Hamzah Wald Maqbul – 15 Ramadn 1442 Late Night Majlis The Scourge of God ESA
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We've reached this Mubarak 15th night of Ramadan.
It is the last night of the first
half of this Mubarak month.
Allah
accept from us whatever good that we did,
and forgive us whatever laziness that we showed
and whatever
lack
of gratitude we showed for this blessing.
And may Allah
give us from the Anwar and the Barakat
and his and what remains in it. Amin.
I wanted to continue, reading,
from,
His
Saviors of the Islamic Spirit.
Although we've completed the
chapter about the biography of Iz, ibn Abdul
Salam Sultanulullahama,
And there remains,
one more biography
in this volume
after it, which is that of Maulana Jalaluddin
Rumi.
But there's a a a kind of an
interlude chapter between the 2,
which has to do with
the, discussion of the Mongols,
and their invasion and their
destruction of
the Muslim heartlands.
And I think it's really you know, it's
good. It's not necessarily the, quote, unquote, the
biography of a particular wali or whatever,
but it's a good discussion to have. We
should talk about it.
Because
oftentimes, I see a type of complacency
amongst people,
which is like, oh, you know, like,
the companions were in such a era that
if they left 1 tenth of the deen,
they would have been destroyed. And, you know,
we're in an era that
if we work you know, if we make
amal, if we practice 1 tenth of the
deen, we'll be saved. I think people are
a little bit too quick to default to
that situation.
Yes. There will be a time when a
person who practices even 1 tenth of the
din will be saved.
However, to kind of make yourself go to
the bottom of the barrel so quickly
and
try to
appropriate
that
status for us
who live in
a situation of Amin and Aman, of
peace and safety and
of security
and of plenty,
not just in the way of economic benefit,
but we have massaged.
We're able to pray
in such a way that many people in
the Darul Islam aren't able to. I know
people brothers who I don't wanna name names
of countries because my point is not to,
like,
you know, cut down the people of one
home or another. They're all Muslims,
But there, you know, there are people complaining
about particular Muslim country where they're,
you know, literally, there's a curfew. You can
do anything you want to right until, like,
10 minutes before Isha,
and the curfew is, all the way until
Fajr is over. So, basically, all, like, Muslim
Ramadan mastered activities,
they're they're more or less banned.
And,
then the curfew is over as if corona
doesn't exist, you know, from 8:8 in the
morning until, like, 7 at night.
And,
so but, like, somehow, only the masjid is
the place that people are gonna get transmission.
You can't space in the masjid. You can't
put masks on in the masjid.
That's not gonna help, but you can go
and do anything else you want to during
the day. I mean, we're not living in
those situations here in America.
Maybe some listeners are,
but most of the people who listen are
either from the United States of America or
some other former British colony
or from Britain itself.
And,
we're not living in that situation. We're not
living in those in those in those, you
know, situations.
We have access to to. We have access
to. We have access to.
We have access to. We have access to
books. We know how to read and write.
The this, you know, ban is happening in
English, which is, you know, for better or
worse, it is a common language of the
entire world.
And, you know, the works of
various different cultures and civilizations and traditional traditions
of learning, if they don't produce original works
in English, they at least are producing translations
into English.
We're not really we don't have it that
bad. Even those of us who do have
it bad don't have it that bad compared
to other people in the world. And so
for us to kinda get to the bottom
of the barrel and be despondent and, like,
kinda write ourselves off, I think it's kind
of bogus. I think it's uncalled for, and
it's unbecoming of a believer.
And so it's good to read a little
bit about,
the time when really things were falling apart,
when people thought it that this is so
bad. If this isn't, you know, the end
of the world, we don't know what is.
And how there were some people who were
very despondent,
and they gave up.
And they walked off, the court, and they
quit.
And there were still some men
from this Ummah
who stood and said that, well, if this
is how it's gonna end, this is how
it's gonna end. But we're gonna go down
with honor. And who knows, maybe Allah will
still give us from his help and we'll
do something. We'll do something good. We'll do
something with the generations will will make for
us for.
