Hamzah Wald Maqbul – 5 Ramadan Late Night Majlis Sayf Al Din Bakharzi Part I Addison 04062022
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Alhamdulillah. We reached this Mubarak 5th night of
Ramadan. Allah
give us from its barakat and from trahamat.
We've reached the midpoint of the first
characterized by Rahma. May Allah give us mercy.
Those mercies that we ask for and those
that we don't even know to ask for,
May Allah preserve those mercies that we know
that we have and those
mercies and great number that we will never
know about.
But Allah was there for us,
to give, them to us and to drown
us in them.
May he be praised for all of the
above.
Such a praise that ultimately he's the only
one who's who knows the true extent of
his praise worthiness.
So we continue,
today,
starting with the
biography of the Sheikh Sifuddin Baharzi.
We mentioned him a couple of times when
talking about the sheikh Najmuddin Kubra,
and in many ways, his story, starts off
within the story of Sheikh Najmuddin Kubra.
Mullajami
he mentions
with regards to the Sheikh Najwad Din
that,
he was a
Wali Taras. People used to call him Wali
Taras,
the one who carves or chisels, or manufactures
saints.
Why?
It says
That he was such a person because of
the
intense,
intense state of
spirituality
inside of him, that when he would cast
his glance on somebody, that person would become
themselves a person of sainthood.
It's said that people would
wander into the Hanukkah.
Mullajami mentioned a businessman from some foreign land,
when just kinda looking around in Khorasan,
wandered into the Hanqah and,
the sheikh Najmuddin asked him,
you know, what are you here for? He
said, I'm just I'm just wandering around trying
to see what's going on in the city.
He says, where are you from? He says,
I'm from such and such land.
And, he basically
sat him down and told him that you're
going to bring people to Allah in your
land.
And he sent him back, and that person
became a sheikh of his people.
Another interesting story about Naswud Din Khobra's Walitarashlik,
if you will, his Walitarashin
abilities,
was that once when the disciples were sitting,
Mullajami mentions
that,
they're sitting listening to a discourse,
and while it was happening, a
a hawk attacked a sparrow.
And the sheikh noticed and he cast cast
his glance on the sparrow.
And those sparrow turned around and attacked the
hawk, until it subdued it. And
these are things that are obviously not normal.
They're obviously not normal.
Now this Walidharas
idea, the idea someone can look at somebody
and turn them into a saint,
this is Fabbat,
in the deen,
by the concept of the Rasool Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam's Mubarak and other turning,
a person into one of his companions.
That one glance,
gave
the companions of Maqam that a lifetime of
prayer and fasting
that those people who accepted the deen and
made good on their deen, that those people
who accepted the deen and made good on
their deen,
from them became the tabireen and the taba
tabireen.
So this is something Fabbat indeed. This is
not Tall Tale. However, whoever claims that they
have this power and this ability is usually
a fraud, and he's selling you something, and
he's trying to basically make some sort of
economic
or personal or political gain from the simple
minded.
Why? Because
a wali is a wali tarash,
and, wilayah has to do with spending your
entire life,
in every single breath,
with your himma being focused, your
complete
power and your complete
aspiration being focused on
pleasing Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in every, every
breath of yours and everything you do.
And it's not in, making a show of,
you know, stupid Waleed tricks or whatever,
that how how can you do this supernatural
thing or the other one. So it did
exist, but people who are,
making claims about themselves usually are a bunch
of jokers and I recommend you stay away
from them.
At worst, you know, tell them to show
you the trick first and then, you know,
see
see how,
how it goes.
At any rate,
sheikh's Najmuddin, you can hear about this Baqarsi
and see, was he wazhi wa lihi of
Allah ta'ala or not and evaluate whether the
claim Muwazami makes about him is,
appropriate
or not.
So we
shift to
we shift to another source,
which
is the rabbi's entry on, Sayfadin Baqarsi.
He mentions that,
he's born in Bahars,
which is a village somewhere between Herat and
Nishapur, Herat being in the
western part of Afghanistan and,
Nishapur being in the Khorasan province of the
modern state of Iran,
in the eastern part.
It's the same area that Imam Ghazali
and a number of other great masha'i of
the sunnah were from. And it was a
place that,
was mentioned by the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam as well,
and a number of aathars ascribed to him
that, he was born in Khorasan in a
place between,
Nisha Pur where imam Muslim is from and,
Herat,
where a number of other masha'ikh were from.
