Riyadat an-Nafs

Today, I was having dinner with some friends who came to Jordan for a few days. Friends from the UK.

And my phone rang. It was shaykh Iyad, the ex-imam friend of mine that I’ve mentioned in the last couple of posts. I answered, but I didn’t hear his voice. Instead, I heard a very large group of people, singing “Radeena ya Bani al-Zahraa, radeena, bi hubbin feekumu yurdee Nabeena” (alayhi wa ‘alaa Alihi assalatu wassalam). Shaykh Saleh’s favorite poem, and his second most famous one, after the Maqboola.

And it was being sung be a huge crowd, I could tell, and they were singing it the exact same way we do it in Egypt, in what shaykh Saleh called the “Azhari” style of it, meaning the style that it used to be recited in the Azhar Mosque after his lessons. Shaykh Iyad kept the phone call going for a long time, so I got to listen to several minutes of it, and I could tell that the main munshids were either Ja’faris, or had listened to it being recited by Ja’fari’s in Egypt. However, this could not have been a Ja’fari hadra, as it included drums, which are forbidden in Ja’fari dhikr, as all instruments are.

Shaykh Iyad called me later, and promised to tell me when he met me all about that gathering and the shaykhs who were present. I still have no clue where this was or who did it!

Then the imam from behind my house took me to meet shaykh Abdul Jaleel, who knew shaykh Saleh very well from the Azhar. He said to me: “If I told you everything I knew about shaykh Saleh, your mind would short-circuit. He was one of the greatest of the awliya, one of the akaabir.”

Then he told me some stories about him. He said that one time he went to the shaykh and said to him: “Oh shaykh, I saw the Prophet salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam in a dream, in your form.”

This made the shaykh so happy, that he took off his green shawl that was around his shoulders, and put it on the floor, and got off from the seat, and sat on the shawl on the floor, and seated shaykh Abdul Jaleel next to him. And he pulled out his ID card and said to the shaykh:

“See how it says ‘Saleh al-Ja’fari’? That is because my lineage goes back to sayyidi Ja’far as-Sadiq! And when I finished my Bachelors degree at the Azhar, I wanted to go back to the Sudan, but I saw sayyidna al-imam al-Husayn in a vision and he said to me: You don’t go anywhere! You stay here with me!”

Shaykh Abdul Jaleel also said that during the last period of his life, not long before shaykh Saleh passed away to the life of the Barzakh, he disappeared for an entire month. No one knew where he was. They looked everywhere for him, in the hospitals, and everywhere. Neither his family nor his murids knew where he was! Then after a month, his son shaykh Abdul Ghani saw in a dream the great wali of Allah, the muhaddith, the commentator of Sahih al-Bukhari, imam Abdallah ibn Abi Jamra al-Andalusi, who said to him: Your father has been my guest for the last month.

So they went to the Muqattam mountain, to the maqam of this great shaykh, and found that Shaykh Saleh had been living there for an entire month, and the servant who took care of the maqam would feed him everyday one small meal of cheese and watermelon.

Then shaykh Abdul Jaleel spoke of the blessedness of this great mountain, which now houses the tombs of so many of the greatest awliya and scholars in history. It was the location of the khalwa of sayyida Nafeesa, radi Allahu anhaa, and it includes the tombs of sidi Ibn Ataillah as-Sakandari, Shaykh Ibn Daqiq al-Id, Sultan al-Aashiqeen sidi Ibn al-Farid, the Wafa’i masters, and so many others. He said that that mountain is such a blessed place, and that when the Muslims conquered Cairo, the Coptic priests asked the Caliph sayyidna Umar ibn al-Khattab to keep this mountain for them, because they believed it to be a piece of Paradise. So he said to them: “We have more right than you for a piece of Paradise!” And he took it.

So shaykh Saleh went and lived there for a month, not long before he died.

He then said, “there are so many other things about shaykh Saleh, but I cannot speak them! Abdullah ibn Abbas, radi Allahu anhu, was asked about the tafseer of Kaaf Haa Yaa ‘Ayn Saad’ and he said: ‘If I told you its meaning, you would call me a kafir!’ And according to another narration, ‘You would become Kafir” (by not believing me).’

So Allahu a’lam. Maybe he’ll tell me more another day!