And remember, after the Mongol invasion, the, you
know, Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire,
you know, the his son, Shah Abdul Aziz,
you know, all of the all of the
of
the Ottoman Empire. Remember Sheikh Usman Danfodio in
in West Africa,
just to name a few examples. And what's
in the ilm of Allah Ta'ala is greater
than what we what we think we know.
All of these beautiful blessings Allah gave
after after that,
after the Muslims witnessed their great metropoli being
emptied, literally emptied, killed, you know,
house by house, street by street, neighborhood by
neighborhood,
depopulated,
through a process of
genocide. And still,
by Allah's we've you know, things were built
up again, and there's still so much in
the entire world benefit, not just the entire
world benefited from the that came from that.
We need to we need to we need
to think about those days and learn about
those days so that we also don't, you
know, you know, tap out so quickly.
And we also have a little bit of
a backbone. And we also, show
some thanks to Allah for the blessings that
he gave us,
and,
also show thanks by defending those blessings and
by
working, to protect them and to move them
forward,
rather than taking them from for granted and
then losing them because of our,
incompetence
and our poor attitude, and then afterward pretending
like it was a foregone conclusion.
Nothing is a foregone conclusion except for Allah
helps the one who asks him,
and Allah forgives the one who seeks forgiveness
and Allah is with the one who says
Otherwise, nobody knows what's gonna happen tomorrow. And
what's gonna happen for the person who believes,
we know it's gonna be good. So just
to have, like, a pessimistic attitude, it's it's
not really compatible with imam.
The Tartars,
the scourge of God.
This the Tatara
is the name of a a particular tribe.
They are not Mongols, but they're like the
cousins of the Mongols and of the Turks.
And for whatever reason in the eastern lands,
the
the word
becomes a synonym for for Mongols perhaps because
the you know, before the Mongols became like
a big thing, the Tatars were more well
known,
in the in the lands of Islam. And
so when they saw them when they saw
the Mongols, they kinda identified them as Tatars.
In English, they're they they write instead of
Tata, they write tartar,
with r before the second t. I'm not
a 100% sure about this etymology, but I
feel like this is also itself like,
some sort of play on words,
that the Tartarus is the underworld,
in Greek mythology, that this is somehow like
a
kind of upgraded, heinous description of them. I'm
not a 100% sure about that. If somebody
has some knowledge about this, they're more than
welcome to to weigh in, and I'd be
happy to share.
But, because in,
in in the the kind of Arabic old
school Arabic,
literature and Persian literature from those who first
had to deal with the the Mongols as
a world power. They used to describe them
as Tatars.
You'll see that,
that that expression is favored by,
many people are conversant in those languages. So
it seems that the translators,
the translator of this book, he he preferred
that word instead of the word Mongol.
This is the Tartars, the scourge of God.
The causes of the Tartar invasion.
Islam was confronted with another danger in the
7th century after Hijra unparalleled
in the annals of the world, which was
about to wipe it out of existence. This
was the invasion of the wild and savage
hordes of Tartars who issued forth from the
Mongolian steppe
and overpowered almost a whole Islamic world with
lightning speed.
The immediate cause of the Mongol invasion can
be attributed to a grievous mistake of Allah
Uddin Mohammed,
the Shah Khorasan.
Khorasan is a a place in,
in in modern Uzbekistan.
Generally, people know, Al Kharizmi.
Khorasmi
is a a famous mathematician,
from from that time.
But Khorasan is a is a city, and
then it becomes a state in in Central
Asia
that, Allahu al Din Muhammad Shah,
the the king of Khorasan.
A body of traders who had arrived from
Mongolia,
was put to death.
So there's a body of traders, Mongolian traders
who were trading in in,
in Khorasan, and they were treacherously killed. They
were apprehended for no reason, and they were
put to death.
And when, Genghis Khan,
also known as Genghis Khan in in in
standard English, when Genghis Khan,
deputed an embassy to inquire to the reason
for it,
Mohammed Shah replied by killing the envoy too,
the ambassador.
