the old woman says, “He who is in the vicinity of the blessed will be blessed, and his lights will overflow onto him; and he who is in the vicinity of the damned will be damned, and will be burned by his fire”.

So how could you stand before Allah Most High every day, five times, without one of His attributes overflowing onto you, when He is the source of all Generosity.

The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, said, “And the Salaat is light.”

So think of that. Be aware, when you pray, that you are in the vicinity of Allah Most Transcendent, Who is nearer to you than your jugular vain. Be aware of this when you greet Allah and say, “al-tahiyyatu lillahi wal salawatu wal tayyibat.” The more you are aware that you are in the vicinity of Allah, in the courtyard of Allah, standing before Allah, the more you will acquire some of His attributes.

Wasslam.

First of all, I would like to wish everyone a happy mewlid. This is the month that was blessed with the birth of the Best of Creation (pbuh).

Second I wish to inform you about the blessed hour of his birth, pbuh, in which all prayers are answered, but before that, we must first speak of the month of his birth, pbuh.

1) “His birth was in the month of Rabee’, not in Muharram, nor Rajab, nor Ramadan, nor any other honored month, because he, peace be upon him, is not honored by time, it is time that is honored by him, and likewise with place. If he had been born in one of the above-mentioned months, people might have imagined that he was honored by them, and so Allah Most High made his birth, peace be upon him, in a different month, to show His care for him, and his nobility according to Him.” [al-sayyid Muhammad bin Alawi al-Maliki, Al-Dakha’ir al-Muhammadiyya]

2) There is disagreement about the date of his birth, pbuh. Some say it is the 2nd, the 3rd, the seventh, or the 12th of this month. It is usually celebrated on the 12th.

The shaykh al-Dabbagh (r.a.) was asked about it and he said that it was on the night of the seventh, and that his birth took an hour, the hour right before sunset, so that he was finally released from his mother, pbuh, at sunset of the day of the seventh. This is the hour of the night in which one’s supplications are answered, he also says.

So try to wake up this coming night (Friday night, Saturday morning), one hour before Fajr, and pray to Allah Most High and do lots of salawat on the Prophet (pbuh), or read from his biography, pbuh, and don’t miss this hour of great great blessings.

I ask Allah (swt) to help us all wake up for this hour to honor His Prophet. pbuh, and to gain their acceptance. Ameen. And Happy Mewlid, once again, inshaAllah!

P.S. I made a big mistake when writing this post, and that is that I forgot that this particular hour is not dependent on one’s time zone, and that it is the one hour before fajr according to the time in Mecca. I’m really sorry about this, but I had to write this, even though it might anger someone who woke up one hour early for fajr because of me, when the timing was at another time, but it’s necessary to write this for knowledge for the future year, inshaAllah, and may Allah accept our works and prayers according to His generosity and to our intentions.

Bism-Allah wa-bi-hamdih, wal salatu wal salamu alaa Rasool Allah.

Sayyidna al-Hasan. the grandson of Allah’s Messenger, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam, requested from his uncle the description of his grandfather, in order to keep it in his mind, or attach himself to it, as he put it. Since we are at the start of the month of Rabee’ al-Awwal, the month that was honored with the birth of best of all creation, sayyidna Muhammad, salla-Allahu alayhi wa sallam, this is a great time for us to start memorizing his characteristics, peace be upon him, in order to attach ourselves to them, and keep them always on our mind, peace be upon him.

So below you will find some of his characteristics, peace be upon him, in nazm form- that is, they have been written in rhymed verse for the sake of memorization. This is the nazm of Shaykh Saleh al-Jaafari (r.a.). You will also find, insha’Allah, a translation, and an uploaded audio file of this nazm being chanted beautifully,. Listen to it as much as possible in this blessed month, and maybe even set it as your phone’s ring tone, so that the image of the Best of Creation is always with you, and this is one of the easiest and fastest ways to create a spiritual link between you and the Messenger, peace be upon him.

His head is grand and his beard is thick * His chest is broad and full of wisdom

His appearance splendid, his color white * His whiteness tinged with redness (1)

Our Prophet’s teeth are bright, straight and even * His speech most clear and eloquent

His eye-lids rimmed with black as if with kohl; he looks majestic * The intense blackness of his pupils adds to his perfection

His eyebrows fine and long with a space between them, his face round and beautiful * His joints are large and his palms wide and generous (2)

His hair is intensely black * It reaches his earlobes but does not exceed them

His nose is like a sword in the light * His forehead like a full moon in the dark

His neck like that of a statue, white and pure * Perfect and complete is his moral character

He walks as if descending from an incline * And that is from his strength

His voice one of the finest voices * It can be heard by thousands as by hundreds.

