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trans-girl-nausicaa · 3 months

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on western artistic chauvinism and islam.

As an American non-Muslim, i first learned about Islamic art and architecture in an academic context, when i was studying art history in college. one of the first things we studied was the complex geometric forms in islamic architecture. Some of the most striking, complex, and beautiful patterns in contemporary and historical islamic architecture are present in religious architecture.

Examples:

Dome of the Selimiye mosque, Turkey, completed 1574 CE.

Exterior of the Dome of the Rock, a shrine withing the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, Palestine. Original construction was completed between 688 and 692 CE, and many alterations and repairs have been undertaken subsequently.

Dome of the Gazi Husri-beg Mosque, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, constructed 1531 CE. (Fun fact: In 1898 this mosque became the first known mosque in the world to have electrical lighting installed!)

The origins of these incredibly complex patterns partly stem from the avoidance of art depicting living beings according to religious principles, also known as aniconism, which is not universal throughout Islamic historical art, but gradually became nearly universal, especially in religious art an architecture. However, there are historical examples of secular figural art made by Muslims. (Link to an article on Islamic figural art by the Met Museum.) The Arab world in general maintained in-depth studies of mathematics and geometry throughout what we may call the "medieval" era in Europe. Arabic translations of Aristotle were studied. Al-Khwarizmi invented Algebra in 830 CE.

So, as any good artist knows, within a "limitation," artistic techniques can become more specialized and refined. Indeed, Muslim artists as far back as the Ummayad caliphate had extemely sophisticated application of geometry within their designs.

In art class I studied some of the fundamentals of how to construct similar geometrically repeating patters. I grasped the fundamentals quickly, and I found it enjoyable to work within these structures. However, as you increase the complexity, the degree to which you need to understand geometry to get your patterns to work out seemingly increases exponentially.

If you want a step-by step study of some of these geometric patterns, please check out the tutorials of the Lebanese artist Joumana Medlej. She also has tutorials on figure drawing and Arabic calligraphy.

(Speaking of calligraphy, I wanted to add more to this piece regarding calligraphy and architecture, but I feel I'm getting really long already.)

Years later, after I was finished with school, I got the opportunity to go to the Balkans. While I was in Bosnia & Herzegovina, I visited several historical mosques and got to see in person the type of art that I had previously only seen in photographs.

But what does it mean to acknowledge that this art exists?

Well, the mere acknowledgement and knowledge of the history of Islamic art, architecture, calligraphy, indeed, all the elements of distinct cultural heritage across the world, are controversial in the West.

One of the darkest examples of European violence against Muslim peoples was the Bosnian Genocide in the 1990s. This genocide did not start or end with the infamous massacre of ~8000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) at Srebrenica, but also included systematic relocation of civilians, smaller massacres, and destruction of cultural heritage throughout Bosnia by both VRS and the Croatian Defense Council (HVO). Over one thousand mosques were destroyed. The VRS and the HVO both deliberately attempted to create "ethnically pure" Muslim-free statelets, and destroyed all the mosques in the territory that they held. The VRS burned down Sarajevo's National Library. The HVO blew up the Old Bridge of Mostar, a beautiful stone bridge in the middle of the city that had stood since the 16th century. (After the war, the stones were recovered from the river below and the bridge was reconstructed, and is used by Mostar residents every day.)

Israel refuses to acknowledge the historical and contemporary fact of the existence of a Palestinian people. As of February 2024, Israel has destroyed over one thousand mosques in the course of its bombardment of Gaza.

Many state and non-state actors within the U.S. and its allies also harbor these dark ideas of "bombing Muslims into the Stone Age." The invasion of Iraq was referred to as a "crusade" by President George W. Bush, and this attitude was aped by the Christian right wing in the USA.

All "they" see is a mythical horde from the East that must be destroyed.

But there is no horde. The people you share this earth with are your neighbors, regardless of their religion.

We live in a global society, and art anywhere is part of global cultural heritage. The acknowledgement, preservation, and study of Islamic art and architecture does not only culturally enrich Muslims, it enriches the whole world. Conversely, when you destroy Islamic art and architecture to harm Muslims, you also harm the rest of the world.