And this is just
just to add. There's a long story. He's
he's really summarizing. There's a long story between
different court factions,
between different court factions.
Basically, one trying to set up the other
or make the other one look bad or
embarrass the other. And they thought that these
are just, like, some, like, weird nomads from,
like, way up, like, somewhere by Siberia. So
they'll just kill them and, like,
you know, it'll be just like a like
a pawn like sacrificing a pawn on a
chessboard.
And,
boy, were they wrong. And, they weren't wrong
because it happened to be Mongols. Well, that's
kind of why they're wrong as well. But
in a more profound way, you just don't
do that. It's haram. It's considered treachery.
Then afterward, you can also think about what,
you know, what the attitude of that government
was,
that, then executed the, Mongol, embassy that was
demanding,
to know why why were there people put
to death.
And
even if that embassies
or those ambassadors or emissaries said something or
did something wrong, it is from ancient times,
considered to be treachery to kill
an ambassador or a messenger no matter how,
heinous the message they carry is. And for
this reason, the
prophet
also didn't kill,
emissaries.
There was an emissary sent to the
from Musa'il Abdul Khazab who,
claimed
of Nabuah prophecy
falsely, and the messenger of Allah
was upset when he heard,
the message being carried by them that he
said to them, if it wasn't considered treachery
to kill a messenger,
I would have surely had you put to
death even for carrying this message.
And,
if, you know, the point is is that
if the messenger of Allah
in that scenario wouldn't have done that, there's
no real excuse for them to have killed
this, Mongol embassy.
And so, Molana says this is, he says
that,
when Genghis Khan
deputed an embassy to inquire,
into the reasons for it. Mohammed Shah replied
by killing the envoy too.
On receiving the news of this outrage,
upon international courtesy, the Mongol,
Hakan,
Genghis Khan,
unloosened the whirlwind of savagery upon the world
of Islam. So you can, you know, imagine
that they're not excited about this happening.
However, if one do one were to look,
into the moral
behavior and attitudes of ancient nations, particularly
those relating to the Bani Israel,
as well as their destruction and massacre, demolition
and sacrilege of Jerusalem.
And the reasons therefore described in the Quran,
one can clearly see with insight provided by
scripture
into the nature of historical process, that the
reason for converting, the Islamic world into a
vast charnel house
was not, a solitary act of cruelty
on the part of a reckless and haadi
sovereign.
So he's saying, you know, as dumb as
what Mohammed Shah did, you can't blame him
for all of it.
As the Quran tells us, it was certainly
not due to the mistake of a single
individual that the storm of death and destruction
burst forth on the entire world of Islam.
If we were to cast a glance over
the religious, moral, social and political conditions of
the Muslim peoples of those days, there would
be no difficulty in finding out the reason
for this calamity.
Such a survey would amply bear out that
the carnage did not take place,
all of a sudden. It had deeper and
far reaching reasons than those narrated hitherto by
the historians.
We shall have a look into these reasons,
into the political situation and the social condition
of Muslim society over a century or more
prior to the Mongol invasion.
After the death of Saladin in 589 after
Hijra, the vast
empire
carved out by him split up into several
independent principalities and kingdoms headed by his sons
and other successors.
Like many other founders of the empires, the
successors did not possess the talent of their
progenitor.
And what was more, they continued to fight
each other for a fairly long time.
Some of these, did not even hesitate to
seek the existence of the crusaders against their
own brothers,
an instance of which has already been cited
in the previous section.
The whole Islamic world was in fact in
a state of chaos,
nor was to be found peace and tranquility.
A moral and social, disintegration was at work,
which was clearly visible in the rapidly deteriorating
political situation.
The Crusaders were again making inroads into Muslim
territories and had captured the lands
emancipated from their clutches by Saladin.
All of all those factors had already contributed
to the repeated famines and epidemics. A fertile
country like Egypt was so devastated by fratricidal
warfare,
brothers fighting against brothers,
between Al Malik al-'Adl and his nephew and
Malik al Athwal,
that when the floods in the Nile failed
in 5, 97,
after Hijra, the country was overtaken by such
a severe famine that the people had to
take resort to cannibalism.