(1) His body was radiant white in the parts hidden by clothes, and tinged with redness in the parts that were exposed to sun and wind

(2) His joints were large and strong, indicating great physical strength

Sifat al-Nabiyy

And may Allah whelm the most beautiful of His creations in peace and blessings, and likewise his family and companions.

Back in October I wrote about my Eid Visits, in which I went with my friend to visit the sahabi Abu Ubayda Amir ibn al-Jarrah and ended up visiting, by the grace of Allah Most Transcendent, five sahaba in total. Today I went out with the intention of visiting the Prophet Shu’ayb and, also by the limitless grace of Allah, ended up visiting many Prophets, walhamdu lillah. While in the “Eid Visits” post I could write at length about each sahabi we visited, I don’t have much information about many of the Prophets we visited, but I hope this will still be informative and inspire you to visit them when you can.

This time I went with two friends, and even though the sole reason of the trip was visiting the Prophet Shu’ayb- upon our Prophet and upon him may Allah shower endless blessings- he was actually the last one we got to visit. We headed for the city of Salt, very close to Amman, and as we were entering it we saw a sign that said, “The Tomb of the Prophet Gad (Gadur) (pbuh)” and we had never heard of him but decided to investigate. We parked our car in downtown Salt and walked around taking pictures of the ancient market and going up the stairs that go up Salt’s beautiful hills, and take you to roads that go between beautiful old houses. Downtown Salt is beautiful, full of old Ottoman-style houses, some of which belonged to prominent families that have been renovated and turned into museums. My friend will likely put up some pictures from the trip here.

There we met a religious man with his wife and daughter, and asked him how to get to the Prophet Gadur, and discovered that on the same street we were on was a church for Khidr, and were told by someone on the street that a miracle had happened there, “but it’s for Christians and definitely made up.” We decided to investigate….

1) The Church of Khidr. There is debate among Muslim scholars on whether or not al-Khidr was a Prophet or a wali. He’s usually associated with the Christian Saint George, the dragon slayer. There are two reasons for that connection:

a) Both St. George and al-Khidr wear green, and in fact al-Khidr is said to spread greenery where he walks, and is usually surrounded by plants when people see him in visions.

b) St. George slew dragons. Al-Khidr is usually the spiritual guide of Sufis- he appears in their dreams (or even in their waking) and helps them on their spiritual path, and helps them kill their false self, in order to arrive at knowledge of their innermost secret, their true self. The Sufis have long used the dragon as a symbol of the false self, which commands us to sin. Thus the Islamic tradition gives a more spiritual and esoteric understanding of the story of St. George the dragon slayer.

I don’t know how long that church had been known as the church of “Al-Khidr, alayhi assalam” as one Christian referred to him. But we went inside, and it was packed with Christians holding candles and taking pictures and buying posters of St. George slaying dragons. It seems that they did not mind calling him with the name from the Islamic traditions. The people there were taking pictures of a chipped wall, and the story goes that Al-Khidr appeared, on horseback, with sword in hand, and began smashing the walls. Someone said this only happened two weeks ago, and that it was “seen” by a blind woman who was worshiping in the church by herself. The Christians saw this as a great miracle and the Church has been packed with people taking pictures of the dents in the wall.

I don’t know how true the story is, but if it’s true, I would say that by smashing the walls of the church, Al-Khidr was trying to tell them that he does not approve of a church in his name because he’s Muslim.

For the sake of the reader’s benefit, I will translate a section from Al-Ibriz, in which sidi Abd al-Aziz al-Dabbagh answers al-Lamati’s questions about al-Khidr. In the Qur’an, the Prophet Moses (pbuh) found al-Khidr and asked him to teach him some of what Allah has revealed to him. So al-Khidr takes him along and does three things that appeared, according to what Moses saw, horrible acts. But when al-Khidr explained to him the reasoning behind them, and what Allah had taught him about these situations that was hidden from the normal eye, Moses apologized for what he said. This is why some scholars said that al-Khidr had to be a Prophet, otherwise he would not have known matters of the ghayb that Moses did not know, with others held that he was a righteous servant and a wali, not a Prophet.