والحمد لله رب العالمين على نعمه كلها

اللهم صل وسلم وبارك على سيدنا ومولانا محمد خير البرية

وعلى آله في كل لمحة ونفس عدد ما وسعه علم الله

I wrote earlier about the Syrian shaykh Ahmad al-Khodari, who studied under 3/4th of all the great ulama of Damascus of his time, before going to study in the Azhar, and then coming to Jordan to become the imam of Jordan’s oldest mosque until now.

He is a very blessed old man, and a great scholar, and almost all the great scholars in Jordan studied under him. He’s also very quiet, and rarely speaks to anyone. The first time I encountered him in the Husayni Mosque in downtown Amman, he was going back and forth across the prayer hall with his rosary, and I knew right away that he was a blessed man, from the look of him. I didn’t know who he was at the time. I tried to speak to him, but he smiled and signalled to me that he was busy with the rosary, so I left him and prayed whatever prayer I needed to pray at the time, and then I looked for him but he had disappeared.

His son, subhanAllah, became the imam of the mosque near my house recently. So he took me to the Shadhili dhikr in Sahab where I saw him the next time, and asked him if he knew shaykh Saleh al-Ja’fari. As I said earlier, as soon as I confirmed to him that I was talking about the imam of the noble Azhar mosque, his face lit up in such a way that is difficult to describe- similar to when you ask a lover about his beloved. And he told us two stories that he remembered from shaykh Saleh’s Friday lessons.

Today, his son and I went up to him again and mentioned my shaykh again. Again, as soon as we mentioned him, his face lit up. All of a sudden, he became a talkative man, which really surprised his son. He wanted to tell us about the shaykh, and he kept talking and talking. Now his son told me later how shocked he was, as his father rarely praises anyone, no matter how great a shaykh or scholar or wali he is. And yet here he wanted to keep talking about shaykh Saleh, and even after the conversation ended and I went to bring the car around, he went back to talking about shaykh Saleh to his son!

He told us how the shaykh used to go every Friday after Asr to the maqam of sayyidi al-imam al-Shafi’i, and would compose poetry there, and recite it out loud. I wrote earlier the story about why the scholars of the Azhar had a habit of praying Asr at the maqam of imam al-Shafi’i on Fridays, or going there after Asr on Fridays. I highly recommend you read it here.

And he said how every night after praying the Isha prayer at the Azhar, he would go and spend some time at the mosque of Imam al-Husayn, visiting the maqam.

Then he told us about his own stories with the shaykh. He said that he had such respect and love for the shaykh, that one day, when he was fasting a nafl (voluntary) fast, and there was only 20 minutes left until Maghreb time, he entered the riwaq (hall) in the Azhar where shaykh Saleh always stayed, and found him and his students eating. So he said he broke the fast, even though there were 20 minutes left, in order to share the food with shaykh Saleh.

Then, I’m not sure if it was shaykh Al-Khodari or someone else who was listening to this story, who said, that there is a famous saying: “The meeting of the loved ones is a eid, so break your (voluntary) fasts for their sake.”

Then shaykh al-Khodari told us that one day him and a Kurdish student were fasting, also a voluntary fast. The call to Maghreb came and they rushed to join the prayer without having broken their fast yet. So after the prayer ended, shaykh Saleh called them to him and whispered to them: “You two are fasting, let me invite you to some sugar cane juice.” !

“We had not told him that we were fasting. He just knew. His karamaat were apparent”, shaykh al-Khodari commented.

Then the conversation ended, and as I said, I went to bring the car around, but the shaykh went back to talking about shaykh Saleh to his son. His son told me that at that point, his father’s eyes welled up with tears as he talked about him, and said to him: “For shaykh Saleh, the Ahlul Bayt were a red line. Their matter was very serious to him. He had such an amazing love for them that cannot be matched.”

After that, his son came with me back to Amman. On the way, he decided to call someone he knew called professor Abdul Jaleel, who is one of the oldest professors in Jordan University, he said. He is also a great scholar and a man of Allah, who has an amazing mind, the imam told me. He told me that since he spent a lot of time in the Azhar, he most probably knew shaykh Saleh, so he called him to see if we can go visit him, even though it was late at night. So he called him, only to find out that he had left his big house in Amman to a plot of land that he owns in the desert, where he often goes and spends some nights on his own, to be alone with Allah, without any distractions.

So on the phone, the imam asked him if he knew shaykh Saleh. Shaykh Abdul Jaleel told him that he not only knew him, he had a very close and loving relationship with him! The imam then said to him: “I read some of his poetry, and it indicates that he was a great scholar, a man of firm knowledge in the religious and linguistic sciences. He was something very serious, wasn’t he?”