Death stalked over the land, killing the people
in such large numbers
that the dead had to be buried without
shrouds.
The analyst,
meaning the historian Abu Shama, relates
that Sultan
al Malik al A'adhil provided shrouds for 220,000
dead bodies in one single month.
People began to take the dogs and humans,
humans flesh without any feeling of revulsion, may
they began to eat them.
Innumerable children were eaten away.
Allah protect us from ever seeing such calamity.
Ibn Kathir writes that a stage came when
the children and youth of tender age were
all eaten up and people began to kill
one another in order to satisfy their hunger.
It's
in his and it's not in his tafsir,
it's in his tariq, in his history.
These were grim reminders of God calling people
to a sincere penitence for their sins and
mending their ways.
The ravages of famine and pestilence were followed
by a severe and widespread earthquake,
which hit the region covering Syria, Asia,
minor, meaning Anatolia, what's now Turkey,
and Iraq.
The devastation and destruction wrought by the earthquake
can be judged from the fact that in
the town Nablus in Palestine and its surrounding
district, 20,000 people were crushed under falling houses.
Another historian writes in Mirat Zaman,
that 11,
11, a 100000 people died as a result
of this
earthquake. On one hand, these natural calamities were
visiting the Islamic world with unwelcome regularity, and
on the other, fraticidal
feuds, forays,
feuds and forays were continuing unabated.
In 601 a h,
2 chiefs belonging to the same family, Qathada
Husseini of Mecca and Salim Husseini of Medina
were locked in the hotly contested battle.
That 2 people from the house of the
prophet
should be fighting each other in the sacred
lands.
In 603
after hijra, the deadly feuds between the Khawis
of Afghanistan
and the ruler of Khwarazam,
flared up, which, encouraged the Muslims to waste
their energy and power by shedding each other's
blood.
This was the state of affairs on one
side,
while the Christendom had, inflamed another crusade
on the other barely 2 years after the
death of Saladin,
and landed its forces on the Syrian coast
in 604 after Hijra.
By the way, this
you know, someone might say, well, okay. Well,
earthquakes and things like that, you know, you
you attribute them to people's sins, but you
don't know if they're really, attributed to people's
sins or not. Yes. This is true.
Although we know in general that people's
that people's,
iniquities,
bring
calamity and tragedy from Allah
on the land. Especially those that are performed
shamelessly and those are performed publicly without any
remorse.
However,
know, sometimes
earthquakes happen to good people too.
Sometimes floods and these types of famines, they
happen to good people as well.
But the thing
that I want you to take a look
at is, one, is that human society, the
way it is, is that when people are
are on the ball, they can deal with
things. They can deal with things. They can
deal with plague. They can deal with pestilence.
They can deal with,
earthquakes. They can
react to these things when their eye's on
the ball,
when they're on task, when society is working
toward something good, When people are just busy
trying to ingratiate themselves, trying to make a
buck off of each other, trying to fight
for,
name and fame and, you know, to see
who sits on the throne,
then
you're no longer able to react to these
things properly.
And, you know, the people are the ones
who who die and and and are harmed
from it.
Further than that, you know, what Moana is
mentioning about people fighting each other.
I heard in the
Allah give health and long life,
an author attributed to the prophet
that the place
in which a believer is killed,
that
the and the curse of Allah reigns on
that place for 40 days
because of the heinousness of
and the odiousness of what happened to Allah
in in Allah's,
site that that this is
a sacrilege and this is a blasphemy that
happened, that someone should take the life of
a believer,
unjustly.
And so imagine what does it mean that,
you know, brothers are fighting against brothers, and
one statelet is fighting against the other statelet.
And I have no no remorse and no
reservation in saying that, you know, Muslim countries
nowadays,
yeah, they behave badly with each other. But,
like, when they take arms against each other,
they fight each other and spill each other's
blood, this is completely a blasphemy. It's a
curse. May Allah
wipe out those people who would do that.
