Omar Suleiman – The Firsts – KaB Ibn Zuhayr – Ra The Story Of The First Burda
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AI: Transcript ©
So last week we spoke about Thumamah رضي
الله تعالى عنه and the dynamics surrounding Thumamah
رضي الله تعالى عنه, a man who comes
to the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم in
a very unique way and who occupies a
very particular position of power that he's then
able to convert and use for the sake
of Allah سبحانه وتعالى.
So I mentioned to you سبحان الله that
as we're getting to this category of people,
failed assassins, failed prophets, false prophets, that you
start to see very unique characters that have
their conversion moment with the Prophet صلى الله
عليه وسلم.
So I wanted to actually talk about a
very particular person tonight إن شاء الله تعالى
because he fits a unique mold and that
is he is a poet.
Now let me take a step back and
actually frame it in the modern context بِإِنْ
إِنَّا هِي تَعَالَى and what we're witnessing.
There's a saying that every Israeli accusation is
what?
Does anybody know how to complete that sentence?
Every accusation is a confession, right?
Every Israeli accusation is a confession.
Everything that they accuse the Palestinians of, they
in fact are guilty of, right?
And it's very interesting when you look at
the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم
that every accusation they leveled against the Prophet
صلى الله عليه وسلم was actually a confession.
What do I mean by that?
They called the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم
a poet.
They called the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم
what else?
They called him ساحر.
They called him شاعر.
They threw every single thing at the Prophet
صلى الله عليه وسلم.
So they called him a poet.
And poets at the time were the ultimate
propagandists, right?
They're the most dangerous and potent people in
society because their voice is the media of
the time.
And what did they do to try to
delegitimize the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه
وسلم?
They used poetry, right?
And so they used all sorts of nasty
poetry against him.
They used poetry against the Qur'an to
prove, to try to prove that the Qur
'an was just poetry or an attempt at
poetry.
They used poetry to dehumanize the Muslims.
And so the nastiest type of poetry, and
usually the scholars of seerah as they narrate
it, they don't actually put this part in
there, was the poetry that was used against
Muslim women.
SubhanAllah, I remember going to Srebrenica.
We were coming out of another anniversary of
the genocide in Bosnia.
And looking at the walls and some of
the things that were written about Bosnian women
by the Serb soldiers, right?
It's a particular way of harassment.
And we see it right now with the
Israeli soldiers posing in lingerie in Gaza, only
humiliating themselves.
So it is the nastiest form of humiliation.
And it is a humiliation that actually comes
back to the one that is saying it.
So it's not befitting of the one that
puts it out there.
And so you see some of the poets
start to descend into that, and that's what
makes them so dangerous.
And as we said about Ka'b ibn
Ashraf, who was of course killed by Muhammad
ibn Maslamah رضي الله تعالى عنه, that these
poets also became warmongers in many ways.
They were inciting wars against the Prophet ﷺ
and against the Muslims.
So that's the first thing, the poets.
As for a sahir, they called the Prophet
ﷺ a soothsayer.
And in reality they try to employ soothsayers
against the Prophet ﷺ.
So you find the very famous example of
Labid, who literally infiltrated and pretended to be
a servant of the Prophet ﷺ to try
to cast a spell on the Messenger of
Allah ﷺ, and try to demolish him with
the strongest form of sorcery, right?
So every accusation they made against the Prophet
ﷺ was in fact a confession of the
tactics that they would use at their time
against the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.
Now I find it subhanAllah, like very interesting
when you just kind of take this framework
through one person.
So the man that we're going to speak
about today inshaAllah ta'ala, and spend a
little bit of time with, is a man
by the name of Ka'b ibn Zuhair.
Ka'b ibn Zuhair رضي الله تعالى عنه.
And you'll notice there are a lot of
Ka'bs in the seerah, and it's important
to distinguish.
The ugly inciter of poetry, Ka'b ibn
Ashraf, and now we have Ka'b ibn
Zuhair رضي الله تعالى عنه.
And you actually get a very important look
at Mecca through the childhood of this young
man.
So his father is a man by the
name of Zuhair ibn Abi Sulma.
Zuhair ibn Abi Sulma.
And so those of you that are into
the history of the Arabs, this is going
to refresh a lot of your memory hopefully.
They had in the Ka'bah seven poems
that they used to hang.
What were they called?
Mu'allaqat.
Very good.
So they had the seven poems that were
hung.
And these were considered the seven greatest poems
that told the history of the Arabs.
So they would tend to cover much of
the history of tribes, the history of some
of the legendary battles that took place between
the Arabs.
The idea was that this shaped the entire
society that had been inherited by Quraysh at
that time.
And these poems were considered the basis of
Arabic history, the basis of genealogy, the basis
of language.
So they have to contain a lot.
They have to give you history, they have
to give you a precision with the usage
of language that makes them absolutely unquestionable, from
which you can build other poetry.
And they have to give you the history
of tribes as well.
And they occupied, subhanAllah, such an important imagery
at that time.
There's actually a really good article by Dr.