So shaykh Abdul Jaleel replied to him: “He was the Badawi of his time!”

Now, if you’re not from the Arab world, you might not know the significance of that statement, so let me explain. In the Arab world in general, and beyond it, there are four awliya of the past that are known as the Four Poles. They are thought to be the biggest four Qutbs in history, and while a few others (like al-Shadhili and Ibn Arabi) might be added to their ranks, or held to be an equal to them, these four hold a very special place in the minds and hearts of the people, and are thought to be the great poles of Tasawwuf in history.  They are: Abdul Qadir al-Jilani, Ahmad ar-Rifa’i, Ahmad al-Badawi, and Ibrahim al-Dasouqi.

Shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi was a moroccan sayyid, who went as a child with his family to Mecca, and grew up there until he became a shaykh, and received his openings in Mecca, and was commanded to go to Tanta in Egypt, where he taught until he was buried. He is known as “Abul Fityaan” ( Father of the People of Futuwwa) and Shaykhul Arab (The Shaykh of the Arabs), and has many other glorious titles. His yearly mawlid festival is the largest in all of Egypt, and might be the largest in the world. He is thought to be THE shaykh of Egypt. He lived during the Mamluk period, in the time of the Crusades, and the great Mamluk leader, al-Zahir Baybars, destroyer of the crusaders, had a great belief in him, so much so that they say he was his murid. Shaykh al-Badawi’s karaamas in saving captured Muslims from the prisons of the Crusaders are very well known, and until this day, generation after generation of Egyptians repeat these lines:

The sayyid al-Badawi stretched out his hand from Tanta,

Brought the prisoner out from behind the bars of the Franks.

At the beginning of the night he reads his wird and repeats it,

And at the end of the night, he shakes hands with the Prophet!

So when the venerable shaykh Abdul Jaleel called him the Badawi of his time, that would be exactly equal to calling him the shaykh al-Jilani of his time, and that is how I always thought of him, considering his character and his charisma and his influence as a preacher and a teacher in the great Azhar mosque, which greatly paralleled the character and influence of shaykh al-Jilani as preacher and teacher in Baghdad.

In fact, shaykh Saleh had a very close relationship with shaykh Ahmad al-Badawi. When the shaykh was still a young student at the Azhar, he would give all his money away to feed his fellow students, and would remain hungry. One night, he couldn’t sleep because of the pains of starvation, and began to cry. So shaykh al-Badawi appeared to him and said to him: “Allah will expand your rizq for you, but don’t forget the brothers.”

After that vision, the shaykh decided to visit his maqam in the city of Tanta twice a year for the rest of his life.

In another vision, shaykh Saleh saw a meeting of the souls of the awliya under the dome of imam al-Husayn, who were deciding whether or not shaykh Saleh should be moved to Medina as he always wished. So shaykh al-Badawi said in a loud authoritative voice: “I AM THE SHAYKH OF THE AWLIYA! And I say that shaykh Saleh stays here with us in Egypt. But he will go every year on Hajj and to visit his grandfather, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam!”

So shaykh Saleh one night began to wonder: “Why does shaykh al-Badawi keep appearing to me, when I do not follow his tariqa?” So the soul of shaykh al-Badawi appeared to him and said: “Because I love you, shaykh Saleh. You have such a high worth in the sight of Allah that only He knows its greatness!”

One time, in shaykh Saleh’s friday lesson, a man stood up and said:

“Oh mawlana the shaykh, my son got lost, and I searched for him for three days without finding him. So I went to a high place and shouted as loud as I could: Oh Shaykhul Arab! Oh Sayyid! I want my son!

And as soon I finished this sentence, I found a man next to me saying: Is this your son? So I looked and saw that it was really the son that I was looking for, and I swear by Allah that this really happened to me!”

So shaykh Saleh said to him:

“You told me a story, and I will tell you another story:

I had given my birth certificate to a bookseller for a period of two years. And every time I would ask him for  it he would say: I returned it to you!

Then it happened that the Ministry of Religious Affairs requested the birth certificate, and without it I would not get my degree. So I prayed the Fajr prayer then I sat down reciting poetry of praise of the sayyid al-Badawi, may Allah Most High be pleased with him. And I said to him: Will my certificate be lost, and my degree with it, while you are present?!