#art #history #bosnia #palestine #islam #art history #architecture

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tanadrin · 5 months

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Shoemaker on literacy, memory, oral tradition, and the Quran:

Studies of literacy in pre-Islamic Arabia have been severely overlooked in recent Quran scholarship; in fact, literacy in the 7th century Hijaz was "almost completely unknown" and "writing was hardly practiced at all in the time of Muhammad." "[T]here seems to be a widespread agreement among experts on the early history of the Arabic language 'that, before and immediately after the rise of Islam, Arab culture was in all important respects fundamentally oral.'" Ancient graffiti in the region seems to have been a bit like early runic writing in Scandinavia--not central to the culture, mostly decorative and incidental, and certainly not used for long, important texts. "There is, in effect, a lot of 'Kilroy was here' scattered across the Arabian desert." Indeed, most of these graffiti are personal names or private in nature--we're not talking monumental inscriptions here, we're talking bored herders scratching stuff onto rocks to pass the time.

Southern Arabia and the larger oases to the north had more in the way of literate elites (and thus things like monumental inscriptions), but these places were far from the central inland Hijaz. If someone in this region did want to become literate, they would probably have learned to read and write in Greek or Aramaic, which were useful and important linguae francae.

As in very early Christianity, writing occupied a controversial position vis a vis orality--oral tradition was primary for the production and transmission of culturally important things like religious texts, poetry, literary prose, genealogy, and history. The shift to a literate culture came only with the expansion of Muhammad's polity into a wealthy, multicultural empire rather than a tribal state. Indeed, much of the early Caliphate's administration used Greek and other languages--Arabic entered administration only slowly, since a lot of early bureaucrats were drawn from the Roman and Sasanian bureaucracy.

And like early Christianity, another reason not to feel any urgency to write down Muhammad's teachings was that early Muslims expected the end of the world to come very soon, maybe initially even before Muhammad's own death.

The dialect of the Quran is distinctive and unusual; it is very difficult to locate where this dialect might have originated. Ahmad Al-Jallad tentatively identifies an Old Hijazi dialect, but the evidence for this dialect (besides the Quran itself) is limited and mostly much more recent, and he assumes the Quran was produced in the Hijaz.

The Arabic of the Quran can probably be identified with the prestige dialect of Levantine Arabic in the Ummayad period, but the origin of that dialect, and what Arabic dialects were brought together there in that time, is hard to ascertain with certainty.

Shoemaker thinks the Quran started as short collections drawn from individual memories following the conquest and encounters with widespread literacy; these collections would have been considered open, and subject to influence from oral tradition. They were combined into increasingly larger collections, with additional traditions and revisions, emergin as something like divergent versions of the Quran (though still not fully static and closed). Finally, the traditions of these regional versions, with other written and oral traditions, were fashioned into their canonical form under Abd al-Malik, and this version was progressively enforced across the empire.

Shoemaker brings in memory science and the anthropology of oral cultures: memory is highly frangible and fallible. Even though it functions well for day to day tasks, it's important not to overlook how common misremembering and re-remembering alters information in both personal and collective memory when talking about a text that even Islamic tradition agrees was not written down within Muhammad's lifetime.

Most forgetting occurs shortly after an event in question; a small core of memories we develop about an event will persist for a significant time after. These findings have been corroborated both in the lab and in the circumstances of everyday life.

Memory is not primarily reproductive; literal recall is, in evolutionary terms, pretty unimportant, and brains omit needless detail. Remembering thus involves a lot of reconstruction more than it does reproduction; memories are storied piecewise in different parts of the brain, and are assembled on recall, with the gaps being filled in using similar memory fragments drawn from comparable experiences.

Note Bartlett's experiments using a short Native American folktale; when asked to recall this story, even after only fifteen minutes participants introduced major and minor changes. Subsequent recall didn't improve accuracy, though the basic structure of the memory developed pretty quickly in each individual. But this structure was not especially accurate, and significant details vanished or were replaced with new information. Most often this information was drawn from the subject's culture (in this case, Edwardian England), forming a memory that made more sense to them and had more relevance in their context. The overall style was quickly lost, and replaced by new formations, and there was a persistent tendency to abbreviate. After a few months, narrative recall consisted mostly of false memory reports, a finding verified by subsequent replications of his experiments.

