Ismail Kamdar – The Umayyad Falcon Abdurrahman ibn Muawiyah

			hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen
		

			wa salatu salam ala Nabil Karim. While he was happy at Mount in Ahmedabad.
		

			There are many stories in our history that often get glossed over. Now one of the problems we have
today with history is that we tend to focus only on specific areas of our history. And the rest of
the 1400 years is forgotten about. And in this history, there are many, many amazing stories. Some
of the stories you think they were works of fiction, but they're actually historical events. And
today, I want you to read one of these stories to you and perhaps extract some lessons from it. This
is a story that, in many ways, would have led to the, to the birth of the modern world. Or even it
was the beginning of a series of events that would have led to the birth of the modern world. But
		

			it's a part of the story that's often overlooked. And this is the story of a man in our history,
known by the name of King Abdul Rahman, the first
		

			also known as Abdul Rahman, even more Alia, or the Falcon of the Romanians. And this slowly goes
back to the second century of Islamic history. So for those who are unaware, the first dynasty to
rule over the Muslim world with the Romanians, and the second were the Abbasids. And this story
takes place at the time when the Abbas's are taking over from the domains. So the domain the this
family ruled the Muslim world for about 70 years. And towards the tail end of those 70 years, the
general public began to get tired of them, because many of the later on AIDS did not live up to the
ideals of Islam. Many of them had fallen into major sins openly. They were at civil war with each
		

			other. They were usurping, usurping the funds of the Muslims. And this had caused people to want
somebody else to take over. So another family, the Abbasids, began to rally politically to get
people on their side, too, so that they could take over now to understand the politics of the
region, the Romanians and the Abbas. It's about Quraysh. Right either two different tribes of the
Kurdish the Abbas is are the descendants of the prophets, Uncle Abbas. That's where they get the
name from. So the urban Ohashi and the Quraysh going all the way back to the time of the Prophet
slowly Assam, the Quraysh. The leadership was always disputed between battle, Harsha and Bernie
		

			omega. So the same tribal dispute is popping up 100 years later. And the Abbas needs to get people
on their side, they begin to politically campaign, the top people are going to do things more
Islamically, we're going to do things better, we're going to bring things back to the way it was the
time of the whole lava rush again, you're going to have a lot of these political rallies and a lot
of these promises. And so eventually, they gain enough support, that they are able to stage a coup
and take over the land. Now, very often when we study this part of history, what we study next is
what the Abbas instead, right? And the bassins did some amazing things in the next 200 or 300 years.
		

			But what we don't study is what did the Omega do next? Right, we know that the bassins took over
from the omega that year. What did the Omega do next? This is another fascinating part of our
history that's often overlooked. And this is where the story of Abdul Rahman comes in. Because Abdul
Rahman was the last Omega prince. He was the last of the Omega bloodline at that time. So again, I
have to point this out in every study history, the figures in our history after the time of the
Sahaba are human. They're going to do good things and bad things. Right. They're not only are they
not perfect saints, they're not the representation of the religion. They're human beings. There's
		

			good and bad in them. And so the first Abasi drooler. One of his bad qualities, was that he was
quite murderous in claiming power. His nickname was actually a boss, the butcher, right, and he got
this nickname the butcher, for butchering the Romanian family.
		

			And in many stories of how he did it, the most popular one was that he invited the last 50 princes
of the Omega bloodline for a for a feast, and he hid 50 assassins behind the curtains. So while they
were feasting, the entire family was wiped out overnight.
		

			Some people see the story is not authentic, Allah knows best but whatever happened. We do know for
sure that in the time of Abbas, the Bucha into in his time the immediate family was massacred. And
it boiled down to just two princes were left Abdul Rahman and his brother. They were the only two
left of this family and they went on the run. So understand this story. Abdul Rahman spends his
whole life with a prince, and he's Abdul Rahman, the son of Mahalia, the son of Hashem, the son of
Marwan even Hakob. His grandfather and great grandfather will be your kings.
		

			His father was a prince and he was also a prince. So this is a man born into royalty. And suddenly
he's a refugee. He's a fugitive, the assassins and police looking for him everywhere. He goes on the
run. And many stories happen when he's on the run. One of the stories that happens is, very soon
after he realizes that the ambassador after him, he and his brother and his servant, they jump into
the river to swim across to Egypt. Nigeria is the robber separating Arabia from Egypt, they jump
into the robber to swim across to get to Egypt. And he manages to swim across the river. And when he
turns around, he sees his brother's swimming back. And all the assassins are on the shore waiting
		

			for his brother.
		

