Hamzah Wald Maqbul – Aqidah Tahawiyyah Part 1 Tawhid Center MI 08192016
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All praises to Allah
and may his peace and blessings be upon
his servant and messenger,
Saydna
Muhammad the
the scholar of encyclopedic
mastery,
heard just all Islam, the proof of Islam,
Abu Jafar al Warat, the one who,
filled out page after page,
of knowledge. At Tahawi,
he said in Egypt,
which was his place of residence from which
he wrote that this is a
a a remembrance and a testament to the
explication
and the expounding, the explanation of the beliefs
of the people of the sunnah and the
people who hold fast to that that community.
According to the Madhub of the Fuqaha, the
people of understanding of the of Sayna Ibrahim
alaihis salam,
Abu Hanifa Nurman,
Ibn Uthabat al Kufi,
and his 2, students, Abu Yusuf Yaqoob, Ibrahim
Al Ansari,
also known as, Khadi Abu Yusuf
and, Il Imam Mohammed bin Hassan al Shaibani.
May Allah
be pleased with them, and this is what
they believed from the primary,
and and and basic matters of deen. And
this is the way that they,
transacted
in their religion with Allah
the lord of the universe.
So from the beginning,
what does Imam Tawawi do? He does something
which is very important for
anyone who wants to talk about Allah and
his Rasool
which is what he shows is nisba. What
is nisba his connection to whom and through
whom he is getting this information?
We have one thing right off the bat,
which is kind of a a a reprehensible
innovation, if you will, with regarding
the way we speak about deen is that
everybody gets up in front of the mic
and says this is what Allah said and
this is what the Rasool salallahu alaihi wa
sallam said. As if they are the official
representative of Allah ta'ala. Who is the official
representative of Allah ta'ala?
The messenger of Allah salallahu alayhi wa sallam.
And who is the official representative of the
messenger of Allah
The Sahaba
primarily in the people of the the persons
of the
And then after that, in the people of
the Muhajidin and the Ansar,
from the Sahaba. And then after that, the
generality of the Ansar. And then after that,
the, you know, he'll talk about it later
in the book, the the salaf who we
call a salaf of salih, which is not
a modern group. The salaf is who? The
sahaba
the Tabi'in, the people who saw the Sahaba
and believed in Islam, and the people who
then after that,
the the people saw the and believed in
Islam afterward.
And from amongst them, there are many different
pathways.
There are many different pathways that the prophet
sallallahu that you get to the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam and from him to Allah
ta'ala to understand your deen. And he's very
upfront about explaining
it, you know, where what his pedigree is.
This is a statement attributed to,
al Imam
Sufyan,
Ibnur Uyeda
which is what
from Bukhari Muslim, Timothy, Abu Dawood,
Ibnu Maja, Nasai,
all of those collections. And the hadithin are
very strict in who they narrate from from
two points of view. 1, you're familiar with
that they only narrate from somebody who's completely
upright and truthful and knowledgeable and has a
good memory, etcetera.
But also, they'll only should narrate a hadith
from the shortest sonnet possible.
So Imam Bukhari,
he studied from Imam Ahmed bin Hambo, but
he doesn't narrate 1 hadith from him despite
considering him an upright narrator because he heard
all the hadith that Imam Ahmed heard from
somewhere
shorter. Alright. So it's a chain of narration
that you have to make as short as
as possible.
So Imam Muslim studied with Imam as Imam
Bukhari,
but You don't he doesn't narrate from him.
Why?
Because all the Hadith of Bukhari,
had
he have narrates them from somewhere else with
a shorter chain of narration.
And so
the idea is that what when someone comes
in front of you and presents something about
deen.
The sunnah of the people of this ummah
was what? That you present your credentials in
the form of your chain of narration.
It doesn't mean what you're gonna say is
automatically right just because you presented something,
but it gives some sort of context through
which somebody can analyze the validity of what
you're saying, and they can then cross reference
it with what other people are saying. Double
check. Does it line up or does it
not line up?
What we have nowadays, unfortunately, part of the
the
the the spectacle
of what the dean is turning into with
all sorts of crazy people, each one of
them, like, there's a room with 1 scholar
and a 100 clowns. And every single one
of them is standing up and say, I
represent the deen of Allah. I represent the
deen of Rasool Allah sallallahu alaihi
wa sallam. You present you have to present
your credentials. This is why all of these
institutions including
Madahib of there's Madahib not just a there's
Madahib of aqida, there's Madahib of grammar. Nobody
ever argues about those Madahib because nobody studies
those things enough to even know that those
exists.
But one kind of strange misgiving people have
is that don't say you're this school or
you're that school. You're say you're Muslim. We're
all you you united. Say, listen. We're all
Muslims
but this is my pedigree I'm presenting. Where
did this come from? So what did Abdul
Abib Mubarak say? He said, that this chain
of narration is part of the deen. He
said, what? This is part of the deen.
And if it wasn't for this chain of
narration, whoever
wanted to say whatever they wanted to say
would have said whatever they wanted to have
said.
So if someone asks you where did you
you say something to somebody and they ask
where did you hear this from?
