Our Qaim is the same as the promised Mahdi whom you should await and when he appears you should obey. He will be my third descendant. I swear by the God who sent Muhammad as the Prophet and appointed us as the Imams that even if there remains a single day on earth, God will prolong it until the Mahdi emerges and fills the earth with justice and equity as it is filled with injustice and tyranny. God takes care of His affairs overnight just as He managed the affairs of Moses in one night. Moses had gone to fetch fire for his family and he returned having been fully designated as Gods prophet. Al-Bazanti is quoted saying: Al-Rida (A.S.) had one of his donkeys sent to convey me to his residence, so I came to the town and stayed with a dignitary for a part of the night, and we both had our supper together, then he ordered my bed to be prepared. A Tiberian pillow, a Caesarian sheet, and a Marw blanket were brought to me. Having eaten my supper, he asked me, `Would you like to retire? I said, `Yes, may my life be sacrificed for yours. So he put the sheet and the blanket over me and said, `May God make you sleep in good health, and we were on the rooftop. When he went down, I told myself that I had achieved a status with that man nobody else had attained before. It was then when I heard someone calling my name, but I did not recognize the voice till one of his (al-Ridas) servants came to me. He said: `Come meet my master; so I went down and he came towards me, asked me for my hand to shake and he shook it with a squeeze, saying, `The Commander of the Faithful, Gods peace be upon him, came once to visit Sasaa ibn Sawhan, and when it was time to leave, he advised Sasaa not to boast about his visit to him but to look after himself instead for he seemed to be about to depart from this world and that worldly hopes do not do a dying man any good, and he greeted him a great deal as he bid him good-bye. We can clearly be acquainted with this negative stance of Ahl al-Bayt (A.S.) towards their rulers by examining what al-Hassan ibn al-Husayn al-Anbari tells us about Emam Abul-Hassan al-Rida (A.S.). He says: I continued writing him for fourteen years asking his permission that I accept a job in the service of the sultan. At the conclusion of the last letter I wrote him I stated the fact that I was fearing for my life because the sultan was accusing me of being a Rafidi and that he did not doubt that the reason why I declined from working for him was due to my being a Rafidi. So Abul-Hassan wrote me saying, `I have comprehended the contents of your letters and what you stated regarding your apprehension about your lifes safety. If you know that should you accept the job, you would behave according to the commands of the Messenger of God (S.A.W.) and your assistants and clerks would be followers of your faith, and if you use the gain you receive to help needy believers till you become their equal, then one deed will offset another; otherwise, do not. The Emams (A.S.) played a significant role in the area of educating the public, setting examples in educating through the example of ones own conduct; therefore, their methods of education were not confined merely to spreading awareness through the spoken word but went beyond that to enforcing a strict practical censorship over actions to observe the defects and shortcomings of conduct in the life of others. Here we present three examples of the norms of conduct of Emam al-Rida (A.S.) each dealing with one aspect of mans practical life: Yasir, one of his servants, narrates that the Emams attendants were eating some fruit one day and they were throwing away a good portion of it uneaten. Abul-Hassan (A.S.) said to them: Praise be to God! If you have eaten to your fill, there are many who have not; so, you should feed them of it instead. In this incident, the Emam points out to the reality of wanton living which we observe in our life. When we feel that we have achieved full satisfaction of something, be it food or anything else, we do not try to satisfy the need of others for it, but we may even try to spoil it in one way or another without realizing the crime towards humanity implied in an action like that. Sulaiman ibn Jafer al-Jufi is quoted saying: I was in the company of al-Rida (A.S.) trying to take care of some personal business of my own and I wanted to go home. He said to me, `Come with me and spend the night over my house. So I went with him and he entered his house shortly before sunset. He noticed that his attendants were working with clay, probably mending stables, and there was a black man among them. He asked them, `What is this man doing with you? They said: `He is helping us, and we will pay him something. He asked, `Did you come to an agreement with him regarding his wages? They said, `No. He will accept whatever we pay him. He, thereupon, started whipping them and showing signs of extreme anger. I said to him, `May my life be sacrificed for yours! Why are you so angry? He said: `I have forbidden them so many times from doing something like that and ordered them not to employ anyone before coming