There has to be a better way of
working out your problems than by unsheathing your
swords,
literally or figuratively against one another.
And it opens the door also for,
other enemies
who care neither for Allah or his
nor for the welfare of the women, children,
and for the common folk,
from outside. And this is exactly what happened.
Malana continues that this is the state of
affairs on one side while the Christendom had
inflamed another crusade on the other barely 2
years after the death of Saladin
and landed its forces on the Syrian coast
in 604,
after Hijra.
The rulers of Al Jazeera
were secretly
in league with the, Farangi,
with the Franks,
and 607.
Jazeera is the northern part of Iraq, the
part that's between the the Tigris and the
Euphrates. It's not what nowadays, we talk about
the jazirat Al Arab is something different. The
jazirah, the province,
is basically Northern Iraq.
It says that, while, Damietta,
in Egypt, Dimyap,
a city of considerable military importance, had fallen
to the Crusaders in 616.
In the metropolis of Islam, Baghdad,
the magnificence and splendor of the Calais Court,
copied from the etiquettes and ceremonials,
observed by the Iranian and Persian,
Iranian, Persian, and Byzantine emperors,
had touched the summit of extravagance. It is
difficult to imagine the wealth amassed by such
personal servants of, the calas as pages,
cupbearers,
intendants of wardrobe who normally entered,
service merely as slaves.
The annual income from the property acquired, by
Alauddin,
Tabarasih
al Zahiri,
a slave purchased by the
Khalifa al Zahir,
is
reported to have been as much as 300,000
dinars. A dinar is a gold coin,
of 4 grams, so about $200 or so.
Very, very rough estimate,
per per dinar.
So it's reported to have been as much
as 300,000
dinars.
The house built by him in Bawdad was
conspicuous for size and beauty.
Similar was the case with other state officials.
Mujahiduddin
Abek,
Salah, Abdul Ghani, only to name a few.
The former had an annual income
of 5 lakh dinars. Lak is a a
a anglicized
Indian word meaning a 100,000.
So 500,000
dinars in annual income.
While the latter,
although
an illiterate
person lived like a prince,
Analysts have left staggering accounts of their lavish
expenditures on the marriage of their sons and
daughters.
On the other hand, the teachers of celebrated,
the celebrated
Madrasa, Mustansaria,
were doled out such paltry sums, which bore
no comparison to the wages paid to the
meanest of state officials.
The 2 erudite scholars and professors, sorry, the
most erudite scholars and professors did not get
more than 12 dinars a month, while the
servant,
of a,
a grandee of the Abbasid regime could spend
400,000 dinars on a marriage and pay another
300,000
as the price of a bird brought for
him from Mosul.
And to be sure, these are not the
salaries that are fixed for these people. These
are basically the income of illicit
deals and bribes that were
made in order to have access,
to government.
The royal processions of the caliph were on
occasions, on the occasion of Eid, and to
mark the anniversary of their succession to the
throne, were seized as an opportunity for ostentatious
display of royal pomp and pageantry.
The whole Baghdad came out to witness these
processions in a mood free and easy,
amusing and entertaining itself, and oblivious of even
obligatory congregational prayers of the salat.
In 640 after Hijra, the royal procession taken
out on the occasion of Eid terminated after
nightfall with the result that most of the
people witnessing the
procession performed Eid prayers just before midnight.
Again in 644, a large number of people
missed the prayers on the occasion of and
performed the same, at the time of sunset.
The usual mode of making
obeisance to the caliph was
to bow almost to the ground or to
touch the ground with one's nose, but nobody
felt in it anything opposed to the teachings
of the Sharia or degrading to his independent
and manly character.
The confiscation of private property had become a
common affair. Illegal gratification by officials was widely
prevalent. Immodesty and grossness of conduct was on
the increase.
The Ba'athinites,
which were the cult of
Ismaili,
Shias that were,
that ruled Egypt before they're dislodged by Saladin
Ayubi, but they still were very much present
in the Muslim world.
The Bateinites and other charlatans and swindlers were
basking in sunshine.