What is your
source? Then you shouldn't be upset or you
shouldn't be offended by the question. Rather, you
should be happy that this chain of narration,
there's still some part of it left. That
that sensibility is still there. So, Imam Abu
Jafar Tawawi, despite having been he's having been
a scholar of encyclopedic
encyclopedic
understanding and encyclopedic,
achievement in every single branch of Islamic learning.
This is actually a very short book. This
aqidat Tahawiya is kind of akin to a
pamphlet.
Even then, there'll be many people who will
learn things they didn't know from before regarding
the beliefs of Islam
because of our our our
overconfidence with what we know and our,
under,
exposure to the the branches of learning of
Dean. But it's a very short work. Even
people who have, like, these books that they
that that that are you you can get
from Amazon and whatnot.
The book is very a small amount of
it is actually the.
It's very short
and even then more than half of it
is puffed up because of translation. You could
print it on the front and back of
1 or 2 pages.
It's not really that much material.
But this is the shortest of his works.
His actual, like,
kind of
more magnum opus type works are not are
not in the field of,
rather they're in the field of and hadith.
And they form a kind of a unique,
overlap between,
ifirk and Hadith,
a unique interface between the and the Quran
and Hadith that I can only describe as
each tihad.
So he has a book, for example, which
is called the Sharman al Athar.
The Sharman
al Athar is a voluminous work in which
he takes the messiah of the issues of
the Sharia 1 by 1, and he discusses
what the different imams their positions are. And
then he gives the proofs for,
for each of the positions,
in great detail and in their varying different
types of narration.
And then, he will then attempt to reconcile
and prefer one opinion over another. It's a
multi volume work. The students, of knowledge and
the Madaris will not read it until,
the last year of their studies. And even
then to this day, there are very few
Madaris in the world that will read the
entire book because of the lack of,
or not the lack of the dearth, the
the rarity of finding a
scholar who is competent to teach it because
it is, such a complex work,
of of juristic reasoning. It's very difficult to
find people to teach it. One of my
who's a very avid fan of Imam al
Tawawi.
Also for those of you who are familiar
with Moana Bilal Ansari in in in in
in
Chicago. Mawana Bilal studied,
the specialization in hadith sciences from him. He
used to remark he used to remark that
the students are so afraid of reading,
the of Imam Taha'i that if you ever
wanna hide any money or something in a
madrasah, hide it in the second volume of
his book, nobody will ever open it because,
it's it's a it's a very, like, complicated
technical work. He's a master of he's a
master of the law and the way that
very few people have shown, you know, brilliance
that very few people have shown in the
history of
of of Islamic jurisprudence. And so that's why
that's why he's given the here of Islam.
People like this are a proof of the
validity of Islam. He has another similar workshop,
that
that that that,
interprets certain hadith, the the the meanings of
which are obscure. It's a very long work
and it it quotes extensively from other hadith
and from the Quran. There's one,
hadith living hadith,
from the Indian subcontinent who has been resident
in Makkamukarama for almost a decade now. His
name is Mawana Latifur Rahman Beharayci.
Beharayci. He I I went and visited him
last year,
in his essentially, it's a cell in a
masjid in in in, not like prison cell,
but like like a very, like,
Spartan living, setup with a computer and just
books everywhere in.
And, one of the he put out was
the
of Imam Tawawi.
The narrations of Imam Tawawi in 13 volumes.
All the hadith from that that he narrates
through all of his works.
He's a he's an accomplished.
This is despite having been after,
the age of the the
the 6 imams.
He still doesn't need to quote other people
for hadith. He still has the hadith and
narrates them individually with chain of narration on
his own.
So he's one of the later,
later age, great that
that has his own
and chains of narration for hadith. He doesn't
have to say that Bukhari said this and
Muslims said that. He has his own shorter
chains of narration that are shorter and more
concise than than than what he could have
narrated from a book.
But, Imam Taha'i
was was in its truly an encyclopedic
scholar of deen. Don't be deceived by the
shortness of this book and the simplicity of
this book. He wrote this as an act
of piety for the lay lay people like
you you and me,
that we could have something with regards to
teaching.
And the reason despite his preoccupation
with with with,
very theoretical
level legal matters.
Despite his preoccupation with those things, he wrote
this as a sadaqa for for the generality
of the Muslims,
so that we can have a concise place
where all agreed upon matters
with regards to deen can be gathered together
and can be learned and taught. And it's
a book that the Ummah has,
essentially given its acceptance. And,
it the Ummah has been teaching and learning,
and even though there are different schools of
thought even within
the with regards to,
all of them, they accept this book as
as being an excellent starting point,
to learn what the beliefs of the and
JAMA' are. This book, all the points that
are mentioned in it are completely,
completely
unanimously agreed upon with the exception of a
couple of them.
And, those couple that are not you know,
that there's some difference of opinion with regards
to,
we'll take time to mention that inshallah. We'll
point that out. But even then, you'll see
the differences of opinion are not really a
big deal. Most of them are things that
don't occur to regular people when they think
about the deen. And,
many of them, you know,
they make sense once you explain them why
why it is. It's not really such a
big deal.