Jonathan Brown called The Social Context of Pre
-Islamic Poetry, Poetic Imagery, and Social Reality in
the Mu'allaqat.
Again, The Social Context of Pre-Islamic Poetry,
Poetic Imagery, and Social Reality in the Mu
'allaqat.
So these seven poems, just imagine in the
Kaaba, they had idols and they had these,
right?
Of course, there were other things as well,
but it kind of gives you an idea
of the elevation of this poetry.
And so amongst those Mu'allaqat, amongst those
hung poems, they had the Mu'allaqat of
Antara ibn Shaddad Al-Absi, and they had
this particular one from Zuhair ibn Abi Sulma.
And the poem of Zuhair ibn Abi Sulma
basically spoke to some of the old battles
between two major tribes, Banu Abs and Zubyan.
So just imagine this long war epic written
by Zuhair ibn Abi Sulma.
What does this have to do with the
person we're talking about today?
This is the father of the man that
we're talking about today, and you can't understand
this Sahabi unless you understand his father.
He lives close to the time of the
Prophet ﷺ.
So some of these Mu'allaqat were written
2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century, 5th century.
This is considered the latest of the Mu
'allaqat.
It's the last of the seven hanging poems.
He was so honored in that society.
When you talk about the honor of the
poets, he was so honored in that society
that he essentially amassed a huge fortune that
was looked at as barely rivaled just by
virtue of his poetry.
And there was particularly a man by the
name of Harimu Nusinan, and he's the leader
of Banu Zubyan, and he ended the battle
between Abs and Zubyan, and he paid all
the blood money to basically put that battle
to rest.
Every time he saw this man, every time
he saw him, he would give him servants,
he'd give him wealth, he'd give him wine,
he'd give him animals.
Basically, he was a rich man, and when
he saw Zuhayr, he credited him for so
much just by writing that poem about the
battle coming together and how it ends that
he keeps spoiling him with more and more
and more and more and more wealth.
And the man that we're going to be
speaking about is going to inherit that from
his father.
So Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma, basically at his
time, right at the time the Prophet ﷺ
is born, so he lived to the birth
of the Prophet ﷺ, but he didn't live
to see Islam.
At his time, he was considered the greatest
poet in society.
So when we talk about Shu'ara, when
we talk about the poets of the time,
he is the poet, the king poet at
the time.
Now very few people in that society could
access that poetry truly.
So they used to study his poetry, they
used to study the way it was constructed,
they used to study the grammar implications and
things of that sort.
And one of the few literate people was
Umar ibn al-Khattab رضي الله تعالى عنه.
Right, so if you were literate, then you
especially appreciated poetry.
If you could read and you could write.
And Ibn Abbas رضي الله عنه he says
that خرجت مع عمر بن الخطاب رضي الله
عنه في أول غزوة غزاها.
That I went out with Umar رضي الله
عنه on the first battle that I got
to go along with him.
Remember, Abdullah ibn Abbas became Muslim as a
child basically later on.
So he's explaining what he's learning from Umar
on his first time with him.
So he said I went out with Umar
رضي الله عنه on the very first battle.
And Umar knew that Ibn Abbas knew poetry,
he knew language, he knew so much, right,
that positioned him to be the scholar of
this ummah.
He was a well-rounded scholar.
So he said to him, you know, recite
to me some of the shi'r لشاعر
الشعراء of the poet of all poets.
It shows you by the way the permissibility,
right, in these types of settings especially of
things that would be motivational, things that would
pump you up, right.
Of course, they had the Qur'an, they
had their du'a, they had so much,
but it shows you the permissibility in these
types of things of having a poem or
having a nasheed or having something else to
fit the occasion.
So Ibn Abbas said to him, وَمَنْ هُوَ
يَا أَمِيرَ مُؤْمِنِينَ Who is the poet of
all poets?
So he said, Ibn Abi Sulma.
He said, it's this man, Zuhayr Ibn Abi
Sulma.
فَقُلْتُ لَهُ وَبِمَا صَارَكَ ذَلَكَ And how did
he become the poet of all poets?
And this is really, really important because, you
know, they say if you look at the
culture of a time, you understand what that
culture values, right.
You look at the music, you look at
the lyrics of something, and it gives you
an idea about that culture as a whole.
So he says about his poetry, he says
why I liked his poetry.
He says, لَا يَتْبَعُ حَوشِيَ الْكَلَامِ He doesn't
speak foolishness, number one.
And he says, وَلَا يُعَضِّرُ فِي الْمَنْطِقِ And
he doesn't, you know, he doesn't betray logic,
like he uses his proper logic.
وَلَا يَمْتَدِحُ أَحَدًا إِلَّا بِمَا فِيهِ And he
said, and he doesn't praise anyone except with
what is actually in them.
So when he speaks about a people, like
he's not someone who just goes ahead and
sings these songs about people or makes these
poems about people.
And he exaggerates, which was a tendency at
the time, right.
You wanna bribe from someone powerful, you start
making up all these lyrics about them.
And he says, وَلَا يَقُولُ إِلَّا مَا يَعْرِفُ
And he only speaks that which he knows.