Experiential and textual memory in particular degrades very rapidly; this degredation is much faster when information is transmitted from one person to another. Epithets change into their opposites, incidents and events are transposed, names and numbers rarely survive intact more than a few reproductions, opinions and conclusions are reversed, etc. Figures like Jesus or Muhammad will hardly be remembered accurately even by people who knew them.

The style of the Quran (e.g., prose, and often terse, elliptic, and occasionally downright nonsensical prose at that) does not lend itself to memorization; Shoemaker argues it is only possible for people to memorize the Quran now because it has become a written document they can consult in the process.

Eyewitness testimony is of course also notoriously unreliable, despite what apologists (in particular Christian apologists) have argued. Cf. Franz von Liszt's experiment in 1902, where a staged argument in a lecture escalates to one student pulling a gun on another--after revealing this event was scripted and staged, and asking different students to recall the details of the event at different intervals afterward, literally none of them got it right--the best reports, taken immediately, got things about one quarter correct. Even repeatedly imagining a scenario vividly enough can eventually lead to a false memory of it occurring (a phenomenon which may explain some alien abduction reports). People mistake post-even hearsay or visualization for firsthand knowledge, especially in the case of dramatic events.

What memory excels at is remembering broad strokes--we are adapted to retain the information which is most likely to be needed, i.e., the gist (or, more likely, the broad themes) of events and information, and not its exact form.

There's a long digression here about John Dean's testimony on the Watergate conspiracy--this may be the first book in early Islamic studies to have Richard Nixon in the index.

Even competitive memory champions train for short-term recall of large amounts of information; they, and other people with preternaturally good memories, are of course exceedingly rare. It's very unlikely that someone could remember, several decades after the fact, precisely (or even mostly) what was told to them by their friend whose brother's wife's cousin was really there. So even within the traditional account of the Quran's composition, it makes no sense to claim it is in fact the verbatim word of Muhammad.

As in the case of Solomon Shereshevski, when you do have preternaturally good recall even for (say) lists of nonsense syllables, the result is actually kind of debilitating--you have so many useless details to sort through, it makes it quite hard to function at an abstract level. And hyperthymesiacs, though they exhibit a high level of recall about their past, still often remember things incorrectly, at about the same rate as people with normal memories--they are no less susceptible to false or distorted memories.

Nevertheless most modern scholars treat the Quran as a verbatim transcript of Muhammad's words. This is exceedingly unlikely! Especially given that "group" or "collaborative" memory--memories as reconstructed by individuals working together--appears to be even less accurate than individual memory. You get better results having people try to recall events by themselves.

Since during the age of conquests the majority of converts were not closely preoccurpied with the interpretation of the Quran, it would have had to have been rediscovered and hermeneutically reinvented later; the memory of Muhammad's words were being shaped by the nature of the community he founded, as its members collective and individual needs continued to evolve along with the context of transmission.

Many people, both scholars and the general public, seem to believe that people in oral cultures have remarkable capacities for memory not possessed by those of written cultures. Study of oral cultures has shown this is demonstrably false; literacy in fact strengthens verbal and visual memory, while illiteracy impairs these abilities. People in literate cultures have better memories!

Oral transmission is not rote replication; it is a process of recomposition as the tradition is recreated very time it is transmitted. Oral cultures can effectively preserve the gist of events over time, but each time the details are reconstituted, and the tradition can radically diverge from its first repetition, with the stories of the past being reshaped to make them relevant to the present and present concerns.

The collective memory of Muhammad and the origins of Islam as preserved in the Sunni tradition would have forgotten many details as a matter of course, many others because they were no longer relevant to the later Sunni community, and they would have been reshaped in ways that made them particularly suited to the life and community of their contemporary circumstances, exemplifying and validating their religious beliefs--ones very different from those of Muhammad's earliest followers.