And, really, the overwhelming majority of the book
is something that that everybody agrees upon.
And, we'll talk about the the nature of
of of the book in that sense as
well. A little bit about Imam al Tawawi.
Imam al Tawawi was alive and mister,
in the generation after Imam al Shafi'i.
So we'll say 2 generations removed from the.
Right? So you see, for example,
you wanna have a kind of, like, a
chain of narration
in terms of generations.
Imam Tawawi, his,
his
his, uncle, his khal, his mom was Imam
al Musani.
His his mother's brother is Imam al Musani,
who is,
from amongst the students of Imam Shafi'i, probably
the one who is,
who most understood
the theoretical underpinnings of his mad hub. And
Imam al Bouzani
pens a number of theoretical works regarding the
Shafei madhhab.
And, he,
you know, he's he's considered an authority
with regards to it, and he contributes a
great deal to
its development and its codification.
So his mother is the sister of Imam
al Muzani. His mother also is a
scholar of the Shafi'i Madhab. Imam al Shafi'i
praised her and called her
Fari. And in those days, you know, the
didn't used to say these types of things
for free. Rather,
she actually was a person of knowledge who
had a a a great deal of research
and a great deal of learning.
And, although her brother definitely has a more
far more prominent position than her,
but Shafiri
was known to have praised her for being,
herself a person of learning.
So the 2 of them are the students
of who? Of Imam Shafiri.
Imam Shafi'i is a student of Imam Mohammed
bin Hassan al Shaibani, who was a student
of Imam Abu Hanifa. Imam Shafi'i is also
a student of,
he's also a student of Imam Malik. You
read the Muwata from Imam Malik directly
and what as a teenager, and Malik died
shortly thereafter. So I think he was 18
years or so when old when Imam Malik
died.
In Madinah Munawara. And then
Abu Hanifa,
is this you know, is is the great
sheikh of the era of the Tabireen.
He actually met Saidna Anas bin Malik
as well as another handful of Sahaba narrated
a hadith from them
Malik, all of his teachers worthy,
the Tabireen,
the students and the freed slaves and the
sons of the Sahaba
So this is their sunnah to the age
of Nagua. So they're not really so far
removed from that age. Abu Jafar al Taha'i
is a resident in Egypt.
Egypt is the place where Imam al Shafi'i
fled from Iraq
during
the, which is the first inquisition of religious
violence that occurred in the,
in the age of the Muslims at the
hands of a heretical section known as the.
And we'll talk about their beliefs a little
bit later,
in the book because many of them are
addressed
as well. But Imam Al Shafi'i fled from
them and then their persecution, their inquisition,
Imam Ahmed bin Hambo
who was also a contemporary of Al Shafi'i,
He'll get caught up in it and he'll
be jailed and beaten.
Severely persecuted during that during that difficult episode
in the intellectual history of the Muslims.
So what happens is that Egypt,
the 2 great imams that are the main
students of Imam Malik,
Abdullah bin Ibn Wahab and Abdul Rahman ibn
Qasim.
The 2 of them, they're Egyptians and they
go back to Egypt. Ibn Wahab is a
prolific Muhadith as well,
and he is the successor of Malik in
his hadith.
And Ibn Wahab's
hadith also come in the Siha Sitta, which
is a great achievement. Like I said, you
know, even even Imam Ahmed Bin Hamble is
not narrated from in in Qari.
So it's a great achievement that it only
means that that if you have certain hadith
that nobody else has with a shorter chain
of narration, then they'll narrate from you. Otherwise,
they won't narrate
from you. So Ibn Wahab is both
a and also he's a of the highest
order. Abdul Haman and his hadith are narrated
in the sun and of Imam al Asahi
as well, and he is also a great
in Egypt. And so most Egyptians are Malakis
at this time. And when Imam al Shafi'i
comes, Imam Shafiri comes and he opens up
his madrasa, which is, you know, this is
more of a discussion of than it is,
but it's more based on the,
you know, it's based on the
or the kind of surface level meanings of
the hadith rather than
a kind of more philosophical
interpretive methodology.
And, what happens is that after some time,
he gets a great number of followers.
Now
this is kind of like a,
a a a fake fake or false belief
that people have, which is that the or
of anything else really are something that divide
the. What's the point of them is what?
It's so you can show your nisbet, your
pedigree of where your illness coming from, that
you're not just making it up, that it
came through a chain.
Although it is true, it is correct that
the people of the Madhhabs fought with one
another and bickered with one another throughout the
history of Islam,
The context of the bickering is something very
important to understand because it will also tell
us something regarding
the situation we're in nowadays,
which is
what? That the bickering
never happened in the madrasah.
People had adab and respect for one another
and there's an idea that there are certain
things people have difference of opinion about. Even
the Sahaba and
whom had differences of opinion about certain matters.
The bickering only happened when it came to
power, political power and political positions.
So the 1st intermed have at least in,
right, the 1st intermed have beef that happens
amongst the people of the sunnah. It happens
in Egypt.
And it happens between the and the malakis,
and it doesn't happen because of issues. It
happens because of a fight over who will
become the, who will become the judge of
Egypt.