So he says, I like his lyrics for
those four reasons.
Match that up to any musical composition today.
Before you say is it halal or is
it haram, you'll get your answer, right.
Don't start talking about musical instruments and things
of that sort.
You could acapella that thing all you want.
The lyrics are in complete contradiction of everything
that we would hold of value.
So Umar radiyallahu anhu is saying what?
He's saying, I love his poetry because it's
not just eloquent, it's wholesome.
And that is of course when it comes
to shi'r al-jahiliyyah, the poetry of
the days of ignorance, that it is permissible
to recite the poetry from before Islam so
long as it's wholesome.
And it was praiseworthy in that sense.
So this is the father and he's Umar
radiyallahu anhu's favorite poet.
He's the favorite poet of Uthman radiyallahu ta
'ala anhu and so many of the other
sahaba reference him as their favorite poet.
And again, he died before Islam.
Now, it's really interesting is that he rises
to fame and he has two sons.
All right, his oldest son is Ka'b
and he didn't want Ka'b to be
a poet.
And there are a few reasons.
One of them obviously is the corruptible nature
of poetry at the time and the other
one, it seems that he didn't want Ka
'b to ruin his legacy.
Like I built myself a legacy.
I built myself a name in society.
You might not be able to live up
to this.
Then you're going to end up bringing us
down, right?
You're going to end up bringing down the
name, right?
The name of Zuhair.
So he didn't want Ka'b to recite
poetry.
Again, there are two different explanations given for
this, but he actually tries to persuade him
to not do poetry, right?
But Ka'b insists.
And he even says that one time he
threatened me.
He says, وَالَّذِي أَحْلِفُ بِهِ لَا تَتَكَلَّمْ بِبَيْتِ
شِعْرًا إِلَّا ضَرَبْتُكَ ضَرْبًا يُنَكِّلُكَ عَنْ ذَلِكَ He
said, listen, if I ever hear you recite
poetry, I'm going to hit you for every
single time I hear you recite a word
of poetry.
Don't do it.
I don't want you to do what I
do.
I don't want you to try to rise
in these ranks.
One man is enough for this, right?
Again, either because you're going to get corrupted
or you're going to make me look bad
because you're not going to be able to
recite lines the way that I do.
But eventually Ka'b said, I kept on
learning poetry in private.
I kept on studying my father's poetry.
Until I came to him and I had
the audacity to recite to him lines of
poetry and I impressed him.
So he quizzed me and he twisted lines
on me.
And he did this and he did that
until I was impressive enough to basically get
his license.
He said, you know what, fine.
You can do poetry, you know.
It's like you would think you're talking about
like football or basketball or like some sort
of violent sport.
Go ahead and do poetry.
You have the ability and clearly he's going
to carry on the same spirit of poetry
of his father or so his father thinks.
Now SubhanAllah, one of the things that's narrated
in the books of Siyam is that Zuhayr
ibn Abi Sulma used to in gathering sort
of that knowledge of literacy.
You have to study everything around you.
You have to know your history.
You have to know the history of everyone
around you.
You have to know the history of Ahlul
Kitab, the people of the book.
You have to know the history of the
Torah and the Injil.
You have to know everything in order to
compose and not slip.
You're a perfectionist, right?
And so in that he knew of a
prophet that the people of the book were
expecting.
All right, and some of the books of
Siyam, they narrate that he had a dream
before he passed away.
It's very profound, SubhanAllah, that there was a
rope that was hanging down from the sky.
And he tried to grab onto the rope,
but the rope was too far away from
him.
And the way he interpreted that dream was
that this awaited prophet in this region, I'm
not going to live to see him, right?
So he advises his sons that if this
prophet comes or if this Mustafa, this chosen
one comes, then embrace him, right?
So I'm going to die before I can
reach that rope.
And SubhanAllah, it was indeed the case that
he died before the Prophet ﷺ received divine
revelation.
So Zuhair passes away.
Now in the process, his two sons inherit
from him.
Ka'b inherits his wealth, the majority of
his wealth, and he inherits his position as
well.
So Ka'b is the natural heir to
Zuhair when it comes to being the master
poet.
And is the person who immediately ascends that
throne of poetry amongst the Arabs.
Now mind you, SubhanAllah, by the way, that
a lot of times we talk about like
Hassan ibn Thabit رضي الله تعالى عنه and
Abdullah ibn Rawaha رضي الله عنه and other
poets at the time or other companions that
were known for their poetry.
That his schemes would have been studied by
everyone.
Okay?
So Ka'b inherits the wealth, he inherits
the position.
And it's basically he and his brother, and
his brother's name is Buja'ir.
Buja'ir and Ka'b.
So Ka'b is the older brother, Buja
'ir is the younger brother.
Now they are interestingly situated.
They're from a tribe called Bani Muzayna.
And Bani Muzayna doesn't live in Mecca, it
doesn't live in Medina.
So it's technically one of the outer tribes
somewhere along the path of the hijrah.
All right?
So initially when the Prophet ﷺ receives revelation,
they don't have to respond to it the
way that others would have to respond to
it.