The early Muslim conquests put a comparatively small number of soldiers, scattered across a huge territory, in a wildly different cultural and social context, especially in close contact with different Christian and Jewish communities, esp. in the Levant, which rapidly became the cultural center of the new empire. Jews and Christians may have joined the new religious community in large numbers in this time also; their faith and identity would have continued to evolve in this period, as we would expect from comparative episodes in the history of other religions. By the time that Muhammad's teachings were formally inscribed, the memories of his few hundred initial companions would have been transmitted and dispersed to a large number of people in a totally different set of circumstances, with consequences for how those memories exactly were recalled.

Jack Goody, researcher on oral traditions: "It is rather in literate societies that verbatim memory flourishes. Partly because the existence of a fixed original makes it much easier; partly because of the elaboration of spatially oriented memory techniques; partly because of the school situation which has to encourage "decontextualized" memory tasks since it has removed learning from doing and has redefined the corpus of knowledge. Verbatim memorizing is the equivalent of exact copying, which is intrinsic to the transmission of scribal culture, indeed manuscript cultures generally."

Techniques like the ars memoriae belong to literate cultures and were invented by literate people; they are unknown in oral cultures. Oral and literate cultures in fact have a radically different idea of what it means for a text to be "the same"--in the former, word-for-word reproduction is not necessary. A poem can be "the same poem" even if every time it is performed it is largely unique.

Case of the Bagre, the sacred text of the LoDagaa people of Ghana, an extended religious poem used in a liturgical context. Variations in its recitation aren't just variations in wording; changes in recitation can be radical, and the last version is always the starting point. Nevertheless (as in other oral cultures) it is considered "the same," functionally identical with each recitation. These differences appeared even among different performances by the same reciter, or multiple times in the same ceremony. Even the most formulaic parts have great variability. Similar variability in oral texts in other oral cultures has been documented by other anthropologists, including for historical events.

Shoemaker notes that the tradition that the Vedas were transmitted without variation from the time of their composition remains an article of faith in some quarters of South Asian studies; this flies in the face of all available evidence. In fact we have no idea what the state of the Vedic texts was prior to the earliest manuscripts; they may have been written all along.

Collective memory is shaped by contemporary cultural imperatives--examples of Abe Lincoln, a white supremacist considered nothing special by his peers; Christopher Columbus, once revered; the last stand at Masada, considered a minor event of little importance to broader Jewish history until the founding of Israel.

There doesn't have to be any conspiracy or coordinated effort for false narratives about the past to take root.

The hard horizon of communicative memory is around eighty years; so historical consciousness basically only has two modes: the mythic past of collective memory, and the recent past less than eighty or so years ago.

Lack of a clear "generic" monotheism in the Hijaz around the time of Muhammad's birth means the expectations and memory of Muhammad would have been profoundly shaped by Christian and Jewish beliefs.

Early Islam, like early Christianity, wasn't old enough to have a clear distinction between historical/origins memory and recent/communicative memory.

"For most of the seventh century, then, Muhammad’s followers had a memory that was still immersed in the social and cultural milieux of the late ancient Near East, from which they had yet to clearly differentiate themselves. They eventually would do this in large part by developing a distinctive collective memory for their group, different from those inherited from Judaism and Christianity, a process that was no doubt delayed by their fervent belief that the world would soon come to an end, making such an endeavor rather pointless for a time. Only as the end continued to remain in abeyance, and the community’s living memory grew ever distant from the time of origins did they develop a collective memory of their own. Yet, as Islamic collective memory began to evolve, one imagines that it initially took different shapes within the various pockets of Believers that were scattered across their empire. The basic elements of this nascent collective memory were, as Halbwachs says of the early Christians, “still dispersed among a multitude of spatially separated small communities. These communities were neither astonished, anxious, nor scandalized that the beliefs of one community differed from those of another and that the community of today was not exactly the same as that of yesterday.” Thus, we should expect to find a significant degree of diversity in religious faith and memory among the different early communities of the Believers, scattered and outnumbered as they were among the Jews and Christians of their burgeoning empire. Only with ʿAbd al-Malik’s program of Arabization and Islamicization was a new, distinctively Islamic collective memory and identity concretized and established for this new religious community. It was a collective identity that was formed from the top down and imposed, at the expense of any other alternative collective memories, with the full power and backing of the imperial state."