Will they appoint a Maliki as a judge
or will they appoint appoint a Shafari as
a judge? Now the 1st generation of,
they considered the judgeship to be
to be something to stay away from.
Imam Abu Hanifa was,
imprisoned
in solitary confinement by Abu Jafar al Mansur,
the Abbasi Khalifa,
and some
say that he was then poisoned to death
within that imprisonment. He was thrown into a
dried up well, essentially.
His students used to come and take lessons
from him, and he died in this this,
imprisonment because he refused to be because he
refused to be the Qadi. He refused to
be the judge for a certain, set of
reasons which we may go into a little
bit later.
Imam Malik,
himself also he was offered by Abu Hussein
Abu Jafar al Mansur
that we will write your in
the
sheets of gold and hanging for hanging from
the Kaaba and make you, make your,
the law of the land. And Malik said,
no. The sunnah sunnah of the prophet
spread throughout the different,
the different lands of Islam and the people
who carried Islam to those different places each
took with them a certain understanding of the
sunnah of the prophet
and it's unreasonable
to,
ask them or to force them to give
up the the part of the sunnah that
they're familiar with and impose something,
alien from the outside.
So he refused as well. Imam al Shafi'i
fled from
fled from
from
Baghdad, from the seed of power, and he
was removed from this fitna, Aslan when the
mehna when the inquisition started.
And Imam,
Imam Ahmed bin Hamble,
he also,
he he was reported to have
despised
the so much that one of his sons
became a. He became a judge in the
in the in the court,
and, he sent,
some bread to the house as a gift.
And, Imam Ahmed refused to eat from it
and everyone in the house refused to eat
from it. And,
someone said, well, we don't wanna throw it
away. Can we just give it away to
the beggars?
And, this is the amount of love that
they had for Imam Ahmed. So the Imam
Ahmed says, you can give it to the
beggars, but you have to tell them what
the source of the
the the the bread is, the the income
that purchased it purchased it because they knew
he he despised the working for the government.
And so what happens is that,
the
the they tried to distribute this bread and
none of the beggars would eat from it.
So the person the person who was trying
to distribute it, he had a frustration. He
then
asked,
asked how long is the life of the
fish
that ate that bread?
Someone said 4 years. So he said, I
won't eat fish from the river 4 years,
but out of Taqwa, he never ate fish
from the river ever again.
That's how much he despised working for the
government of the because of the the that
that governments inevitably do on people.
And, you know, the idea is that later
on, the righteous will become judges. But the
fear that the the the the first generations
had regarding being a judge is that if
you become the judge and the government puts
you in a really bad position,
in order to somehow ratify or justify
some that they're doing, the people afterward will
consider this to be a precedent of deen
and will consider it to be a, you
know, to be something that this part of
the religion.
And they were acutely aware of their position
in the in the history of our civilization.
If I do something stupid,
pardon the,
form of expression. If I do something stupid,
people just say this is hamza. Right? Imam
Malik, Imam Hanifa, these people knew that the
generations that came afterward will hang on their
every word and consider it to be a
representation of the sunnah of the messenger of
Allah So they were extremely cautious about it.
So Imam
had a committee of 40
that were masters of every science
that were masters of every science starting from
and
then going to hadith, tafsir,
Arabic grammar,
etcetera.
And they sat together and they would deliberate
on issues and that's what the is.
If that they if they agreed on something,
they would write that they agreed on this
issue that this is the hukum. And if
they disagreed, they said there's a descent on
this and Abu Hanifa's opinion is this and
Mohammed's opinion is this, Abu Yusuf's opinion is
this, Zufar's opinion is this,
Ibnu Ziyad's opinion is this, etcetera. And they
would move on from that. So they register
the descent.
And descent and the, you know, the madhab
then grows up around that around this process.
So Imam al Hanifa during his lifetime before
this project was completed, he refused take
the
judgeship.
After his this project is completed where they
go through all the messiah of the sharia
and these things are written down and proliferated,
then they start accepting the judgeship. The first
the supreme court judge or literally the judge
of judges,
in the history of Islam is who? Is
Qadhi Abu Yusuf. Harun Rashid will elevate him
to this position. He's essentially second in power
politically only to the,
to the
to the the the the
caliphate. And, even then in some ways, he
holds more sway over the people in the
sense that he is a supreme arbiter of
what the deen of Allah is,
in the state. Whereas the, the Khalifa has
a more of an executive role.
But, in terms of explaining to the people
and expounding to the people what the deen
is and isn't, he had a very unique
function.
And so, imam,
imam,
Muhammad, the other major companion of Abu Hanifa,
he despise the fact that
that Abu Yusuf took the the judgeship.
And so Abu Yusuf says to his younger
brother and companion,
says that you won't die before Allah
test you with the judgeship as well, which
is what happens.
So then after after after, Abu Yusuf passes
away,
then, Imam Mohammed is forced to take the
judgeship as well and he held it for
a very short amount of time before he
died. But at any rate, this was also
very important that this transition occur. After this,
then all the people, all the will start
to take the judgeship because there's no longer
a,
a a fear
that
confusion regarding deen will go through the masses.