Al-Dabbagh says that,

Generally, the (spiritually) great are strong in witnessing Al-Haqq, Most Transcendent, and weak in witnessing the creation, whereas the (spiritually) small are strong in witnessing the creation and weak in witnessing al-Haqq, Most Transcendent. And this is what happened in the story between sayyidna al-Khidr and sayyidna Musa- upon our Prophet and upon them be peace and blessings- in what was related to us by Allah Most High in his great Book, from the story of the ship, the young man, and the wall. For knowledge of these things was hidden from sayyidna Musa alayhi assalam because he was (absorbed) in the witnessing of that which is stronger than that, and that is Al-Haqq, Most Transcendent, and therefore Moses’s ignorance of these matters is utmost (spiritual) perfection.

His analogy, in relation to al-Khidr, is like two servants for a king. As for one of them, the king has chosen him for himself, and made him sit with him, having nothing to do but standing in front of the king, looking at his face, and if the king left he left with him, and if the king entered he entered with him, and if he ate he ate with him and if he drank he drank with him, and if he spoke he spoke with him. While the other servant has been appointed by the king to run the affairs of his subjects, so he goes out to them and does with them as the king commands, and speaks to them about their affairs and how to improve their state, and he might be away from the king for a long time in order to do these things. There is no doubt, then, that the first servant is closer to the king and more knowledgeable of his secrets from the second, even though, if he were asked about any of the affairs of the king’s subjects, he would not know about them as much as the second servant, especially if the subjects lived far away from the city of the king. And thus was the state of Moses with Allah Most High, for he is like the first servant, and sayyidna Al-Khidr is like the second servant, for sayyidna Musa is greater than him, without question, because he is the Messenger of Allah, and his kaleem (the one with whom he spoke) and his chosen one….

[Al-Khidr] is not a prophet, but a servant that Allah has ennobled by giving him knowledge of Himself…and there is nothing in his knowledge of the preceding matters that Moses did not know about, which necessitates that a non-prophet be more knowledgeable than a prophet, for what we have said earlier, that Moses- peace be upon him- was pre-occupied from these things with witnessing of Al-Haqq, which is something unparalleled, and therefore there is nothing that necessitates belief in (al-Khidr’s) prophethood.

There are in Jordan four Islamic mashhads for Al-Khidr (places where he was seen), but none in Salt. They are in Kerak, Ajlun, Bayt Ras (Irbid), and Mahis (which is the area between the Valley of Shu’ayb and Amman).

After that we decided to leave the car and take a taxi to show us a few places that were inside the city. He took us to:

2) The Cemetery of the Turks. There used to be a fort on the highest point in Salt, from which an Ottoman battalion was stationed to fight the British in WW1. Three hundred of them died in two days and were placed in a cave below the fort that was used for storage because there was no time to bury them. Then after time they were forgotten and the fort was removed and replaced with a mosque, until a Turkish journalist took a picture of the cave with the bones of three hundred soldiers, which prompted the Turkish and Jordanian governments to give them a proper burial and build them a monument. So the place is a beautiful little garden with a monument, and in the cave there is one sarcophagus, under which is a five-meter deep grave in which all the bones were places. We were told that the Turkish ambassador to Jordan comes every year to visit them, and we saw in a room pictures of all the Turkish soldiers and officers who have come to Jordan to visit the monument. I felt honored to read the Fatiha to these forgotten martyrs.

3) Gad. “The Prophet Gad”, as the locals call him, is the seventh son of Jacob (the Prophet Ya’qub), and therefore one of the brothers of Joseph (the Prophet Yusef). He is the father of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Islamic traditions do not rule out the possibility that Joseph’s brothers were prophets despite their negative treatment of him. Evidence of this comes from the Quranic verse that says to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), “We inspire thee as We inspired Noah and the Prophets after him, as We inspired Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes, and Jesus and Jacob and Jonah…(4:163-4).” (Italics added). We couldn’t go inside to the tomb as it was locked, and only opened in times of prayer when the imam came to the mosque attached to it.

4) Asher (Hazir in Arabic). He was the eighth son of Jacob and a brother of Joseph and Gad. He is also the father of one of the twelve tribes, and might also be a prophet. He’s buried underground in a small cave, above which are a 600-yr old tree and the most beautiful almond trees that were in blossom. There are springs of water under the hills of both Gad and Asher.

5) Job (Ayyub in Arabic). The story of Job’s patience is famous so there’s no need introducing him, peace be upon our Prophet and upon him. The area he is in is called Job’s Ruins (Khirbet Ayyub), and it is a hill on which are the ruins of an ancient building. There is a well and several mounds of rock and you can see the basic layout of some rooms, but we couldn’t tell which one had the tomb. There is a picture of it in the book The Holy Sites of Jordan, but we had forgotten it in the car in downtown Salt so we couldn’t make it out, but we just read the Fatiha while standing among the ruins. Since it’s spring time the whole of Salt was beautifully green but the Ruins of Job in particular were covered with Red Poppies.