The limits of oral tradition apply even more strongly to the hadith and biographies.

#stephen shoemaker #Creating the Quran #islamic studies

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girlactionfigure · 1 year

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I wrote this last year in August. I post it again because of the situation in Jerusalem over al-Aqsa. I'll always tell the truth and the truth about Masjid al-Aqsā is what I've written here.

From Mīhrāb Dāwūd to Masjid al-Aqsā: How did an Umayyad myth transform Jerusalem's Temple Mount, a Jewish holy site, into a Muslim holy site.

I. The conquest of Jerusalem

Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim forces in May 638, an accomplishment ascribed by Muslim sources to the Caliph Umar. In return for assistance in the taking of the city, the Jews received the right to reside in Jerusalem and to pray on the Temple Mount without interference. They also received permission to build a synagogue on the Temple Mount.

II. Temple Mount as the Mīhrāb Dāwud

When the Caliph 'Umar visited Jerusalem, the Patriarch of the city Sophronius accompanied him on the Temple Mount, while he searched for the Mīhrāb Dāwud (David's prayer-niche) to perform a prayer. Later Muslim commentators identified this site with the Tower of David.

What is evident here is the Jewish connection found in the early Muslim tradition which considers the Temple Mount as Mihrab Dawud (David's prayer-niche).

An early Islamic apocalyptic text, probably composed in the 8th century but attributed to the converted rabbi Ka'ab al-Ahbar (d.652), reads "Ayrusalaim which means Jerusalem and the Rock which means the Temple. I shall send you my servant Abd al-Malik who will build you and adorn you. I shall surely restore you to Bayt Al Maqdis, its first kingdom and I shall crown it with gold, silver and gems. And I shall surely send you my creatures. And I shall surely invest my throne of glory upon the rock, since I am the sovereign God, and David is the king of the Children of Israel."

The scholars of Islamic studies Crone and Cook believe that originally the Muslims truly intended to rebuild the Jewish Temple. They attempt to prove this thesis by referring to the Jewish apocalypses. For example in The Secrets of Rabbi Simon Ben Yohai, which is also the basis for al-Ahbār's text, we read "The second king [Umar] who restores the breaches of the Temple," it refers to the Muslims conquerors as "the salvation of Israel."

This Jewish link was temporary and short, however, and the separation of the site from Judaism was swift, as the Arabization and political rivalry changed the cultural and religious landscape as well as the demographics of the land of Israel.

III. Hashemite–Umayyad rivalry: the beginning of the Fitna

The Banū Umayya clan, headed by Abū Sufyān, were a largely merchant family of the Quraysh tribe centred at Mecca. They were the traditional enemies of the Banu Hāshem, another clan of Quraysh which Prophet Muhammed (570 - 632 CE) belonged to. Therefore they initially resisted Islam, not converting until 627 when they had no other choice since Muhammed triumphed over all of his enemies in Arabia and founded an Islamic kingdom. Although they subsequently became prominent administrators under Muhammad and his immediate successors, they always looked for an opportunity to retaliate against Banu Hāshem. In the first Muslim civil war known as Fitna (656–661) - the struggle for the caliphate following the murder of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, the third caliph (reigned 644–656) — Abū Sufyān’s son Muʿāwiyah, then governor of Levant, emerged victorious over the newly appointed caliph ʿAlī, a Hāshemite and Muhammad’s son-in-law and the fourth caliph. Muʿāwiyah then established himself as the first Umayyad caliph and made Damascus his capital.