to an agreement with him regarding his wages. You know that nobody would work for you without an agreed upon wage. If you do not, and then you pay him three times as much as you first intended to pay him, he would still think that you underpaid him. But if you agree on the wage, he will praise you for fulfilling your promise and paying him according to your agreement, and then if you give him a little bit more, he would recognize that and notice that you increased his pay. Umayya ibn Ali states: I was sitting with Abul-Hassan (A.S.) at Mecca during the year in which he performed the hajj prior to his trip to Khurasan, and Abu Jafer was with him when he was bidding the House (Kaba) good-bye. Having finished his tawaf, he went to the maqam and said his prayers there. Abu Jafer, accompanied by Muaffaq, was making his tawaf, till he reached the Stone. There he sat and he prolonged his sitting there. Muaffaq said to him: `May my life be sacrificed for yours! It is time you stood up. He answered: `I do not wish to leave this place at all except by the Will of God, and grief could easily be seen clouding over his face. Muaffaq approached Abul-Hassan and said to him: `May my life be sacrificed for yours! Abu Jafer is sitting by the Stone unwilling to leave, so Abul-Hassan stood up, came to Abu Jafer and said: `Stand up, my loved one. But his son said: `I do not wish to leave this place... He said: `Do stand up, O my loved one. After a while, he said to his father: `How can I stand up seeing that you have already said your farewell at the House never to return again? He said: `Do stand up, my loved one. He stood up and left with his father. The Emam (A.S.) patiently put up with numerous norms of persecution and injustice inflicted upon him during the reign of (Harun) al-Rashid starting with the tragedy of his father, passing by the tragedies to which the Alawides were subjected, and ending with the unfair instigations to al-Rashid by the Emams opponents to kill him and eliminate him. The strength of the patience and perseverance of the Emam become manifest when we examine the thinly veiled political persecution from which he suffered during al-Mamoons reign especially after the latter appointed him as his heir to the throne, fully knowing that al-Mamoon was not sincere in his intention but rather enacted a political act in which al-Mamoon played the major role solely to provide security to the shaky foundations of his regime due to the storming events the outcome of which was reflected upon the issue of who would succeed him on the throne. The extent of the suffering of the Emam, the degree of his bitterness and agony, and the amount of grief and sorrow which filled his heart due to the treatment meted to him by the government, can be assessed; yet he buried all of that in the depth of his mind with mute patience and perseverance. Yasir, his servant, said once: Whenever al-Rida (A.S.) returned home on Friday from the mosque, with his face sweating and stained by blowing dust, he would raise his hands and invoke God saying, `God! If the only way I am relieved from my distress is by death, then I invoke Thee to hasten its hour. In a dialogue with al-Bazanti, the Emam said: Anyone who receives a boon is in danger: He has to carry out Gods commandments in its regard. By God! Whenever God blesses me with something, I continue to be in extreme apprehension till (and here he made a motion with his hand) I take out some of it and spend it in the way God has ordained in its regard. Al-Bazanti asked him: May my life be sacrificed for yours! You, in your status of high esteem, fear that much? He answered: Yes, indeed! And I praise my Creator for the blessings He bestowed upon me. The Emams method in giving is derived from such an angle of the human nature. Eleisha ibn Hamza says: I was once talking to al-Rida (A.S.) when a large crowd of people assembled to ask him about what is permissible in Islam and what is not. A man as tall as Adam came to him and said: `Assalamo Alaikom, O Son of the Messenger of God! I am a man who loves you, your fathers and grandfathers, and I have just been on my way to perform the pilgrimage when I discovered that I had lost everything with me and now I do not have anything enough even for a leg of the trip. If you will, please help me with the expense of going back home, and I am a recipient of Gods blessing (i.e. well to do). As soon as I reach there, I will give to the poor as much as you will give me, for I do not qualify to be a recipient of alms. He said to him: `Sit, may God be merciful to you, then he kept talking to people till they dispersed except that man, Sulaiman al-Jaferi, Khuthaiama and myself. Then he (al-Rida) said: `Do you permit me to enter (the room)? Sulaiman said to him: `May God advance your endeavor.43 So he entered the room and stayed for about an hour after which he came out and closed the door behind him, stretched his hand above the door and said: `Where is the man from Khurasan? The man answered: `Here I am! He said: `Take these two hundred dinars, use them for your preparations for the trip; may