And
that he made Hajj when he was young
and that he spent 11 years in his
youth in Baghdad,
and he spent that time in study,
that,
it said that he heard from,
Iblil Josi, the great Hanbali Fakih, and Muhandid,
and,
great reviver of the deen in his age,
in Iraq. And it said that he also
read from,
Shihabuddin Sohuardi Sahib al Awaref,
the great Sufi Sheikh, not the Shihabuddin,
Sohuardi Maqtul, who is a person who shares
the same
Nisba and the same,
Lakab,
but,
but was a very different person.
And you can contact me more if you're
interested in the,
but it's somewhat of an aside.
It's said that, he traveled to Khorasan and
he studied
the Hidayah,
the same Hidayah that we read in Madrasa
nowadays, the master book of Hanafifeq that, you
know, gives the different differences of opinion on
different messiah and the legal reasonings that underpin
all of them. That he read the Hidayah
despite being a a a Shafi'i in fiqh
like his Sheikh Najmuddin Kubra
and an Athari in his methodology.
That he read the Hidayah from Jalaluddin, the
son of Borhanuddin Marinani,
the author of the Hidayah. He read it
directly from, the author's son himself.
And,
that
before
the events,
happened,
with regards to the shahadat and the martyrdom
of Najmuddin Kubra
that,
Baharzi
came to
Khorasan
and he took the tariqa from Najwad Din
Kubra and he also,
studied from him. And, the habib mentions that
he's a Hafid of hadith,
that he,
is a master. He reached the master level
of hadith and the habib doesn't give out
these,
he doesn't give out these
titles easily or for free.
But he actually attained a great, station in
hadith. And he attributes to him the revival
of the study of Hadith and his age,
in the transaxonian
lands.
And it's said that he so he learns
hadith from Najmuddin Khobra, but he also,
takes the tariqa from him. And there's a
couple of stories Mullajami mentions with regards to
how fervent he was in his, in his
discipleship,
that once he was sitting in the khalwa
and,
the khalwa is what? It's like a spiritual
retreat.
It's
also it's not a baseless thing. It's a
practice
dhikr of Allah ta'ala and you do these
spiritual exercises and you don't talk to people,
you don't meet with people, you don't go
outside, you eat as little as,
possible just to keep yourself alive. You sleep
as little as possible and you spend all
of your your hima and your your your
your focus, your energy, and your strength on,
your spiritual exercises, the worship of Allah to
Allah and,
and straightening out yourself in order to
make the nafs,
subdued so that the light of the can
can emerge
and, you can benefit from it. And this
is again not a completely baseless,
practice. The Rasul sallallahu alaihi wa sallam gave
this ummah the institution of iatikaf, which is
just around the corner, which we've, by the
way, completely, like,
plowed over,
like a snowplow,
that, kicks a rock up and, it breaks
your car's windshield,
which has happened to me before.
What what EATI Cafe is nowadays, you make
friends and,
you know, have a great time of your
life or whatever.
That's fine. You can do all those things,
but that's not that's kinda not what is
supposed to be. Is supposed to be a
person sitting in the masjid in isolation
and not talking people.
If someone says
to you, say
but you don't start the salaam to people.
And, you basically sit in your hujra, you
know, or your
in your tents or whatever and
you do one of 4 things. You read
the Quran or you make dua or you
make the dhikr of Allah Ta'ala or you
pray. Everything else is done like
the way a person goes to the bathroom.
You do it the bare minimum that you
have to. That includes sleeping. That includes eating,
and the like. And so, you know,
the halwa,
even though we made the etikaf even
not like that anymore, the halwa was a
specialized type of etikaf
that the the disciples would take in order
to hone and strengthen their their spiritual,
their spiritual abilities.
So once
Baharzih was sitting in the khalwa and
the sheikh
came and
saw, his fervent
and intense,
preoccupation
with his spiritual exercises
and how difficult it was on him.
And he exclaimed,
He says that I'm a lover and for
me it's acceptable
to constantly be brokenhearted.
But you're a beloved one. You have no
need for, you have no need for being
broken hearted. What need have you for being
broken hearted?
And this was a high praise from the
sheikh. Why?
Because this is a discussion in the books
of the Sufis that what is better. Is
it better to be a lover of Allah
or beloved of Allah? And,
you know, both are good, but and both,
you know, they're not mutually exclusive of one
another. A person can be both at the
same time.
May Allah make us of, those people.
But the superior maqam is that of being
beloved.
The Rasul
the secret is in his name is that
he's Muhammad
not Muhammad.
Even though he is Muhammad, he is the
one who intensely praises Allah to Allah, but
he is the one who is also intensely
praised.