Then I went after that to the owner of the library and gave him a cup of tea with milk and said to him: Drink the tea and look for the certificate. So he got angry and said to me: Your matter is truly strange! Two years have passed, while you have been asking for the certificate, and I keep telling you that you took it back from me, and you don’t believe me!  So I said to him: For my sake, look for it just one more time.

So as soon as he put his hand and lifted one of his books he found the certificate! So when he was shocked by that I said to him: I spoke to the sayyid al-Badawi, and he is a wali whose du’a is answered.”

Salawatun Tayyibatun is now on YouTube with translation.

check the Media page.

“Who said that victory over the enemy is the goal of the sincere mujahid believer?

He whose goal is victory, only seeks to please his nafs and desires.

And he whose goal is Allah, chooses only what Allah chooses for him.

Allah was not content in making victory over the enemies the reward with which He rewards those who do jihad in His cause. How, and the entire dunya is not worth the wing of a fly in His sight!

If you put the entire dunya together in one morsel, Allah would not care if He put it in the mouth of a kafir, and that is only because of its lowliness in His sight.

No, Allah rewards them by what befits Him, subhanahu wa ta’ala:

“He shall forgive you your sins and admit you into Gardens beneath which rivers flow, and pure habitations in the Gardens of Eternal Abode- and that is the greatest of triumphs!” (61:12)

And the greatest victory for the believer in the dunya is for Allah to give him victory of his own nafs, and to remove from his heart fear of anything other than Allah.”

These are the words that shaykh Muhammad Khalid Thabit wrote in his introduction to the chapter on the great Sanusi mujahid, shaykh Omar al-Mukhtar.

That was from his book The Schools of Love: The Factories of Men!

And the shaykh had every right to include his own father in that book, as one of the true men of Allah who were produced by the schools of love: Love of Allah Most High, love of His Messenger and his family, Salawat Allah alayhim, and love of Deen of Allah and the Men of this Deen.

His father is Khalid Muhammad Khalid, best known for authoring Men Around the Messenger (salla Allahu alayhi wa Alihi wa sallam). But this great man wrote tens of great works about The Messenger of Allah – salla Allahu alayhi wa Alihi wa sallam – and his Companions, ridwan Allah alayhim.

And I just finished reading a true wonder of a book that he has written, for which I hope Allah will reward him with the highest stations in the hereafter: The Sons of the Rasool in Karbalaa’.

And there is a story about this book that his son shaykh Muhammad Khalid Thabit wrote about in The Schools of Love: The Factories of Men. He says:

“Kamal Sulayman was an officer in the Egyptian army, and he was one of the people of the tariq, a lover of Rasool Allah and his Ahlul Bayt. And usually if there are changes in the army, officers would be afraid to be moved to distant areas, except him, for he found uns (comfort) in the faraway lands, away from civilization.

And the first time I had met him was in January 1974, and I was serving in the army back then, and he was the commander of the regiment that I was attached to. I went to him, and brought with me an intercessor to intercede for me because of a long time of absence that I spent away from my duty. I found him sitting on some straw, with a white cap on his head, holding a rosary in his hand. He sat me next to him and asked me about my full name. Then he said: Are you the son of Khalid Muhammad Khalid? I said: Yes. He said: You have been saved! Even if you had brought with you the Minister of Defence, he would not have interceded for you with me, as much as your father’s intercession, even though I have never seen him in my life.

And from that day we became close friends, until he moved to the presence of his Lord in 1999. And every night he would send someone to take me to him, and we would sit and talk until a late time of the night, and he, Allah have mercy on him, would feed me stuffed pigeons and other delicacies.

And he told me of the story behind his forgiving me, and his love of me that lasted until the end of his life:

It was during the War of Attrition (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Attrition), and those days were of the toughest that he ever went though, and upon many in the army. And one time, he went on a reconnaissance mission with a reconnaissance unit composed of several men and cars, and it is a mission that goes on for several days, and sometimes weeks, in very tough conditions.

He was in such great anguish, that he even described those days as the darkest days of his life, and he even preferred death to them. And in one of those days, he saw in the equipment vehicle a small book that was folded between the top of the car and one of the wheels on top of it. So he reached out to it and read its title: The Sons of the Rasool in Karbalaa’, and he opened the book and began to read. And every time he folded a page to the next one, his hunger for more increased, and his tears would pour out from his eyes in a never-ending stream. And he remained with the book, completely taken by reading it, until he finished it, having shed so many tears that he didn’t know where they came from.