He's able to almost dodge the issue and
not have to respond the way that others
that are immediately affected by it, especially in
Mecca, would have to respond to it.
But generally speaking, the poets did not like
the advent of the Qur'an.
And you think about it in that society,
what the implications of the Qur'an are
for the poets.
Number one, your poetry is generally frowned upon
and looked upon as invalid because the Qur
'an is superior to anything that came before
it.
Number two, the position that's used to exercise
in society.
You can imagine the festivals, the poets and
everyone surrounding them.
And all of the fasad and all of
the corruption that came with that.
You have to let that go now.
The exploitation, the bribery, everything that comes with
that.
It's almost like a musician today becoming Muslim
and worse.
Right?
So poets generally did not react positively to
Islam because of what it did to their
position, what it meant for them and the
implications for them.
Now some poets immediately recognized the superiority of
the Qur'an and the fact that there
is no way that this is human composition,
and they embraced Islam.
The majority of them took a position from
Islam that was the opposite and generally became
condemnable.
So Ka'b basically positions himself that he
doesn't like the spirit of Islam that is
emanating and the implications of Islam, where he
kind of has amassed his wealth and he's
amassed his position and he partakes in the
jahili festivals, the ignorant festivals on a regular
basis.
And now Islam is threatening that.
The idol worship creates an entire environment for
him and all of that is gone.
So he takes a hostile position to the
Prophet ﷺ.
Now his hostility does not really increase until
the Prophet ﷺ goes to Al-Madinah.
And the reason for that is that he
and his brother Bujayr were in a valley
nearby the Prophet ﷺ as the Prophet ﷺ
was with his companions.
Mind you, subhanAllah, he could not recall ever
seeing the Prophet ﷺ, meeting the Prophet ﷺ
or directly hearing his da'wah.
But he knows enough about him to where
he doesn't like him ﷺ, he doesn't like
what he represents.
So Bujayr, his younger brother and him are
close by, they can see the Muslims from
a distance.
And Bujayr says to Ka'b, I want
to go listen to what he has to
say.
And Ka'b doesn't want to hear what
the Prophet ﷺ has to say.
Bujayr insists, he goes and he meets the
Prophet ﷺ and he listens to the message
of the Prophet ﷺ and he embraces Islam.
So he doesn't actually come back to Ka
'b, he stays with the Prophet ﷺ and
the younger brother Bujayr, who also had some
poetry, is poetic, but we don't have any
records of his poetry, except for the poetic
words he used with his brother when calling
him to Islam.
Bujayr becomes a companion, Bujayr actually participates with
the Prophet ﷺ in his ghazawat, in his
battles, and is considered an early Muslim in
that sense.
So around the time after the hijrah, but
he's not written from the people of Badr.
So sometime, a few years, two or three
years after the Prophet ﷺ makes his way
to Medina, Bujayr r.a embraces Islam.
This enrages Ka'b because his younger brother
is taken away from him and he feels
like has come under the influence of the
Prophet ﷺ.
And the way Ka'b is positioning the
Prophet ﷺ is that this is a cult.
Islam is a cult, and it's basically the
brainless people.
You can read it in his hijrah, in
his attacks on the Messenger ﷺ, that you're
being followed by illiterate brainless people, right?
They're the slaves of society, they're the people
who can't read, they're the people who get
impressed by anything.
You know, many of the same stereotypes that
would be used about people of religion as
a whole now, right?
These people got too smart for themselves.
So he insults the Prophet ﷺ, he insults
the Muslims in that way.
So he sends a message to Bujayr.
And he says, Very
powerful lines of poetry.
I'm not even gonna bother trying to do
a word for word.
I will simply convey the meaning of what
he's saying to him.
Basically convey a message to Bujayr, a message
from his brother.
On what basis, right?
On what basis besides your own lowly self
have you been guided to this supposed message
of yours?
To a path that you didn't inherit from
your mother or your father, nor did you
find even your brother upon.
Like where did you get this from?
This complete foreign message to us, what we
grew up on and what we know as
intelligent people.
What led you away from the path of
your family?
The path of your father, the path of
your mother, the path of your brother?
And he said basically the meaning of Abu
Bakr gave you a cup of something intoxicating,
right?
That you were intoxicated by Abu Bakr's cup
and you became a follower because it seemed
to quench something inside of you and you
thought that it did something for you.
But in reality, basically you're drinking the Kool
-Aid, right?
You're going far away from common sense and
from the dignity that has come to you
from your family, from your father, from your
mother, from your great tribe.
So Ka'ab becomes hostile and this is
the type of poetry that he shares.
And the Prophet ﷺ said, you know, he's
right about one thing.
لَمْ يُنفِي عَلَيْهِ آبَاهُ وَلَا أُمَّهُ He did
not find his father or his mother upon
this.
Basically the Prophet ﷺ turned it into a
praise that you were courageous enough to follow
the truth even if you did not find
your family upon this.
Afterwards, Ka'ab starts to increase his attacks
on the Prophet ﷺ.