Why? Because the the is already written. At
any rate, so this is, what happens. We're
coming back to Egypt. Why is Tawawi in
Egypt? And why is Tawawi a Hanafi if
he is from, like, the royal family of
the
in some sense. Right? Why is he a
Hanafi?
What happened is that the first intermed have
beef that occurred in the history of Islam
was between the Malekis and between the
in in Egypt. And it had nothing to
do with whether you say Amin out loud
or how many times you raise your hands
during the prayer. Had to do with who's
gonna become the judge, which is a political
issue. It's not a illmi issue.
And so what happens is that that,
people become so rowdy like this and people
behave silly like that. You know, you see
people like, you know, if you wanna see
this type of behavior and its silliness, just
go read a news article about anything and
then go read the comment
section. So you have all these people who
are like insane and crazy, you know, partisans
of God knows, like, what whatever it is.
And this is ridiculous and irrational types of
things. So what happens is that that,
the Abbasid
government in Baghdad,
this is a public,
safety issue
that people will riot if their guy doesn't
become Qadi, doesn't become judge. So their solution
was what? They used to at some point,
they said enough is enough and they started
sending,
judges under armed guard from Iraq, Hanafi judges.
So if you guys can't get along, Malik
is in Shafes, we'll send you a Hanafi
judge
under armed guard with a military escort from
Baghdad. He'll hear the cases, and if you
don't like it, then you can deal with
the army.
And so what happens is that there's some
very talented and and and and and capable
judges that come from,
come from from Iraq to Egypt. And this
is a completely new,
and fresh perspective on deen and fresh perspective
on fiqh. And so, at the hallway, he
was a young man who was a student
of knowledge. He says, we'll go and see
what these guys have to say as well.
He becomes very impressed with them. There are
a number of a number of that come
from Iraq,
that Baha'i is very impressed with. And eventually,
what ends up happening is he, he through
his study of of fiqh with them and
through his study of hadith, he will, end
up kind of having a change of heart
and leave the in
order to,
in order to become a a Hanafi. And
that's one of the things you see in
the style of of of of the writing
of the is
that the the way of proving the messiah
is a very methodology
dependent almost completely on the narration of hadith.
And so he brings a very, unique, perspective.
He's a a scholar of encyclopedic,
knowledge.
More information about him if you guys, you
know, want to, you can look it look
it up, especially this book Sheikh Hamza Yusuf's
translation of the creed of Imam al Tawawi.
He has a biography about him. I recommend
that you read it, inshallah, if you get
it online or find it online.
We don't have time to go into it
much more than that, but, I wanted to
give some intellectual history regarding the background, the
backdrop against which the book was written.
So what does he say,
when he writes this in, he says, this
is a testimony or a testament
to the beliefs of the people of the
Sunnah and
the according to the of the of the
Millah. And so who are the of the
Millah?
Fatiha is somebody who has clear understanding of
deen. And who are the of the Millah?
Imam Abu Hanifa,
Imam, and his two companions, Qadhi Abu Yusuf,
who was the first chief justice of the
Muslim,
state and, Imam Mohammed bin Hassan al Shaybani
who was then the 2nd chief justice of
of the the sovereign state of the Muslims.
Now why does he attribute this knowledge of
toward Imam Abu Hanifa?
This is also very important to know.
Imam Abu Hanifa, before he was an imam
of fiqh, he was a he was a
imam of akhida.
Before he was a imam in he was
an imam of
and he uses this word. Right? He's you
you're the set of word
that That according to the of the not
of the but of the. Right? We are
the of Sayidna Muhammad
the most Mubarak representative of the millah of
Saidna Ibrahim alaihis salaam.
This is why Abu Hanifa is Abu Hanifa.
Abu Hanifa is not Abu Hanifa because he
had a daughter by the name of Hanifa.
Rather, he is Abu Hanifa because he is
the sahib. He's the patron and the protector
of the millah,
Al Millatul Hanafiya,
the millah of Sayna Ibrahim.
Right? And Sayna Sayna Ibrahim Al Hanif.
Right? This this Ummah is a part of
the of Ibrahim, the Hanif, the one who
inclined toward the truth. Right? He was al
Hanif, which is one of the adjectives and
descriptors
of Saidna Ibrahim alayhis salam.
And he wasn't somebody who worshiped other than
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So Abu Hanifa means
what? Not the father of a girl named
Hanifa,
but the patron
of the millah of Ibrahim al Hanif, the
millah Hanafiya.
Why did they give him this title? Why
was he given this title?
He was given this title because he and
the generation after the Sahaba
lived in Kufa. Kufa is a city that's
slightly south of the modern city of Baghdad.
Kufa was
during the age of the salaf.
It was the most populous city
during the latter part of the age of
the salaf, the
is the most populous city in the entire
Muslim world.
It was the biggest city by population and
it was the biggest city by revenue.
The Tigris and Euphrates River that flowed through
Iraq,
they flooded the Saud with with with with
irrigation,
and they made this very rich, area for
revenue.
This was the
prime land of the Persian Empire.