And he felt that he was born anew, and that a mighty force had gone into him, with which he could do anything, and have patience in any situation, so that even sacrificing his life became an easy thing for him. He looked again at the title of the book, but this time he was looking for the name of the author: Khalid Muhammad Khalid. So he raised his hands and prayed for him in all sincerity and depth, and said in his du’a: “Oh Allah, allow me to re-pay him this favor that he did for me!”

And only a few months had passed when he saw me standing in front of him, in trouble, and Allah enabled him to repay my father his favor upon him, through what he did with me, and he assisted me several times in stituations that can never be forgotten, whether during serving in the army, or after. May Allah recompense him for me, the best of recompense!”

And so we return to that book, The Sons of the Rasool in Karbalaa’, and to the king of kings, the martyr of martyrs, the imam of the mujahideen, al-imam al-Husayn ibn Ali, ridwan Allah alayhim.

We return to imam al-Husayn, as he travelled towards al-Kufa, where he had been promised an army of supporters who will fight with him to restore Islam to worthy hands. And yet on the way, he received the news that his representatives in Kufa were killed and crucified, and his supporters completely disbanded.

“What will he do, when he knows that his cousin was killed, and that those who gave him allegiance escaped?

He will not do anything except go forward with his determination. That is because he did not go out to achieve a guaranteed victory. No! He went out to confirm the right of Islam in protecting itself from misguidance and falsehood. And to make up, in his glorious sacrifice, for the sin of silence that the people committed, either in obedience, or against their will!

And let whatever happens after that be!

What mattered to him in essence, was to perform what he saw a holy duty upon him and toward the truth.”

“The great lessons of Karbalaa’ teach us that sacrifice is its own reward, and that as long as it is for the sake of truth, then waiting for a reward for it is ignorance of its worth, unless that expected reward is the pleasure of Allah, His contentment, and His Gardens.

And the meaning of sacrifice being its own reward is not that it deprives its heroes of its virtues and benefits.. But it means that it is elevated with those virtues and benefits to a level of sanctity, to being a great example, to being eternal, to a level in which all the quick booties of the world and its fake glories mean nothing!

The faces of human elevation are many, but the honor of man and his worthiness of life remain, and will always be, folded in his ability for noble and majestic sacrifice for the sake of truth.

And the image that was drawn by the sacrifices of al-Husayn and his family and companions took this honor, and this worthiness, to their highest stations, to their apices.

They did not go forward to a sacrifice from which victory is hoped. No: they went forward to a sacrifice for the sake of the sacrifice itself.

And so they made it a means and an end.

And they confirmed that it is its own reward, and a value in and of itself!”

May Allah give glory to your name oh Abu Abdallah! May Allah give glory to you and your family in this world and the next! And may Allah reward you and your family for teaching us that the sincere believer does not fight for the sake of victory, but because the truth deserves that we fight for it! Because the Deen deserves that we fight for it! Because Allah deserves that we fight for Him! Regardless of the outcome!

The King of Martyrs is Husayn

The King of Kings is Husayn

Husayn’s is the way of life

The Saviour of Islam is Husayn

He gave his head but not his hand into the hand of Yazid

In truth the foundation of La ilaha illa Allah is Husayn.

- Shaykh Muinuddin Chishti

اللهم صل وسلم وبارك على سيدنا ومولانا محمد خير البرية

وعلى آله في كل لمحة ونفس عدد ما وسعه علم الله

I wrote earlier of how I went with two imams and one ex-imam to a Shadhili dhikr gathering in the city of Sahab in Jordan, and found a shaykh there who had studied under shaykh Saleh al-Ja’fari and retold stories he had heard from shaykh Saleh’s friday lesson. (riyada.hadithuna.com/jackpot/)

Well, today I was speaking to the ex-imam, a Palestinian ikhwani sufi, who used to give amazing khutbas. I heard a sample khutba from him myself (to give me a glimpse of why he’s not allowed to ever approach a minbar again in Jordan), and his style is truly amazing. I also heard another sufi ex-imam (also banned from doing khutbas) highly praise the first ex-imam’s khutbas and his style to a third imam. The point is: that first ex-imam’s khutabs are really really good. Too bad he can’t give any more.