So having the position that he has and
then being isolated conveniently from Mecca and Medina
from a safe distance, he's able to write
these poems and these poems get recited against
the Muslims in different circles.
So you imagine like the new diss track,
the new lyrics that come out about Islam.
Ka'ab is authoring them, people are literally
taking them and reciting them in the public
squares in Mecca insulting the Prophet ﷺ, insulting
Islam, insulting the Muslims, calling them all sorts
of names and then insulting and making implications
about Muslim women as well.
What's happening around him?
The Prophet ﷺ is obviously victorious in Badr
and Uhud and as time goes on you
have Khandaq and Hudaybiyyah.
The da'wah of the Prophet ﷺ is
growing.
He is sort of dodging the climate in
Mecca and Medina but the world is closing
in on him after Fath Makkah.
After Fath Makkah, the world is closing in
on him.
So he's increasing in his poetry but it's
getting more difficult for him to insert his
poetry about the Prophet ﷺ in these different
spaces.
At that point, his brother who was amongst
those that went with the Prophet ﷺ to
Hunayn and to Ta'if, his brother writes
him a letter knowing that he's kind of
on the run at this point and the
Prophet ﷺ at this point, he has a
death sentence.
Again, he's inciting against the Prophet ﷺ so
he is an enemy of the Prophet ﷺ.
The Prophet ﷺ has given the permission that
if he's found then he could be killed
because he's considered a warmonger at the time.
So Bujair writes a letter to him and
Bujair asks the Prophet ﷺ for the permission
to call him, to find that way and
the Prophet ﷺ of course does not object
to people that come without force and that
don't have to be put in this situation.
So Bujair sends him a letter and he
says to him, listen my brother, إِن كَانَتْ
لَكَ فِي نَفْسِكَ حَاجَةً If you have in
you anything, if this is resonating with you,
come to the Prophet ﷺ فَإِنَّهُ لَا يَقْتُلُ
أَحَدًا جَاءَهُ تَائِبًا He doesn't kill anyone that
comes to him repentant.
Like the Prophet ﷺ has forgiven people that
have done way worse than you.
He forgave Ikramah, he forgave Abu Sufyan ibn
Harith, Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, he forgave Safwan
ibn Umayyah, he's forgiving the people of Ta
'if, like he's not out to get you,
it's not because the Prophet ﷺ wants to
let your blood flow, just like we said
about Thumamah, it's not what he's after here.
So just come to him repentant and he's
not going to hurt you.
And he authored him some lines of poetry.
So you know that this family is way
too poetic when their letters even have poetry
to each other.
So he says فَمَنْ مُبَلِّغُنْ كَعْبًا فَهَلَّكَ فِي
الَّتِي تَلُومُ عَلَيْهَا بَاطِلًا وَهِيَ أَحْزَمُ إِلَى اللَّهِ
لَا الْعُزَّ وَلَا الْلَّا تَوَحْدَهُ فَتَنْجُوا إِذَا كَانَ
النَّجَاءُ وَتُسْلِمُوا لَدَيْ يَوْمَ لَا يَنْجُوا وَلَيْسَ بِمُفْلِتٍ
مِنَ النَّارِ إِلَّا طَاهِرُ الْقَلْبِ مُسْلِمُوا And then
he goes on, he says فَدِينُ زُهَيْرٍ وَهُوَ
لَا شَيْءَ غَيْرُهُ وَدِينُ أَبِي سُلْمَ عَلَيَّ مُحَرَّمُوا
So he says who will convey to Ka
'b?
Remember Ka'b said who will convey to
Bujayr?
He said who's going to tell Ka'b?
That's a poetic instrument.
Who's going to tell him?
Who's going to tell Ka'b?
Are you still blaming Islam?
Are you still blaming this affair unjustly?
Or have you come to realize when it
is actually far more coherent and far wiser
than anything that you have?
Turn to Allah not to Allah, not to
Al-Uzza only Him so that you can
be saved on a day when you will
need to be saved and on a day
when no one will escape from the fire
except for one who has a pure heart
and who is a Muslim.
And he says the religion of Zuhair is
nothing but this and the religion of Abu
Sulma is forbidden upon me, I've made it
muharram for myself.
So he's calling to him and he's telling
him listen it's about time for you to
recognize where you are now.