Kufa was a city which
was built across the river bank from Tisfoun
or Mada'in, which was the imperial capital of
the Persian empire.
Said, Omar
his his
methodology
was
when the Muslims conquered a city, he would
not let the army into that city. Because
what happened in the ancient world when conquest
happened? People would loot things and people would
get into fights and civilians would get killed
and women would become would would be abused.
So that we're not gonna do this in
the name of Islam. We're not gonna humiliate
the the the dean of Allah by
allowing this even possibly to happen.
So he'd tell the army to pitch camp
outside of the city,
and then he would only send the senior
commanders into the city to do whatever business
they needed to do.
The city surrendered. The army were not allowed
to enter into it.
So this happened also. So Kufa was the
army encampment across the river from Mada'in, from
the old,
imperial
Persian capital.
And this becomes now rapidly the new center
of the city
because all the administrative offices, all of the
government offices, the courts,
the the the halls of Mashra, the encampments
of the important people who will then go
on to rule, that land after the prophet
after the after the conquest of the
Sahaba.
And so this rapidly becomes a new center
of a new city. Another benefit of it
is what? That it makes this city now
a culturally Muslim city.
But because it is at such a important
center of power and and and and and
money,
the city expands very quickly.
And so unlike the the major metropoli, if
you wanna know the intellectual history of Islam,
you have to know what the major metropoli,
the centers of centers of culture are. Right?
1 is
1 is Madinah Munawara. The the greatest one
is Madinah Munawara out of them because it's
the original button of the prophet and the
the the the the the people who were
like the the
the the assassin, the the the foundation of
Islam.
Then after that, right, after Madinah Munawar as
Makkamukarama,
then there is Syria, which is Damascus,
and then there is the, the 2 major
cities of Iraq, which are
Kufa and Basra.
Basra is downriver
near the gulf,
and Kufa is upriver near what is now
modern day Baghdad. It's just south of modern
day Baghdad.
Okay? So these are the the cultural imperial
and political centers of
of of of Islam in the early time.
And so out of all of these, the
biggest financial financially and and by and by
population is Kufa and it expands very rapidly.
So unlike Madinah, which retains its primarily Muslim
character,
from the beginning till several centuries afterward,
Kufa is a hustle and bustle. There are
many non Muslims that live in Kufa.
And after the time of the the the
Khalafar Rashidun,
there are many heterodox type people, people who
are Muslims,
but they have strange views and strange beliefs.
So you'll
come across a lot of a lot of
stories about Abu Hanifa. This was his debate
with an atheist.
This was his debate with somebody who didn't
consider,
you know, Earthman to be a Sahabi
This was his debate with the person with
this
this,
kind of aqidah problem. This was the debate
of the person with that aqidah problem. And
he was very talented at doing that. Right?
Abu Abu Hanifa is Anurman.
Right? His name is Anurman, and his father's
name is Thabit. His father Thabit is a
convert to Islam. He's a Persian convert to
Islam. There's a very interesting story that many
of you will find
unbelievable.
In fact, some of you will think this
story was good enough. It makes the whole
weekend worth it. Okay? So listen carefully.
Hafiz Zahabi
Hafiz
Zahabi
who is a great historian
and hadith of of, kind of the middle
part of this ummah. He writes in a
Sir al-'alam, which is a collection of biographies
of the notable personalities of Islam
That Fabbet, the father of Abu Hanifa,
he accepted Islam at the hands of Saidna
Ali
He was a Persian convert and he was
a businessman. He was a man of extreme
piety and righteousness,
and in his youth as a young man,
he accepted Islam.
He was such a pious person. There's a
story attributed to him that he's such a
pious person that one time he,
passed by the orchard of
a fruit orchard and he saw a piece
of fruit like almost rotting on the ground.
And he thought like,
it's gonna go to waste, may as well
eat it. So he ate it and then
he becomes overwhelmed with remorse that this was
somebody else's property and I ate it. And,
how, you know, I gotta like, you know,
I don't want this to come against me.
I don't know what to do. So he
goes into hunts down the owner of the
orchard. So the owner of the orchard sees
this and, like, you know, this is like
a kind of like a freak show. Like,
you joking? Like, really?
This guy is so biased that he really
cares about this, like, rotting piece of fruit.
So he decides to mess with him. He's
like he's like, oh, yeah?
I won't forgive you unless you,
unless you do something for me.
He goes, I'll hold it against you unless
you do something for me.
He says, what? He says, I have a
daughter.
She's blind,
and she's paralyzed. She's bedridden. She's deaf, and
she's,
extremely ill. If you don't marry her,
I won't forgive you.
So he's like, oh, man.
He's like, I gotta I gotta do it
though. I don't wanna go to Jahannam. So
he comes, he shows up, and they do
the nikah, and he says, your wife is,
you know, waiting for you. And so he
goes, opens the door and sees her, and
she's not like any of those things. She's,
like, beautiful. She's in good health. She's, like,
you know, the daughter of this, like, super
rich guy and she's like this, you know,
beautiful, intelligent, wonderful,
girl who's, you know, machined by all standards
just fine. In fact, even better than that.
