The Date Palm Cried “The Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) used to stand by a tree or a date-palm on Friday (to give the Khutbah/sermon). Then an Ansari woman or man said, ‘O Messenger of Allah! Shall we make a pulpit for you?’ He replied, ‘If you wish.’ So they made a pulpit for him and when it was Friday, the Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) sat on the pulpit (to deliver the Khutbah) and the trunk of the date-palm on which he used to recline cried out as if it would split asunder.” Another narration states: “It cried like a child and the Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) descended (from the pulpit) and embraced it while it continued moaning like a child being quietened. The Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said, ‘It was crying for (missing) what it used to hear of Dhikr near it.’” [Sahih Bukhari] Ibn Hajar said that there is evidence in this hadith that Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) can endow inanimate objects with a special sense or feeling like that of animals. This hadith also shows one of the numerous miracles of the Messenger of Allah (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam). All of Allah’s creation on land, in sea, in water, in the air and all over the universe, worships Allah (subhana wa ta’ala). It is only humans and jinn that can choose to ignore and disobey Allah (subhana wa ta’ala). A Muslim is therefore in harmony with the entire universe that is worshipping Allah (subhana wa ta’ala). Even if the world is filled with non-Muslims, the animate and inanimate forces backing a Muslim are far greater. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani was a medieval Shafiite Sunni scholar of Islam who represents the entire realm of the Sunni world in the field of Hadith. He was born in Cairo in 1372 CE and both of his parents died in his infancy. Ibn Hajar was enrolled in Quranic studies when he was five. Here he excelled, learning Surah Maryam in a single day, and progressed to the memorization of texts such as the abridged version of Ibn al-Hajibs work on the foundations of fiqh. When he went to Mecca at the age of 12, he was considered competent to lead the Tarawih prayers there during Ramadan. In 1397, at the age of twenty-five, he married Anas Khatun, who was a hadith expert in her own right, holding ijazas from Zayn ad-Din al-Iraqi. She gave celebrated public lectures to crowds of ulema, including as- Sakhawi. Ibn Hajar went on to be appointed to the position of Egyptian chief-judge (Qadi) several times, and authored more than fifty works on hadith, history, biography, Quranic exegesis (tafsir), poetry and Shafii jurisprudence. Ibn Hajar is the author of the commentary on Sahih Bukhari, known as Fath al-Bari, which is the most valued commentary on Sahih Bukhari. According to historian Ibn Iyaas, “the greatest celebration of the age” was held in Egypt on the completion of this work. Ibn Hajar passed away at the age of seventy-nine. His funeral in Cairo was attended by an estimated fifty thousand people, including the Sultan and the Khalifa.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 04:20:54 +0000
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