			And they promised him that if you come back, we won't have you. By the often false promises that
politicians give. And in front of his eyes from one side of the river across the other side, he sees
the assassins grab his brother and chop off his head. And so just like that, there's not only one
prince left into omega dynasty, Abdul Rahman, and he goes on the run, he goes into hiding, he
manages to go to Egypt, the ruler of Egypt at that time, his name was also Abdul Rahman. And he had
wavering political allegiances. I at one point, he claimed to be loyal to the omega naught point he
claimed to be loyal to the Abbasids. But what he really wanted to he wanted to be king himself, he
		

			wanted to be the Khalifa himself. So initially, he led Abdul Rahman live in Egypt, right as a
refugee, to Abu Rama and goes from living as the as the prince in in the baskets, to living as a
refugee in Egypt. But, you know, Abdul Rahman was a very charismatic person. And people flocked to
him and people rallied around him. And eventually, the king of Egypt, or the governor of Egypt,
begins to get worried that he's going to lose, you know, his political power that people are going
to want. This familiar prince will be the leader instead. So he hatches a plot against Abdul Rahman
himself. And once again, Abdul Rahman finds himself on the rug, running now from both the Abbasids
		

			and the rulers of Egypt, both of who want him dead.
		

			And they say he spent up to 10 years in exile. And we don't know much of what happened in these 10
years because he's undercover. He's changing his name. He's living a secret life. He's a fugitive,
he's a refugee. Everywhere he goes the assassins after him. They are spies trying to figure out who
he is where he is, people know he's alive. They don't know where he is. And they want him dead. And
this man spends the next decade on the run.
		

			Eventually, he makes his way to Morocco, the land of his maternal ancestors, his mother was from
Morocco. And yet he finds family, his mother's family, and he's able to live a simple life, and to
at least be away from the politics of, of the East.
		

			A man born as a prince in Arabia is now living as a refugee in Africa. But the story doesn't end
there.
		

			Across the ocean for Morocco, was the land of Al Andalus, Islamic Spain.
		

			And Spain was very loyal to the Romanians. You see, early Spain, owed a lot to the Romanians. It
became a Muslim land in the time of Walid the first, it began to truly develop in the time of Ahmed
bin Abdulaziz. And so people there, in general, were supportive of the Omega family. And they saw
them as people who liberated them who brought justice for prosperity to their land. And they were a
lot of people there who were related to the roommates and who loved the roommates and who supported
them. So Abdul Rahman, he's still a politician at heart. Even though he spent 10 years in exile, he
sends his servant over to Spain to find out. What's what's it like on the on the ladder? Are people
		

			supportive of us? Are they supportive of their bosses who say early on, and when he arrives, there
is a civil war going on in Spain, because the Abbas is had appointed a new governor over Spain, and
many people rejected him because they didn't want the passage rolling. And so there's our civil war
between many of the local governors and the new representative of the party, the Empire in Spain,
and all these others who are rebelling against the Abbasids. They learned that Abdul Rahman is still
alive, he just across the ocean in Morocco, and he also you're gonna give him his full support. So
Abdul Rahman takes a ship, he crosses the ocean. He lands in Spain, where groups of armies and
		

			governors and leaders are waiting for him to accept him as the new leader. And he leads them into
battle. And he conquered Spain. And he established his Spain as a new kingdom are made under those.
And he declared himself the Emir of Andalusia, the king of Andalus.
		

			Think about this is the kind of story that you think is fictional but since this is history, this is
real history. This is a man born as a prince in Damascus, spending most of his life as a refugee and
		

			In a fugitive, when he died, he was the king of a country in Europe. You as the king of Spain.
		

			Imagine today if a refugee from Syria became a king in in Europe. It sounds mind boggling, but it
happened in our history. And his story doesn't end there. Because the Abbas Hudson army armies to
fight when he defeated Those armies, and he want the respect of the baskets. You know, in the
beginning, I said that his nickname was the Falcon of the omegas. He was the Abasi King that gave
him the nickname. When people ask the Abbas's, what do you think of this Abdul Rahman guy claiming
to be king all the way in Spain. He said that man is the Falcon, of the domains. He the above seeds
were amazed by the tenacity of this man who overcame all odds and somehow established the kingdom in
		