So her father was just thought, man, this
guy has so much stock. Well, let's see
if he's, like, for real or not. And
if he is, then we wanna this guy
is someone we wanna keep. Right? So this
this,
a Sabbath one day, he,
so he he took Islam at the hands
of
and,
he really loved him and looked up to
him. He was like his hero to him.
And so he would go meet him after
Jummah or in different occasions and shake hands
with him and ask him please make dua
for for me.
And, one day he this is the part
you guys will find unbelievable. Okay. One day
he showed up with a with with a
dish of falooda.
With a dish of what? What did I
say?
Falooda.
Right? Actually, it's Faloodaj
with a j in the archaic
form of Persian that the story is told
in, then the j drops drops off later.
Right? But he gives a dish of to
and says, it's a gift we are prepared
for my house for you. Please make dua
for us. And Imam
made made very
long dua for him and for his progeny
that Allah used them for the,
for for the service of deen.
And so Imam Hanifa along with running the
family business.
Right? So so
Imam Hanifa's father gave fadudah to Sayna Ali
radiAllahu anhu. And if you don't believe me,
you can look it up in the Surah
Alaa under the entry, for Imam Hanifa.
And you wouldn't have believed me if, you
know, if you didn't look it up. So,
you know, that's that's something very interesting.
And I I literally, I looked through the
footnotes and it says
It's like a dish with, like, made like
with sweet milk and rice noodles. I'm like,
yep. That's basically it. Right? So
although I don't think they put
in those days.
So this is Imam al Hanifa and his
pedigree in Kufa. They were people who had
very strong
allegiance to the Sahaba
And what I want you to understand one
of the things I want you to understand,
this remember we talked about. Right?
This book, this is the beliefs of the
that are transmitted down through that chain.
K? But how he's not saying this is
from my extensive reading of hadith, this is
what I come up with.
He's saying what? These are the beliefs that
are transmitted through these people,
through imamu Hanifa, through the sahaba, to the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
If you want to be a person who
is a
participant and supporter of their project, this is
very necessary for you to pick up.
This is more important than the state.
This is more important than the army.
This is more important than minting gold and
silver coins and with
written on them.
Do you understand what I'm saying? This is
part of that project of the sahaba. It's
not crumbled. It hasn't gone away anywhere. This
is part of that project
that the part of the project that lives
on. Okay?
So this is very important. This is why
it's worth your your time to take and
to benefit from it.
It's more important than benefiting from, you know,
an a mural in a government. All these
things are wonderful.
But the greater part of the message, what
is it? Is it contained
in in in the world around you or
is it contained within the hearts?
Is it part of our that's contained within
the hearts? So what happens, Imam, he
he's a person who buys into the project
and he feels this for the sahabah
and on this loyalty for them. And so
he takes it upon himself when he grows
up to defend
the beliefs of the the
Sahaba, radiAllahu anhu, in the face of all
these heretical groups.
Atheists,
Zoroastrians,
Jews, Christians, the heretical groups within Islam
to defend what the positions of the
were.
So he used to attend the halakat of,
and he was
considered the preeminent scholar of theology
in Kufa. He had his own halakah in
the jama'i masjid of Kufa. And then there's
another story that an old woman one day
comes to him and says,
asked him like a very simple, issue of
and he says,
he says, you know what?
You know, this is not something I specialize
in. Go to Hamad,
Hamad, Hamad, ibn Abi Suleiman,
and ask him
what the the the answer to the question
is. And when you when you get the
answer, you can come back and tell me
as well. I'm interested now. His halakha is
across the Jameel Masjid. You can go ask
him.
And so she said, subhanAllah, I thought you
were the big sheikha Abu Hanifa and you're
the the big, like, master Alem, the defender
of the Mila. You don't even know, like,
these issues regarding the law. What do you
know?
And so this was his his humility
that he thought about what she said, and
he he accepted it. And then he broke
up his own halakah,
and then he went and sat down in
the halakah of Hamad.
Right? Hamad is a student of Al Khama
who is the student of Ibrahim and Nakha.
It's a student of Ibrahim and Nakha'i who
is a student of Alkama who is a
student of,
Abdullah bin Mas'ud who
Who the prophet
said about him, take half of your deen
from Ibn Umi Abdi. Ibn Umi Abdi is
the the the the the nickname
that that, they used to call saying, Abdul
Abid Mas'ud
the diminutive nickname
that they used to call him. So take
half of your deen. You always call him
Ibn Umi Abd. Did this guy take half
of your deen from him? The one you
call.
One time he climbed up a tree and
they exposed, like, his the bottoms of his
legs and they're very thin, like, you know,
how we said chicken legs, really thin legs
he had. And so the Sahaba started laughing
at him. The prophet
said don't laugh at at his how thin
his legs are. Verily, the the
legs will be more in the scale pans
with Allah in the mountain of Uhud. Right?
So he went and sat in the Halakah
against Sanad going back to the prophet
from Abdullah bin Mas'ud
who is the one who used carry the
pour the water when the prophet made his
wudu. He's the one who used to carry
the Mubarak sandals of the prophet
wherever he went.