And,
the sheikh Ali Hajwari in the Kasfo Majjubi,
he mentions, which a number
of the Sufia I kiram also mentioned from
the fada'il of the messenger of Allah sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam and his his merits,
and his virtues.
Is that Allah ta'ala when he describes in
the
Quran,
he described
him as but David slew Goliath alayhis salam.
But when it mentions the Rasool
exploits in battle, umarameitaivarameitawalaqinallahualamah,
that, you didn't throw when you threw. It's
a reference to the battle of Hunayn that
you didn't throw when you threw, rather Allah
was the one who threw. Meaning that Allah
attributed
the Rasool sallallahu alaihi wa sallam's actions to
himself and the Rasool sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
was the passive,
madhar of those actions. They passed over him
rather the actions were attributed to Allah Ta'ala
which is the highest attribution a person can
make.
And so he he he says that you
have this inside
of you, that that you're beloved
and, it was a sign of many things
to come. There's another story that Mullajami
mentions,
and I'll spare you my, like, really horrible
Persian reading skills, which probably makes Afghans and
Tajiks and Iranians, etcetera, cringe.
But, you know, we're trying our best here.
Which
is that once there was a wedding party
that came through their part of Khorasam
and the murids, the disciples were
mashallah, all engaged in their fervent,
exercises, spiritual exercises in order to hone and
train the nafs.
It's an understanding that you have to train
the nafs in order or train the the
the the the soul and the spirit in
order to subdue the nafs and in order
to allow this the ruah to rise
and benefit from its light and from its
insights, and from its strength and its connection
to the higher realm.
However, you cannot subdue the nafs so much
that you kill it because with the death
of the nafs, you I mean, you just
die.
That's it. Your vital,
functions cease. And so the nuff has to
be broken like a horse, trained like a
horse or like a dog.
You don't break a horse by killing it
or train a dog by killing it. There
may be some difficulty involved, but the point
is not to kill it, it's to train
it.
And so when this wedding party came, the
sheikh,
Najmuddin
Kubra, he saw this is a great opportunity
to give the, disciples a rest from their
hard spiritual exercises,
and so he,
he gave them all the order
that all of you in this night,
go. You have a break from your mujahhadat,
from your your spiritual struggles and
go and spend the night,
making yourself happy and enjoying
any enjoyment
that you want to as long as it's
not haram. As long as it's not haram.
And so it was basically like the spiritual
equivalent of a cheat day. Like, someone's on
on a diet or whatever. They have a
cheat day that they eat carbs, whatever, once
a month or once a week or whatever.
So that was their cheat day that as
long as you're not, you know, indulging in
something haram, go ahead and,
go ahead and relax your nafs and then
you can come back for your mujahada tomorrow.
And so what happens is around Fajr time
in the morning, the sheikh comes to the
Hanukkah and he sees,
he sees Baharzi
engaged in his devotions and,
in his services and cleaning the Hanukkah and
whatnot while,
in in his acts of worship.
And he asked him. He says, Seifuddin, didn't
I tell you,
to
to spend this night,
in whatever halal and lawful
lazat,
enjoyment,
and whatever thing that makes your, your, you
know, your yourself happy.
Didn't I didn't I order you to do
that? What's what's wrong with you that you're
you're still here in the, you know, in
your
exercises?
And Sefudin replied to him, in all honestly
that
you said that whoever, you know,
you know, whoever
hears this order should go and enjoy themself
and
should do whatever makes them happy.
And he says, what I enjoy
is,
nothing but staying in this,
Hanukkah
and being ready for the service of my
sheikh and, engaging myself
in in my acts of devotion. That these
are the things that genuinely make me happy.
And,
when hearing that, the sheikh was genuinely pleased
and he said to him,
that, may you take,
glad tidings
that the kings will will will come to
your feet one day.
And,
this is essentially
a
a prognostication
about the future that comes true,
with regards to
the, Sheikh,
Saifuddin Baharzi that,
when,
like we mentioned in yesterday's,
Majlis,
the sheikh Majmudin Kubra ordered those from out
of town to go back, to leave.
He ordered,
the safe Sheikh Seifuddin, who wasn't from Khorasan,
to go back to
Khorasan.
I guess you could call it Sis Aksiana,
the the southern the land south of the
Amudaria.