Everyone seemed to be after wealth. Love of
music had grown almost into a craze. In
short,
common pursuits of people and the social moral
disintegration of society through a lurid light,
on the state of chaos, then prevailing in
the Muslim world.
This was a time when Mongols were devastating
Turkestan and Iran, and were casting a covetous
glance over
Baghdad. The year 626,
began, writes Ibn Kathir,
with
the indecisive yet sanguinary
battles between the monarch of, monarchs of the
house of, the Ayyubids.
Such a state of chaos prevailed in Baghdad,
the center of the caliphate,
that from 640,
to 643,
no arrangements could be made by the caliph
for sending out Hajj parties,
nor was, the covering of the Kaaba sent
by the Khalifa.
For 21 days, the walls of the holy
shrine remained without a cover, which was taken
as an, taken as an ill omen by
the people.
Ahmed Abu Abbas succeeded his father,
Al Khalifa Al,
Mustafi,
in 5/75,
after hijra,
under the title of Nasruddin
Allah.
He had an opportunity to rule for 46
years. His reign was the longest one ever
enjoyed by any Abbasid caliph yet, perhaps. It
was also the darkest of all regimes
of the,
house of the Abbasids.
Historians have severely criticized this regime for tyranny
and maladministration.
The historian in Mahadis Abin Athir writes, he
was a tyrant who ill treated the populace.
He was a tyrant that ill treated the
populace. Iraq was devastated,
during his, regime. Its population migrated to neighboring
countries, and their possessions were confiscated by the
caliph.
He gave contradictory orders, rescinded the orders given
by him a day earlier.
Being too much interested in sport and pastime,
he had prescribed a special uniform which could
be put on only by those permitted to
take parts in gymnastics and athletic sports.
His orders so severely curtailed the sports that
these activities, practically came to an end in
Iraq.
His interest in entertainment
had grown almost into a craze.
Iranians,
accused him of inviting the Mongols to attack
the Muslim territories and hatching a conspiracy for
the same.
And Nasruddin
Allah died in 6/22,
and al Mustansar Bilhah seated ascended the throne.
He was a just, mild, benevolent, and pious
ruler, recalling the rightly guided caliph, but unfortunately,
he did not get enough time to reform
the administration.
He was succeeded by his son, Mu'tasim Billah,
Mustaasim
Billah affan in 640.
He too was pious,
and just as a sovereign who never touched
wine nor indulged in immodest acts.
He had committed the Quran in memory and
observed,
fast on Mondays Thursdays in addition to, those
during the month of Ramadan and Rajab.
He is reported to have been punctual in
the performance of prayers, but according to, he
was too mild and miserly and also lacked
foresight.
Inshallah, we'll continue,
the description of the Muslim world on the
dawn of Mongol conquest,
tomorrow. But I want you to take a
look and see a couple of things. One
is that how are we
resembling those people?
Because we
talk about very incredible personalities
like Sheikh Ib Isabein of the Salam and
like we will when the time comes of
Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi.
But how are we like the good people,
and how are we like the bad people
as individuals and as a society? Are we
the ones that, you know, have these huge,
lavish parties and waste money trying to show
off to each other
and trying to look a certain way or
imitate, you know, certain types of people who
are not really worthy of being imitated?
Are we
doing things in an inefficient way and wasting
energies on those things that really don't matter?
All the while
losing opportunities
to prepare for,
difficulties
or for very, solemn responsibilities
that if we don't prepare for them, we
as a people are going to collapse.
Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, give us,
the tawfeeq of,
you know, not being like,
those people who destroyed,
the Muslim homeland before
and who are destroying it right now. And
make us like those people of Tajdeed, those
people of renewal and revival.
Allah give us. One important reason to think
about these things in Ramadan is what
is that when we take stock, if we
see that things are not going well, at
least we have an opportunity, a very important
and a very powerful opportunity to ask Allah
for his help to turn things around.
Because to turn things around when they've gotten
this bad,
it's not it's not easy.
It's not easy except for for Allah,
with whose help, no challenges insurmountable.