He was the one who was with the
prophet
when he went to go and meet the
jinn and preach the deen to them. He's
the only one that the prophet
took with him. He was one of the
first converts to Islam.
So he goes and sits in a halakah
and he starts to learn. And, what happens,
he sits there for decades to the point
where Hammad will then put him at the
front of the halakah. And when he has
to leave, he'll appoint him as the the
the sheikh in his place. And then afterward,
when he passes away, all of the students
unanimously agree that this is going to be,
the the fafiqhuf Kufa as well. So he
becomes the imam al Hanifa that that we
all know and love from later.
Originally, what is he? He's a scholar of
and that's why there is
there's a a a a dimension of in
his as well.
Has anyone here wondered why there's something called
wajib in in the Hanafi Madhab and there's
something called farthan what the difference is between
them?
The 2 functionally are the same thing. Functionally,
they mean an act that you
have to do. If you do it, you'll
be rewarded, and if you don't do it,
you'll be punished.
That's the same for both of them. So,
functionally, they're the same thing.
The difference between
wajib and fard is that that,
fart is something that has an element in
it. If you don't believe that this is
far this far, then you're outside of the
pale of Islam.
So if you don't believe that praying is
far,
then you're not a Muslim. If you don't
pray for it, you're a sinner. But if
you don't believe is far, then you're not
a Muslim anymore.
Whereas wajib, like wither salatul wither is wajib.
Right? According to the Hanafis, if a person
doesn't pray with her, it's a sin.
But if someone were to say, I don't
believe that praying with her is an obligation,
we'll say it's a difference of opinion.
No one will make takfir of them. So
he actually integrates
his advanced knowledge of into his as well,
which is a unique
a unique,
element of his of his madhab.
But what I want you to understand is
that Abu Hanifa himself is a master of
aqidah. He also writes a book himself called
Al Fikl Akbar.
And what happens is that his teachings in
aqidah, they also are spread forth,
just like his teachings in have
been spread forth. And he his is
also something that spread forth as well. For
those of you who've studied the,
you'll know that there is from the schools
of the in
terms of,
one of one of the schools is the
school, which is attributed to Abu Mansur al
Matsur al Matsur al So Abu Mansur al
Matsuridi was the first one to write it
write write it out, basically.
And but he claims himself that the teachings
that I write out are not something that
I came up with are myself. Rather, here
is my son and to Imam Abu Hanifa.
This is the this is the the the
the the creed of, of, as
was passed down through,
this chain from imam Abu Hanifa
And that's something important to understand that his
madhab is propagated both in what?
Both in and in.
So
that's the pedigree of this book. That's where
this book starts from,
and that's
what the, you know, how the book is
narrated and that's the authority with which the
book comes with.
And then obviously,
Qadhi Abu Yusuf and
Imam Muhammad, inshallah, you can read their, their
biographies
in the,
you can read the biography
amongst the appendices of this
translation if you purchase it,
or if you find it somewhere else, you
can read it somewhere
else. So
he's Abu Abu Jafar
says that this is the, an explication of
the
the creed of Ahlus Sunnah Al Jama'ah,
according to the imams in the fukaha of
the millah,
sayna Abu Hanifa and,
Qadhi Abu Yusuf and Imam Mohammed. May Allah
be pleased with both of them.
So we say he says
He
said that, and
then the 2 Imams after him that are
mentioned,
Abu Yusuf and Muhammad, both of them said.
And we also say with them,
regarding the oneness of Allah Ta'ala,
believing in that oneness by the divine enablement
of Allah
that Allah
is 1 and he has no partner.
And there there Allah is 1 and that
he has no partner. And this is a
important
concept that that we're all familiar with, but
we have to remind ourselves again
and
We don't believe in multiplicity
in terms of reality. Rather, there is a
unitary reality that's a common thread through all
things that exist.
And that's based on what? That's based on
Allah Ta'ala's
that
there is no,
that there is no partner unto him.
And there is nothing like him.
Allah says in his book
he says Allah says in his book
There's nothing like anything like him.
Allah says in his book,
and there's nobody,
like unto him.
There's no one like him. So this is
the rule number 1. What are we what
are what are we what are we saying?
If there's something you can imagine, Allah ta'ala
is not like that.
This will it seems like a very simple
rule. It's mentioned upfront but then the people
have confusion about other issues later on.
Always refer back to this rule.
And as a methodological
point, it's very important to understand
that certain rules have exceptions, certain rules don't
have exceptions.
This rule doesn't have an exception.
And
when you see one text of the Kitab
and Sunnah seemingly possibly conflict with another, there
are ways of reconciling them because the each
text might mean one of a different number
of things.
And if there's
one, combination of of meanings that that may
conflict in one combination of meanings that may
actually,
fit with one another, then the the combination
that fits the fact that it fits together
is a indication that this is more correct
than the combination that doesn't fit. So,
understand that that that
the rule that's of a higher level is
preserved,
and the rule that's of a lower level
will be,
then
interpreted in such a way that, that allows
it to fit,
that allows it to fit with the higher
level rule.