So Ka'b mentions that the earth is
constricting, it's like it's suffocating me he's on
the run and one of the things subhanAllah
that's really interesting about the psychology of many
of these people is that they saw and
this comes from not the exact right place
but there is something to it they saw
that if Allah gives the Prophet ﷺ victory
that means he was on something that is
the way that many of them were thinking
and you hear it in many of the
stories that we already covered, look if he
gets there we'll follow him because that means
he's upon something and if he doesn't then
we're going to assume that he actually has
nothing so Ka'b is thinking about it
and he wants to convert to Islam now
so Ka'b what he says is he
says I snuck into Medina alright and this
is where the story gets very interesting so
I basically reached out to someone who I
had mawadda with like an old friend and
I stayed with him, so not Bujaid stayed
with him and then he said that I
went to the masjid at salatul fajr and
I wrapped myself alright and he said that
I basically made out who the Prophet ﷺ
was, it's fajr time so I went close
to the Prophet ﷺ after salatul fajr I
shook his hand, by the way this is
very dangerous because I mean technically speaking you
can be executed at any moment, if anybody
in the masjid realizes who you are before
you get a chance to actually say who
you are, you're done right but he says
you know I went to the Prophet ﷺ
wada'tu yadi fi yadihi ﷺ, I put my
hand in his hand and the Prophet ﷺ
didn't know who I was or at least
it didn't seem like he knew who I
was of course we know the story of
Umair bin Wahab and others so he said,
I said to him and this is from
his brilliance I said to him, Ya Rasulullah
in Ka'b ibn Zuhayrin ataaka ta'iban
musliman fahal anta qabilun minhu in ana jittuka
bihi I said listen just hypothetically speaking Ka
'b ibn Zuhayr who you've basically put a
sentence out on now because of all that
he's done, he's done some pretty bad stuff,
if he came to you repenting would you
forgive him if I brought him to you
so he's pretending that he's not Ka'b
but he's someone that could catch Ka'b,
I'm not Ka'b but I know where
to find Ka'b so the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam he says of course if you
brought Ka'b you who's not Ka'b
and he was repentant for what he had
done then he would be forgiven a very
important point here that the scholars mention there
are many narrations of people in this situation
who came to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
and they didn't become Muslim their idea of
being forgiven was simply releasing hostility right as
we saw with Safwan ibn Umayyah by the
way right, that you know basically resigning to
a place of no hostility but he's saying
if he came to you ta'iban musliman,
like I don't know if my brother was
really sure about what he was saying when
he said that so the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam said of course so Ka'b radiyallahu
ta'ala anhu he unwraps his face and
he says ana ka'b wa ashhadu an
la ilaha illa Allah wa ashhadu annaka rasool
Allah I am Ka'b and I bear
witness that there is only one God and
that you are the messenger of Allah now
it shows you that everyone knew exactly who
he was one of the ansar jumped on
him right away right, he was like no
I'm not letting this go and the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told him to stop he
said ya rasool Allah let me kill him,
this is Ka'b we know who he
is, we got him he's here in the
masjid, we finally have him and the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said da'ahu anka innahu
ja'a ta'iban just leave him alone,
he came repenting now what happens here right,
this is salatul fajr and it's in the
masjid what happens in this situation now subhanallah,
immortalizes some of his poetry he's a poet
and he's clearly prepared for this moment with
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and so he
will say to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
the original burda I'm gonna have to like
qualify this a million times if you go
to youtube and search burda you're going to
get a poem that was written way later,
hundreds of years after the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam, by a man by the name of
Imam Busayri in Egypt right, and he saw
a dream he says he saw a dream
where he recited these lines to the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam gave him his burda, he gave him
his mantle this is not the same burda
nor is it the one of Ahmed Shawqi,
right the great poet, this is the first
burda the first actual burda that's recorded in
history and the only one that we know
recited obviously to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
that has this type of a connotation basically
he authors or he shares with the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam one of the most eloquent
poems in history and can anyone tell me
what the name of that poem is anybody
have you ever heard of Banat Su'ad
there you go, I was looking for you,
I knew Abu Amr was gonna get it
mashallah I tested my father with it by
the way and he immediately started rattling off
the lines I get it, ok so this
is one of the most poetic expressions in
history, but it's very interesting because Banat Su
'ad literally means Su'ad left me Su
'ad left me it's a poem of 60
lines ok, it's a poem of 60 lines
and he doesn't start talking about the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam until line 40 ok but
this line or these lines are all weaved
poetically and beautifully into the praise of the
Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam but it takes a
long time to get there and the lines
are extremely complicated and you start to decipher
line by line and it's hard to even
figure out the connections and that's why this
man's poetry is studied in terms of scheme
in terms of how he would do it
because he's considered an expert in madhh in
hikam he's considered an expert in praise in
dispoetry which was what Hassan Muthabith used to
do in wisdom and parables he kinda has
it all and it seems like the first
20 lines he's talking about a woman named
Su'ad who left him but in reality
right, many of the scholars of language, they
say that Su'ad here is jahiliya Su
'ad here he's referring to the days of
ignorance and he's referring to the betrayal of
the dunya, like basically I lived this life
of lavishness and I lived this life of
enjoying everything that I possibly could I had
the wealth, I had the women I had
the wine, I had it all I traveled
the earth and lived this incredible life and
it abandoned me, or it showed me its
reality, so he's talking about jahiliya and he's
talking about dunya, he goes on to talk
about the worldly life and material life and
his journeying through and then he comes to
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam so again, even
that is a debate, who is Su'ad
is Su'ad an actual woman or is
Su'ad referring to the days of ignorance
so it's 60 lines and the last 20
are of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and
it's too long to actually go through all
of them but you can actually listen to
what he says to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam he says he said that I was
told that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam had
promised me he had set out to kill
me but seeking pardon from the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam is always hoped for a man
like the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam he said
he said you know almost like be calm,
be calculated oh you who has received all
of this wisdom you've received the beauty of
the Quran with all of its instruction, with
all of its wisdom with all of its
details so surely you're not going to be
hasty when you have with you something as
beautiful as the Quran he said he says
listen, do not immediately assume that everything that's
been said about me is true like I
know I have a bad reputation at this
point but don't assume that everything is true
about me so to be slow because of
what guides you not to be hasty in
taking me and not to be hasty in
what you've heard about me Ya Rasulullah and
he says he said that if I'm in
a position right now and seeing and hearing
something that if in my position was an
elephant an elephant would shiver and tremble out
of fear in front of you O Messenger
of Allah if an elephant was in this
situation who am I?