Anyway, I took to him today Shaykh Saleh’s al-Burda al-Hasaniyya al-Husayniyya and his Rawdat al-Quloob wal-Arwaah, and we recited some of the lines of poetry in praise of the Ahlul Bayt, and especially imam al-Husayn, because of Ashura.

He told me how in one of the mosques in which he used to be imam, called the Mosque of Abu Hurayra- a very large mosque, he once found the book al-Salawat al-Ja’fariyya. This is shaykh Saleh al-Ja’fari’s salawat (darood shareef) collection, which is divided into days of the week, and is part of the wird of our tariqa.

SubhanAllah. He found this book in the Abu Hurayra mosque, and went through it, and fell in love with it, and took it home. He kept it in his home for more than a year, reading it every now and then, and sometimes copying out some of the salawat and basing some of his khutbas on them!

Then, after a year, he felt something in his heart- he felt that this book must belong to someone else, and that he had to return it to the mosque. He wrote on it “waqf”, meaning religious endowment, something that can never be sold and must remain as it was left, and put it back in the mosque. And since a year had passed, whoever had left it must have forgotten about it or replaced it, and so it remains until now in the mosque, as an endowment, which anyone can pick up and read while they’re there.

This makes me wonder: how many fellow Ja’fari’s are in Jordan? Who left that book there? Jordan is full of Egyptian laborers, so odds are, there must be Ja’fari’s out there….

اللهم صل وسلم وبارك على سيدنا ومولانا محمد خير البرية

وعلى آله في كل لمحة ونفس عدد ما وسعه علم الله

The Viva Palestina convoy arrived in Amman last night, so I went to see them and meet some of the bro’s, and offered to take three of them to visit some of the blessed maqams of the Sahaba in Jordan.

So this morning, I went to pick them up, and on the way I stopped at the nearest traffic light to my house, where there is a newspaper seller who sells newspapers to the cars as they wait on the traffic light. I have a special relationship with this guy: he likes me, and knows that I will always buy a newspaper from him (even though I never read newspapers).

So he always runs to me when he sees me, gives me a newspaper, I pay him, and he makes a du’a for me.

But today he said a du’a he never said to me before. He said: “May you visit the maqam of the Rasool, salla Allahu alayhi wa sallam!”

So I said to him: SubhanAllah! I’m just going now to visit the maqams of his Sahaba!

Then I drove off saying “ameen, ameen” to his du’a.

————

Alhamdulillah I have uploaded another YouTube video, of the descriptions of Allah’s beloved, as composed into poetry by Shaykh Saleh al-Ja’fari for easy memorization. English translation is included. Link

YouTube with translation

If you look at the Page tabs above, you’ll see a new “Media” page, where I will be putting YouTubes and other things inshaAllah.

riyada.hadithuna.com/media/

Ya Safwat ar-Rabbi Full on Youtube

With translation.

JAZAKUM ALLAH KHAYRAN KATHEERAN BROTHER FOR THIS AMAZING WORK.

Jaddid al-’Ahda ‘alaa Khayr al-Waraa (Go back and re-visit the best of creations)

Jaddid al-Ahd

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome,
Welcome, this is the Prophet, Welcome!

Welcome, guide of the path, welcome,
Welcome, most compassionate one, welcome!

Welcome, light of existence, welcome,
Welcome, guide of the groups of visitors, welcome!

Welcome, best of people, welcome,
Welcome, oh full moon, welcome!

Welcome, grandfather of al-Hasan, welcome,
Welcome, grandfather of al-Husayn, welcome!

Welcome oh Mustafa, welcome,
Welcome oh Murtada, welcome!

Go back and re-visit the best of people,
Look at that light who traveled by night (to Jerusalem)

And pour out your tears,
When you see the Rawda, oh you who have arrived!

And look at the light that is on his face,
and glorify Allah, Most Great, say Allahu Akbar!

And smell the perfume that comes from his grave,
it surpassed the smell of musk, surpassed the best of roses!

Say to him: Oh Mustafa, Oh sayyidi!
You are the bounty of Allah, oh happiness of all people!

You are alive, sitting, witnessing us,
Like a sun, like a full moon!

Oh intercessor, of worth so high!
The most famous of all Messengers!

And when they all came (to Jerusalem), you led them in prayer,
You were above all the other Messengers!

May Allah’s salawat always cover,
That most noble, most illuminated face,

(Our shaykh al-Ja’fari guides us, saying:
Go back and re-visit the best of people)