6) The Prophet Joshua (Yoosha’ in Arabic). He is mentioned in the Qur’an as Moses’ ward and apprentice, but not in name; however the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) named him as the one referred to in Surat al-Kahf. He was still young when the Prophet Moses took him along in search for al-Khidr. That is because Moses had claimed to be the most knowledgeable man on earth so Allah wanted to humble him by sending him to acquire knowledge from one of his servants, who was not even a Prophet. Moses had prepared his army to conquer Palestine (namely the cities of Jericho and Jerusalem) from the Canaanites (yes, Arabs are the original inhabitants of Palestine), but he died before he could do it, so he left Joshua (pbuh) in charge of the army.

The complex built for him is new and beautiful. There was a shaykh there, who on Fridays gives the khutba in a local mosque, and then spends the rest of the day visiting the Prophet, and telling visitors about him (or I think he does it every Friday because it sounded like he did this before). He told us many of the stories told about the Prophet, probably taken from Jewish sources by the early Muslim scholars. It is said that he surrounded Jericho for six months before its walls crumbled before him, and then marched on to Jerusalem.

The story goes that he arrived before the gates of Jerusalem, only a short time before the Friday sunset, and since the day in Islamic and Jewish calendars begins from sunset, it meant that the Sabbath was just about to start, and they couldn’t wage war on the day of the Sabbath. So Joshua pointed at the sun and said, “I am commanded by God, and you are commanded by God” and then asked God to stop the sun in its place, and so it stayed in its place until Joshua’s army conquered Jerusalem. (See the Book of Joshua, chapter 10, in the Old Testament). There is a hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) confirms this story and says, “The sun was never halted for a human being except for Yoosha’ (pbuh) on the night he left for Jerusalem.”

The shaykh told us that the spot where the mosque-tomb complex is built is where Joshua’s house was, and that he died in it and was buried in it, like the Prophet Muhammad who was also buried in his house and said that Prophets are buried where they die.

After that we had the taxi driver take us back to our car, and we headed out of Salt to the Valley of Sh’uayb (Wadi Shu’ayb), which is near Salt, on the way back to Amman.

7) The Prophet Shu’ayb. He, may Allah whelm our Prophet and him with peace and blessings, was one of the four Arab prophets mentioned in the Qur’an (the other three being Hud, Salih, and sayyidna Muhammad, peace be upon them). He is a descendant of the Prophet Abraham and some say that he is the one who is called Jethro in the Bible, who married his daughter to Moses, but this is debated between Muslim scholars and I am of the opinion that he came much earlier than Moses.

What can I tell you about the tomb of Prophet Shu’ayb? All I can say is go there yourselves and smell the scents there, the like of which I have never smelled before. A friend of mine who goes there a lot told me that if you lift the green cloth on the sarcophagus you will find a little hole in it from which the smell comes really strongly, but I didn’t want to lift it and look for it in front of all the people. You see, since it was Friday, the area around his mosque was covered in people who had come to camp near him and BBQ and play and enjoy the day. In the words of my companions, the whole atmosphere of it was “surreal”.

The two most impressive and awe-inspiring tombs which everyone should visit if they can are the last two. Hopefully the Jordanian government will eventually fix up the area where the Prophet Job is buried, so that it joins them in greatness and importance.

And may Allah whelm Prophet Muhammad and all the Messengers and Prophets with peace and blessings, and may He raise us with them on the Day of Judgment.

And all thanks and praise are due to Allah who blessed us with a chance to visit His chosen servants, and may He bless us with a visit to His Beloved, the Imam of the Messengers, the Seal of the Prophets, sayyidna wa mawlana Muhammad, salla Allahu alayhi wa ala aalihi wa sallam.

نورك الكل والورى أجزاء * يا نبيًّا من جنده الأنبياء

I try to read some of the Qur’an every night and I just got to Al-Rahman, which reminded me of something that happened two years ago.

I was in Cairo, and I went with my aunt to visit the grave of her husband, who was like an angel that walked among men. We said our salaams, read Ya Sin, and asked Allah to have mercy on him, and then it occurred to me to read to him Al-Rahman. So I began reading it silently and, having read one quarter or one third of it, my aunt headed back to the car.

In Cairo, every family builds a room inside the cemetery, with a locked gate, and members of the family are all buried inside that room. There are roads passing through between all these family cemeteries and so the car was parked right outside the room.