this small human being in front of you
حَتَّى وَضَعْتُ يَمِينِي لَا أُنَازِعُهُ فِي كَفِّ ذِي
نَغَمَاتٍ قِيلُهُ الْقِيلُ till I put my hand
in the hand of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam a man who is in such a
position that what he says happens as he
says it like he knows the position of
power that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is
in he said that in this situation
it is more dreaded by me when I
speak to him and I am told that
you have been questioned and you must now
answer so he's conveying to the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam the difficulty of the situation but
then he's just pouring out these beautiful lines
of poetry and by the way he's not
reading from an iPhone Subhanallah it's a long
poem and it's beautiful and the lyrics are
perfect so perfectly composed and it shows you
the brain of this man as he starts
to flow with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
and to the end of it he says
إِنَّ الرَّسُولَ لَسَيْفٌ يُسْطَضَاءُ بِهِ مُهَنَّدٌ مِنْ سُيُوفِ
اللَّهِ مَسْلُولُ فِي فِتْيَةٍ مِنْ قُرَيْشٍ قَالَ قَائِلُهُمْ
بِبَطْنِ مَكَّةَ لَمَّا أَسْلَمُوا زُولُوا it's so profound
he says that the messenger of Allah Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam is surely a sword from whose
light is sought like a shiny sword and
he says one of the swords of Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and he mentions Muhannad
an Indian blade that is unsheathed so the
finest metal the finest swords unsheathed were from
Al-Hin there was a fast nation that's
why you have half of the people named
Hind back then Hind, Muhannad so he's saying
like an unsheathed Indian sword shining like that's
how your light is sought and obviously it
conveys by using that example the power of
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam his authority as
well as his eloquence and he praises Quraysh
he praises the Muhajireen and he says this
small group of people from the Quraysh who
were in the valley of Mecca and when
they were told to submit to Islam they
immediately said go like they were ready to
go with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam by
the way Subhanallah it's very interesting he was
angry with all of the Ansar because of
the Ansari man that jumped on him so
initially his poetry he's praising only the Muhajireen
and he took a stance with all of
the Ansar and then the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam told him to praise the Ansar he
said you abused the Ansar with your tongue
now praise the Ansar with your tongue you
have to praise them as well so he
authored lines praising the Ansar as well now
obviously when this happens the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam he stands up, he takes off his
burda he takes off his cloak so this
is real life now he takes off his
mantle and he puts it on him Subhanallah
this man walked in wrapped up not sure
if he was going to get out safe
and now the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is
giving him an assurance of safety and this
is of course a gift at the time
that conveys the appreciation for the words that
he said so he walked in wrapped in
afraid to be killed he's coming out and
he's donning the burda of the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam in Medina and this of course
Subhanallah fits the same spirit many of the
ulema mention you can't just read this just
in the tradition of the Arabs at the
time like just give him a burda because
that's how you reward a poet give him
your burda to show that what he expressed
is that superior but that it fits the
way the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was softening
the hearts of the people like this man
is about to give up a life of
going and serenading the Kisra's of the world
and the Caesars of the world and all
of these tribes and stuff like that I'll
give you something better than that the same
way that he was softening the hearts of
Abu Sufyan and Safwan and these types of
people this is a way of softening his
heart as well you know what, here this
is my approval of you and this is
my love for you and as you can
imagine this man never gave up that burda,
right, like he wore it everywhere, so Ka
'b ibn Zuhair radiAllahu ta'ala anhu accepts
Islam and starts to author all of these
lines in praise of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam and for Islam and defending the Muslims
right, and at the same time he's always
wearing the cloak of the messenger of Allah
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and subhanAllah it was it
became known Mu'awiyah radiAllahu anhu said that
the most poetic of the people of Jahiliyyah
in terms of poetry was Zuhair and the
most poetic of the people of Islam was
Ka'b ibn Zuhair so his father was
the master poet of Jahiliyyah, his son Ka
'b becomes the master poet of Islam and
he was called Hakeem Ash-Shu'ara his
father was called Hakeem Ash-Shu'ara as
was he the wise one or the great
one of the poets, so he used to
walk around with this burda so what happens
is that Mu'awiyah tries to buy it
off of him and he says there's no
way you're not getting it from me so
he holds on to it for the rest
of his life and he's in Medina and
he authors poetry in praise of the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam well after the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam passes away and then subhanAllah when
he passes away Mu'awiyah manages to get
his inheritors to sell it to him so
he couldn't buy it from him directly but
he could buy it from his inheritors and
Ka'b his son and his grandchildren all
became poets as well and they all authored
poetry so it kind of became in the
family Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma's fear was unfounded
his name remained sort of eternal in history
as far as this great poet and the
son carried on the name and of course
became a sha'ar of Islam as did
the children but that's when you kind of
have this mythology of sorts or I don't
even want to say mythology because that indicates
that it was all fake but this aura
that surrounds the mantle of the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam and it became the tradition then
that the khulafa would pass down this mantle
and that the kings would have it of
course the problem becomes at some point you've
got multiple people claiming to have the same
burda so I'm just going to put this
out there that if you go to Topkapi
Palace in Turkey that that's what they claim
is the burda of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam wallahu a'lam right and Allah knows
best but obviously I mean we live in
a time where even the black stone or
you know there was a time when even
the black stone was stolen how do you
verify these things?