			a completely different part of the world, and was able to oppose their own power. They didn't like
him, but they respected him. He respected him. And then from that point onwards, the Ummah had two
major kingdoms, there was made Spain, and there was the Abasi the Empire. And interestingly, both
both kingdoms would enter a golden age at the same time. And Abdul Rahman is descendants would rule
over Spain for 290 years. See, these are parts of our history that are forgotten. So many people you
asked him about the omega the Empire, or the Omega drew for 70 years. And they forget the 290 year
old me it's been, which by the way, was the better homemade empire in many ways. Read if you study
		

			the history of of the homemade Spain, and the Abdullah and his descendants, that was, in many ways,
the superior media empire in terms of their accomplishments in terms of what they did for this world
and for the Ummah, in terms of the kingdom they developed, because under Abdul Rahman descendents,
Spain became the most powerful country in Europe, it became the most advanced, most developed, most
sophisticated, most cultured community in all of Europe, it became the envy of Europe, even Muslims
of other parts of the world, Muslims on the above the Empire will look at me at Spain, and the
nickname they gave it was Jana on Earth. That was the kind of kingdom he developed Jana on Earth.
		

			And so this is a story of Abdur Rahman, the first and then read it so that we can become more aware
of the history of the broad history of the Western world. So we can take some inspiration from his
story, as we can understand, you know, the, the both the good and the bad of what happened in
history. The end of the day, none of the figures in the story are perfect. None of the figures in
the stories are what we would call Olia or saints or Alama. These are politicians, they had the good
qualities and the bad qualities, but they were Muslims. And their legacy is also our legacy. And
their story is also our story. And it's important that we familiarize ourselves with the history of
		

			the Muslim world, not just with the main story, in this case, the baskets, but even the other
stories as well, like that of Spain. So behind Arabic Arrabal is that the mIRC phone was salam ala
mousseline what Hamdulillah, Robin Alameen?
		

			In Al Hamdulillah na muda who understand Pharaoh we know behind our colleague, my bad. So what can
we learn from the story?
		

			It's very important that when we study history, we study history with the prime focus of taking
lessons from history is not about memorizing names. History is not about memorizing dates. History
is what can I learn from the successes of those who came before me? What can I learn from the
failures of those who came before me? How can I repeat their successes? And how can I avoid their
failures? The first lesson that we learned from the story of Abdul Rahman is a refutation of imagery
that is present in the minds of many Muslims. Many Muslims because we haven't studied history, we
have this myth in our mind that this ummah had one Khalifa until World War One. This only had one
		

			ruler use one unified empire until the downfall of the Ottoman Empire in World War One. This is
Imbert. In reality, this ummah had only one ruler for the first 100 years. Once Abdul Rahman
established for me it's been, we now had the Abasi of empire, and the old lady Empire coexisting for
290 years. And he never ended there. Because then the Ottoman Empire will pop up tomorrow, but the
Empire will pop up. By the time of the Ottomans, you had the Safavid Empire, the Mughal Empire, the
Mameluke Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and many others all existing at the same time. It's not one
ruler, ruling over the entire Muslim world. The problem with this myth is that people then have
		

			unrealistic expectations. They think that the solution is if you have one ruler, all our problems go
away. That's not true. Even when the Ummah had one ruler, there were still problems. I just need the
life of the Colaba Rashidi and there was never a perfect time. So we need to be careful how we
portray history that we are honest about our history, and we don't
		

			make up things to, you know, to make it sound better than it was history is human. And what happened
happened and we shouldn't lie about it, this OMA, it is part of its destiny to be divided. We still
try our best to unite with ever we can. But we don't lie about our history, we see that this is what
happened. And this is the way it was. Now let's go to some personal lessons we can take from the
story, because there's really a lot of motivation you can take from the story. This is a man who
went from a prince to a fugitive to a king, who was born in the Middle East, in Syria, who spent the
bulk of a large portion of his adult life as a refugee in Africa, and who died as a king in Europe.
		