And he
basically
said stick with the sheikh Saaduddin
and the 2 of them took care of
one another. But he also gave him the
instruction that I want you to
keep on your radar and to keep concern
for the lands of Transoxiana,
that when they're garbaged and trashed by the
Mongols,
that they shouldn't be completely lost to the
ummah, that you should do some service in
those places when you're able to. And so
what ends up happening is that the sheikh,
uh-uh, Sayf u Din,
he does that when he's first able to
after the Mongols,
desolated and destroyed Bukhara,
he comes back and,
you know, does service in that place. And
just to give you an idea of how
bad the Mongol desolation of Bukhara was, there
are no buildings from the pre
Mongol
destruction
that are still up except for 2.
1 is the Mazar of Ismail Samani,
the kind of, like, late
Abbasi period warlord,
and, it's a very early building.
It's kind of has, like, a number of,
like, almost Zoroastrian looking, early Aryan looking motifs
in it.
And the reason they say that the Mongols
didn't destroy it is because it was
basically under dust. The dust of the centuries
had accumulated in dirt so that most of
it was underground. They didn't realize how big
of a building it was. It was later
excavated and found to be a very large
and exquisite building.
But the Mongols didn't didn't know that, so
they didn't know there's something there to destroy.
So they just kind of passed it by.
And the other was the minaret of the
uh-uh Kalan Masjid,
the Friday Masjid, main Masjid of Bukhara,
which is is a really impressive and a
really huge minaret.
And they say that, despite destroying the masjid
and
killing everybody in in Bukhara,
Genghis Khan liked the minaret and so he
kept it for the particular purpose of using
it as a watchtower because it had such
a magnificent view of the lands, all around.
It's relatively flat land around that area.
And other than that, everything was completely destroyed.
So it said that, Baharzi,
he came to
he came to Bukhara
and he started to gather people. He started
to speak. He started to teach. He started
to gather people over there and to pray
congregations over there,
and that he,
met the Sheikh Jamaluddin,
bin Ibrahim
Al Mahbubi,
the Muaddith, and he read Sahih Bukhari in
his presence
in Bukhara,
in the year
622 Hijri,
which is interesting. It's the use of the
reading of the hadith,
of the prophet
as a way of gathering people
and a way of reviving their deen and
their sunnah and their knowledge and, also their
civilization,
quite literally,
and that he would hold, wav over there.
He would hold,
exhortations and sermons, give bayans. He would give
the tafsir, the Quran, etcetera etcetera,
so that people would come back and and
settle that place. The people from the countryside
would settle that place, and it wouldn't be
abandoned like the other
desolated cities that were completely destroyed by the
Mongols.
And,
it was successful. People started moving back and
started living there and it got to the
point that,
that that people
not only gathered there together, but they started
hating on the sheikh that there were some
people who were jealous of his
prominent position and the great role he played
in,
resettling Bukhara
and, that some people,
cast aspersions on him and about his aqidah
and about his deen, even though he was
a muhadid
and,
he was a great defender of the sunnah,
in in in in many ways that,
the Ahlul Hadith found praiseworthy.
But, they found, like, little stuff to nitpick
about him, like the fact that he would
pray
in a in jama'ah.
The
is a a particular form of prayer.
I believe in the Hanafi Madhub, it's
considered to be recommended.
Malik considered the the the
narration of the prayer to be spurious,
but, he was
extremely exacting in these matters.
But, it's nothing,
you know, it's nothing horrible. It's something completely
within the ambit of difference of of opinion,
but people made it a big deal in
order to cast aspersions on him.
However, the
prognostication
of sheikh Najmuddin Kubra
regarding Baqarsi that the the rulers will come
to his feet, it's already started coming true.
Mahmoud Balwach,
was a minister,
that worked for the Mongol administration.
He was a Muertazili,
so not a Sunni,
and he was sent by, the Mongols to
to this new
gathering of people who took up residence in
Bukhara
in order to
collect taxes from them, And tax collectors
are not nice people. In the old days,
they would harass and brutalize people so that
people would pay and they would exact punishment
and make examples of people who didn't pay
fast enough and pay a high enough amount.
So you were sent to collect a poll
tax of a dinar from every person and
10% of the
proceeds from trade from Bukhara.
So not a nice person nor,
particularly somebody who one would think would care
for the ulama'ad al sunnah, in particular, Muaddith.
But,
for whatever reason, the Habibi mentions that he
was taken by Baharziz
beauty,
both physical and spiritual,
and
he he somehow believed in the wilayah of
of Baharzi.
And so he came to him and he
gave him a gift of a 1,000 dinars,
of a 1,000 gold coins. It's not a
small amount of, of of money,
and it said that Bakharzih didn't even look
at it. He didn't even look at it.
And,
but this was an illustration of how, even
the Mongol administration
already started for some reason or another having,
giving some sort of credence to him. So
we mentioned that the people,
basically
started to be jealous of Baharzi and speaking
ill of him.