How do you maintain it?
Allahu a'lam right so I'm not going
to get myself in trouble I'm just going
to say that verification is very difficult obviously
with these things but there is a whole
science of trying to verify this and trying
to ensure that this was indeed the mantle
of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam the burda
of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and you
know they've had multiple ceremonies with it and
you know every year where you know even
back then actually the king or the khalifa
would visit it and they would you know
do something with it right so it kind
of comes from this interaction from him and
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and then obviously
everything after that becomes an extension right of
that initial incident but it went on that
obviously his name became this great name in
Islamic history and so when you ask who's
the master of poets you know Hassan radiallahu
ta'ala anhu you know some of the
companions of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam it
is Ka'ab ibn Zuhayr radiallahu ta'ala
anhu in this sense who's sort of looked
at as the most superior in his poetry
the next person I'll mention subhanAllah because he
was also in the same spirit just because
we have a few more minutes inshallah ta
'ala, in the same spirit forgiven at the
end of Islam one of these poets is
a name, a man by the name of
Abdullah Nazzab Ali and this was a man
who wrote poetry against Islam from the heart
of Mecca battle after battle after battle after
battle and not only that but to give
you an image he was considered the opponent
of Hassan ibn Thabit radiallahu ta'ala anhu
before things went down so he and Hassan
ibn Thabit would exchange poems against each other
sort of like the best of Mecca versus
the best of Medina being Hassan ibn Thabit
the poet of the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi wa
sallam and when the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi wa
sallam came to Mecca and he fled and
Hassan essentially wrote a poem mocking him for
running away right so again the culture of
poetry subhanAllah, so he wrote a long poem
mocking him and making fun of him for
running away from the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi wa
sallam and it's actually in the books of
Sirah, this actual poem where he's making fun
of him and eventually he also converts to
Islam from afar he hears that the Prophet
sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam is granting amnesty he
comes back from Yemen to the Prophet sallAllahu
alayhi wa sallam remember we had a whole
bunch of people that fled to in the
direction of Abyssinia, in the direction of Yemen
but something beautiful about him is that when
he walks into Mecca the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi
wa sallam sees him from afar right and
here's the thing subhanAllah he fled with some
of his family and he decided when he
was away, you know what I'm going to
go back and become Muslim and his family
said wait a minute you know we wanted
to become Muslim a long time ago now
you're going to be the one to you
took us on this journey, now you're going
to be the one to go back to
the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam and leave
us behind, right so he really held out
but he comes to the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi
wa sallam and when the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi
wa sallam is sitting with his companions he
sees him approaching from afar and the Prophet
sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam says as he is
coming from afar wallahi inni la ara fi
wajhihi nurul iman I can see from his
face from afar the light of faith something
happened to him and he's coming to embrace
Islam and indeed he came, the Prophet sallAllahu
alayhi wa sallam told the sahaba to stand
down and he comes to the Prophet sallAllahu
alayhi wa sallam so regretful and he authors
poetry about his own humiliation and how he
spent all of these years against the Prophet
sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam and the Prophet sallAllahu
alayhi wa sallam embraces him and tells him
that Islam does away with everything that came
before it and he also stays in Mecca
and becomes a Muslim and dies as a
Muslim in Mecca and is buried in Jannatul
Mualla the point being subhanAllah that when you
look at these people this sort of represents
a category these people are no less significant
than the chieftains and the tribal leaders at
the time who were attacking Islam and the
Prophet sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam had the heart
and he had the appetite to even forgive
them and what ends up happening as a
result is what we see today that instead
of having this angry narrative, this angry poetry
against Islam about a vengeful Prophet you have
poetry about the forgiveness of the Prophet sallAllahu
alayhi wa sallam who's looking at the people
that incited war against him and the Prophet
sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam is overlooking their faults.
Next week we're going to talk about probably
in my mind one of the most interesting
people because a false Prophet someone who actually
claimed nubuwwah who repented so inshaAllah next week
we'll talk about him as we're talking about
these unique figures that embrace afterwards so we
ask Allah to be pleased with and and
to be pleased with all the campaigns of
the Prophet sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam and send
his peace and blessings upon him and his
family ...
...