God bring you blessings thereby, and do not spend an equal amount to it on my behalf, and leave the room in a way that I do not see you and you do not see me, then he left. Sulaiman then said: `May my life be sacrificed for yours! You have made quite a generous offer, but why did you hide your face? He answered: `I did so for fear of seeing the humiliation on the face of the man due to my assistance for him. Have you not heard the hadith of the Messenger of God (S.A.W.) in which he said: `The one who hides a good deeds receives rewards equal to performing the pilgrimage seventy times; one who announces his sin is humiliated, while one who hides it is forgiven? Have you heard the saying of the example of the first case: Whenever I approach him, one day, with a plea, I return home and my dignity is still with me. for he hides himself from the person who appeals to him when he gives him something so that he does not see the humiliation on his face, and so that the pleading person retains his dignity when he does not see the face of the benevolent one who is giving him? He asks him to leave without seeing him in order to safeguard himself against feeling as having the upper hand over the pleading person, and in order to relieve the pleading person from having to show his gratitude to him. While in Khurasan, he once distributed his entire wealth to the poor on the day of Arafat, so al-Fadl ibn Sahl said to him: Now you are bankrupt! He said: On the contrary! I am now wealthier than ever. Do not consider trading my wealth for Gods rewards and pleasure as bankruptcy. A man passed by Abul-Hassan and begged him to give him according to the extent of his kindness. He said: `I cannot afford that. So he said: `Then give me according to mine, whereupon he ordered his servant to give the man two hundred dinars. The reason why the Emam abstained from giving the man according to the extent of his own kindness, as the man asked him the first time, is probably due to the fact that he simply did not have as much money as he liked to give. As regarding his own affection towards the poor and the indigent, and his way of looking after them, Muammar ibn Khallad narrates this anecdote: Whenever Abul-Hassan al-Rida (A.S.) was about to eat his meal, he would bring a large platter and select the choicest food on the table and put on it, then he would order it to be given away to the poor. After that he would recite the following verse: `But he hath made no haste on the path that is steep. After that he would say: `God, the Exalted and the Sublime, knows that not everyone has the ability to free a slave, nevertheless He found means for them to achieve Paradise (by feeding others). Thus does the Emam sense the weight of deprivation under which the poor moan and suffer; therefore, he shares his best food with them in response to the call of humanity and kindness and in harmony with the spirit of the message with which God entrusted him. Al-Bazanti tells the story of a letter Emam al-Rida (A.S.) wrote to his son Emam Abu Jafer (A.S.) which personifies the generosity and spirit of giving deeply rooted in the hearts of the Prophets Ahl al-Bayt (A.S.); he says: I read the letter of Abul-Hassan Emam al-Rida (A.S.) to Abu Jafer which said: `O Abu Jafer! I have heard that when you ride, the servants take you out of the city through its small gate. This is due to their being miser so that nobody asks you for something. I plead you by the right I have upon you that every time you enter into or get out of the city, you should do so through its large gate, and when you ride, take gold and silver with you, and every time you are asked, you should give. If any of your uncles asks you for something, you should give him no less than fifty dinars, and you yourself may determine the maximum amount you would like to give; and if any of your aunts asks you for something, do not give her less than twenty-five dinars, and it is up to you to determine the maximum amount. I only desire that God raises your status; therefore, keep giving away and do not fear that the Lord of the Throne will ever throw you into poverty. The Emam (A.S.) did not have the chance to rule for any period of time so that we may discuss his practical style of government, but we can still be acquainted with that through reviewing his statements to some of his followers who very much desired that the Emam should shoulder the responsibilities of caliphate. Muhammad ibn Abu Abada asked him once: Why did you delay executing the order of the commander of the faithful and why did you refuse to oblige? He said: Be careful, O father of Hassan! The matter is not so. He added saying that the Emam noticed that he was crossed, so he said: Whats in it for you anyway? Should I, as you presume, become what you wish me to become, and you are as close to me then as you are right now, you would certainly be responsible for paying your dues and, in my eyes, there would be no difference between you and anyone else.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 12:50:37 +0000
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