			i This is an amazing story. And from the lessons we can take from this is number one,
		

			that perhaps you dislike something and it is good for you. Perhaps you dislike something and it is
good for you. This is a proverb taken directly from the Quran, that Allah tells us in the Quran that
perhaps you dislike something and it is good for you, perhaps you love something, and it is bad for
you. And throughout history, we see this very often something bad would happen to someone that in
the long run, it leads them on a journey that leads them to the destiny. We see this with a story of
use of a Saddam when his brothers throw him in the well. And that's the beginning of his story that
leads to his destiny in Egypt. And he says in the story of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam
		

			when he's exiled from Africa, which leads him to Medina where the story of Islam truly blossoms and
that's why the Hijra is the beginning of our calendar. As we see again with the story of Abdul
Rahman. In reality, Abdul Rahman was never in line to be king. Right? The Romanians had over 50
princes, he was like number 14 That list. He was never in line to be king. If you made Empire
continued, he would have just lived a life of a prince in in Syria. But Allah's destiny for him was
something else. Allah's destiny for him was to be a king in Europe, in Spain, and for his
descendants to establish one of the greatest empires in the history of this world. And so that
		

			series of events as horrific as they were as traumatic as they were, they were the necessary part of
history that led to him getting to where he needed to be to establish what he needed to establish.
And this is the history of the world even today. Very often we look at things the world today, we
feel like why did this happen? In the long run, there is benefit for it. Let me give you an example.
One of the things that many of us believe is the worst thing to happen to Muslims in recent times,
was the migration of Muslims to non western lands. Right for 1400 years, or rather, for 1300 years,
Muslims did not migrate to non Muslim lands. We live together in Muslim world right in that role
		

			Islam in the past 100 years, first, the migration to South Africa, then we had the euro, Europe,
then we have America. And so a lot of people think this is a bad thing. And in some ways it is. But
what we don't think about is the other side, the amount of people in these lands, who have converted
to Islam, who would never have been exposed to the messenger of Islam had our forefathers not been
forced to migrate.
		

			Think about it, it was Allah's Will, that the people of these lands, hear the message of Islam and
be exposed to Islam. And the way for that to happen was that somebody had to be forced to migrate to
that land, and to take Islam to that land. We don't think about this, if Allah wants Islam to spread
in a certain land, sometimes political events happen that we don't like they force people to move
out of the land to new lands, because Allah wants them to be in that land, not in the land they were
born in, because that's where they're going to make a difference for this Omar. As we take this
lesson from a man born in Serbia and died in Europe, we see that Allah wanted his destiny to be
		

			somewhere else and to be something else. And perhaps he was the same for our forefathers as well,
that for many of us, our forefathers came to Africa just trying to make a better living. But because
of that Islam is spreading in this land. And the same thing is happening in many other parts of the
world. And it's up to us to make the best of the situations we in and to understand whatever Allah
has willed, whatever codon Allah has worked for this ummah, in the long run, it is what is best for
this, Omar. Another lesson we take from the story of Abdul Rahman and we'll end with this lesson is
never give up. If you have a goal that you think is beneficial that you think is worth chasing,
		

			don't give up.
		

			Abdul Rahman won the respect of his enemies because of his tenacity, because of his never give up
attitude, because of his ability to take the worst of situations and build something great from it.
		

			And even your enemies had to recognize that this was an amazing man.
		

			And today we give up too easily. We live in the age of instant gratification, you know, we start a
business if we're not millionaires, by the end of the year, we close out the business. You know,
that's not how it works. You want to accomplish something you need to take 1020 years, you need to
take your time. You need to work towards your goal you need to deal with the problems you need to
face your obstacles to overcome them. Nothing worth accomplishing gets done overnight.
		

			And this is a lesson we get
		

			TiVo Abdur Rahman, it took him a long, long time to turn his life around and make something of it.
But he never gave up. At the end of the day, he accomplished something amazing. Because when you
look at the history of America and Spain, in America, it's been that we see the development of
universities, we see the development of philosophy, we see the birth of the ideas that would spread
to the rest of Europe, causing the Renaissance, the Renaissance, the cause the modern world. But it
all goes back to the day that will mediate Spain was established. It's all linked. All of history is
linked in this way. The golden ages of the art of the Roman Empire, led to the golden age of the
		

			rest of the world as well, because knowledge was shared between different civilizations. And so we
learned today, not to give up. We take inspiration from stories of people who were in difficult
situations and made something good out of it, and were able to accomplish great things. We take
lessons from that not to give up. And we take lessons from that to accept our destiny and to
understand that Allah knows what is best for us and that perhaps we dislike something and it is good
for us.
		

			Probably not enough for dunya Hasina, fulfill Arthur the Huseynov working as a banal Robin hablan I
mean as wodgina with a reality nakodar
		

			Rama shabiha Shobhana Rebecca Robin is it Yama is the phone was salam Abu Salim Al hamdu Lillahi
Rabbil Alameen Aki, me Salah