And a charlatan,
who probably had some part to play in
all of this by the name of Taarabi.
People coalesced around him even though he was
not, one of the people who originally,
you know, started to beneficially settle Bukhara.
They started to coalesce around him, and, he
was, kind of like a fake sheikh.
And, he convinced his disciples that somehow he
has control over an army of jinns,
and he gathered them to revolt against the
Mongols. And so they gathered together, and they're
completely unarmed. And they they were convinced that,
Tarabi, their their sheikh,
will summon an army of jinns to fight
the Mongols.
And,
you know, I don't know. I guess the
jinns, were on strike that day,
and,
the Mongols completely cut them into the ground.
The the habib mentions that in an hour,
7,000 people were killed. The first of them
was Taarabi
himself. And,
some of his more fanatical,
disciples said, no. He must have flown away.
You know, he must not have he must
not have been killed,
because they're in disbelief as, you know, cult
members are often in disbelief when, their cult
leaders,
failed to live up to their, promises that
they most fervently
believed without basis.
And it said that from the inhabitants new
inhabitants of Bukhara, nobody survived,
this
second destruction of Bukhara
except for those people who Baharzi himself,
interceded on their behalf with the Mongol administration.
And even then,
they were
branded with,
hot iron on their foreheads,
to teach them a lesson because
this is almost a miracle of that they
even let them survive in the first place.
The Mongols did not take kindly to rebellion
or to people not, following their orders, and
they usually only had one punishment for any
of that, which was death.
But
what happened was that,
that that
it became famous that this man was now
respected by them.
Well, some of the, kind of hater kafirs
of that era,
they started spreading whisperings about this guy in
in,
in Bukhara who has some sort of control
over the local administration,
Mongol administration
over there, and that he secretly harbors designs
of overthrowing the Mongol state and himself making
himself into the new Khalifa.
And so these whisperings were,
said to Baikou,
who was the leader of the great khan
or the brother of the great khan at
that time who the habib mentions and describes
as
Safakan that he was a tyrant and he,
was a great spiller of blood. And he
says,
That, that he killed everybody in Tiramath. He
destroyed Tiramath so so badly that he not
only killed the people, he killed the animals
and the birds.
And any troublemaker,
any, like, foul person that that was around,
all of them went and joined joined his
cause, and his army. That, any person who
hated the Muslims, any person who hated the
people, the sunnah,
thieves, robbers, miscreants, all of them, you know,
went to join him.
And they all started egging him on against
the Sheikh Baharazi,
And, they basically
said, like, you know, who does this guy
think he is? And, like, you know, look,
he's interceding on behalf of the people of
Bukhara,
and he hasn't come to visit you and
pay his, homage to you.
And he just wants to, you know, grow
in power until, he becomes a Khalifa.
And so,
it said that Baikou, this Mongol commander,
he
he ordered that the sheikh Baqharzib be dragged
to him in Samarkand in chains.
And the sheikh,
himself when he was arrested and put in
chains, he
says.
He says that watch. After this humiliation that
they're putting me through, I'll I'll still I'll
still live to see, honor.
And so what happened was,
when he came close to Samarkand,
Baikum basically dies all of the sudden
and, the Mongols let him go and they
think of this as
some sort of supernatural power that he has
because they themselves were relatively
superstitious people.
And so they freed him, and a number
of them actually accepted, Islam at his hands.
And so this is a good,
time, inshallah, to,
save the rest of the, story about the
Sheikh Seifuddin Baqalzi for tomorrow, inshallah.
Allah give us tawfiq, Insha'Allah. Maybe we can
also make intention to sit in khalwa, this
Ramadan,
to sit in in iatikaf, if not for
the full 10 days for those who are
able to. May Allah accept it and give
you hir and barakah.
But at least, you know, the minimum amount
of eretikaf in the Maliki school is from
1 Maghrib to the next,
and there's no etikaf less than that. Although
I do know that there is a difference
of opinion with regards to,
this issue amongst the different
But Allah give us to sit in the
masjid
in silence,
with the exception of returning salams to people
and with the exceptions of our prayers and
our duas and our dhikr,
focusing only on one's relationship with them and
Allah Ta'ala,
allowing the nafs to starve and to be
sleep deprived so that the and its light
can make a shirk like the sun rises
over the dark horizon
and illuminates,
every single direction. May Allah
give us and give us that happiness to
be able to see, like that and strengthen
our connection with the higher realm so that
we don't live and die
like a bunch of people who really are
worthy of being described as descended from monkeys.