My aunt started calling for me to come and I didn’t want to keep her waiting but I also didn’t want to stop without having finished the Sura. But all of a sudden, I heard someone reciting the same verse that I had reached, with me, at the same speed as if we were reading it together, despite the fact that I had been reading silently! The voice came from right outside the door, where the car was, and I just couldn’t believe that whoever it was, that they began at the same exact verse I was on!

I was quite confused for a moment but then I smiled, knowing that Allah had sent someone to finish the Sura for me, for the sake of my aunt’s amazing husband, rahimahullah. And so I left and got into the car and we drove off, and I didn’t even look to see who was doing the recitation.

Then which of the favors of your Lord will ye deny? (Al-Rahman)

While the Messenger of Allah- may Allah whelm him and his wives with peace and blessings- was going through the pains of his death throws he said,

“What makes this easier for me is that I saw how bright Aisha’s palm will be in Paradise.”

Ibn Kathir said,

“People have described great love in many ways, but none of them ever reached such an amount.”

فنازعت أقدار الحق بالحق للحق، والرجل من يكون منازعاً للقدر، لا من يكون موافقاً للقدر‏

“I have fought against what was destined by al-Haqq, with al-Haqq, for al-Haqq. Men are those who battle against fate, not those who go along with it.” - Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (r.a.)

Ibn Taymiyya said,

“What the Shaykh - may Allah’s mercy be upon him- said, is what Allah and His Messenger commanded, but many men have erred, for they might see what was destined for someone from sins and wrong acts, even of disbelief, and see that this goes according to the will of Allah, and that what He ordains and destines comes from the fact of His Lordship and the fact that what He wills must happen. So they think that surrendering to that, going along with it, and accepting it, is a way (deen), a path (tariq), and an act of worship (ibada). In this they become like the mushrikeen who said, “Had Allah willed, we had not ascribed (unto Him) partners neither had our fathers, nor had we forbidden aught (of what He made lawful)” and they said “Shall we then feed those whom, if Allah had so willed, He would have fed, (Himself)?” and they said, “Had Al-Rahman so wanted, we would not have worshiped them.“

Had they been guided, they would have known that we were commanded to accept destiny and have patience when a calamity happens, like poverty, illness, or fear. He Most High said, “No calamity befalleth save by Allah’s leave. And whosoever believeth in Allah, He guideth his heart.” As one of our pious predecessors said, “He is the man who is afflicted with an affliction and knows that it is from Allah so he accepts it and resigns to it.” And He Most High said, “Naught of disaster befalleth in the earth or in yourselves but it is in a Book before we bring it into being - Lo! that is easy for Allah - That ye grieve not for the sake of that which hath escaped you, nor yet exult because of that which hath been given.“

As for sins, a servant may not sin, and if he sinned, he must ask Allah’s forgiveness and repent, for one must repent from fault and have patience with calamities…. And so it is with the sins of (other people). The servant must command that which is good and forbid that which is evil- according to his ability- and to struggle against the kuffar and hypocrites in the cause of Allah, to support the awliya of Allah and to take as enemies the enemies of Allah, to love in Allah and hate in Allah…

…They must struggle in order to uphold His Deen, asking His help in that, removing with that that which was destined of bad things… just as man removes the present hunger with food, and keeps away with it future hunger, and likewise, if the time of cold weather comes, he keeps the cold away through clothing, and likewise all that man wants is used to keep away something that man does not want. As they said to the Prophet (pbuh), “Oh Messenger of Allah, you see the medicines that we take, the recitations that we use for healing, and precautions with which we protect ourselves, do they keep away anything that Allah has destined?” So he said, “they are part of what Allah has destined.” And among the hadith: “Supplication and affliction will meet and fight between the Sky and the Earth.” This is the state of those who believe in Allah and His Messenger, and all that is part of worship.

[Summarized, and translated, from Ibn Taymiyyah’s Fatawa, vol 10: www.al-eman.com/islamlib/viewchp.asp?BID=252&CID=191#s1]

The Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, said:

“Three things of this world of yours I have been made to love: women, perfume, and the comfort of my eye is in the Salaat.”

The expression, “comfort of my eye” ( qurrat ‘ayni) means “the thing that I love most” or “the thing that gives me the most joy or pleasure”.

Ibn Ata’Allah al-Sakandari said,

“The Prophet’s eyes, peace be upon him, did not find comfort except in Allah Most High, which is why he said ‘in the Salaat’ (fil Salaat), not ‘the Salaat’ (bil Salaat).”

It is related that when Abu Bakr heard Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) say this, replied:

“And I, Oh Messenger of Allah, love three things: sitting with you, looking at you, and spending my money on you.”