IV. Jerusalem under Umayyads: the new rival city of Mecca, Temple Mount as the Masjid al-Aqsā

In 682 CE, fifty years after Prophet Muhammad’s death, ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr (a member of the Banu Hāshem clan) rebelled against the Umayyad dynasty and conquered Mecca. Now with a rebel dynasty based in Mecca, both sides (Hashemites and Ummayads) engaged in a struggle for control of the Muslim world. The Umayyads opted to fight the rebels by damaging Mecca's economy, which was based almost entirely on revenues from Muslim pilgrims. Their secret weapon was to create a competing pilgrimage site by building a magnificent edifice, the Dome of the Rock, on the site of the destroyed Jewish temple and hoping that this mosque would turn Jerusalem into a religious and political center which would weaken Mecca's economy by siphoning off pilgrims from Mecca. Thus, a political strategy designed to fight mutineers in far-off Mecca transformed Jerusalem's Temple Mount into a Muslim holy site with far-reaching implications to this day.

Both the Hashemties and Umayyads resorted to fabricating prophetic traditions known as Hadith (sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammed) in their favor in order to give political and religious legitimacy to their claims and their rule.

Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Caliph, in order to legitimize the construction of the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, connected the city and the site with the the Qur'anic verse 17:1 (below) which describes the night journey of Muhammad's Isra and Miʽraj:

“Glory to Him who caused His servant to travel by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts We have blessed, in order to show him some of Our Signs, He is indeed the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.”

The designation of Temple Mount as the "Farthest Mosque" mentioned in that verse was made possible by making up Hadith which links the site with the night journey to heaven (Isra and Miʽraj). The Qur'anic reference to the masjid al-aqsā, however, applies specifically to al-Ji'ranah, near Mekkah (in Saudi Arabia), where there were two sanctuaries, Masjid al-Adnai and Masjid al-Aqsā, and where Muhammad sojourned in dha al-qa'dah of the eighth year after the Hijrah.

Abd al-Malik commissioned the construction of the Dome of the Rock in the late 7th century. Al-Aqsa Mosque, the second mosque on the Temple Mount, was built in 715. The wooden structure that was built over the Foundation Stone was first intended for a synagogue, but before it was completed, the site was expropriated by the city's Arab rulers. The Jews received another site on the mount for a synagogue in compensation for the expropriated building.

In this way, the Umayyads cleverly associated Muhammad's life with Jerusalem even though the prophet died years before the city's capture by the Muslims. This construction further cemented the site's holiness to Islam, as explains the Muslim historian al Ya'qubi (d. 874) who accuses Abd al-Malik of attempting to divert the pilgrimage from Mecca to Jerusalem, thus characterizing the Umayyad Dome of the Rock as a rival to the Kaaba.

There was an active synagogue on the Temple Mount during most of the early Muslim period. Solomon ben Jeroham, a Karaite exegete who lived in Jerusalem between 940 and 960, affirmed that Jews were permitted to pray on the Temple Mount, noting that "the courtyards of the Temple were turned over to them and they prayed there [on the Temple Mount] for many years."

After the conquest of Jerusalem by the army of the Fatimid dynasty (969), a Temple Mount synagogue was rebuilt and used until the Jews were banished by Caliph al-Hakim in 1015. When a subsequent ruler canceled Hakim's eviction order, the Jews again returned to this synagogue on the Temple Mount and worshipped there until the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. Hebrew writings found on the internal walls of the Golden Gate are believed to have been written by Jewish pilgrims at least one thousand years ago, thus testifying once again to the continued Jewish attachment to and presence on the Temple Mount in this era. An eleventh-century document found in the geniza or storeroom of a Cairo synagogue also describes the circuit followed by the pilgrims and the prayers they recited at each of the gates.

Sources:

Amikam Elad. Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage. Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts 8. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.

https://books.google.iq/books?id=CDz_yctbQVgC...

F.M. Loewenberg. Did Jews Abandon the Temple Mount?. Middle East Quarterly Summer 2013, pp. 37-48.

Moshe Gil. A History of Palestine, 634-1099. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Nuha N. Khoury, The Dome of the Rock, the Kaʿba, and Ghumdan: Arab Myths and Umayyad Monuments, in Muqarnas, Vol. 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar, Brill (1993), pp. 57-65, p.58.

Boris Havel. "Jerusalem in Early Islamic Tradition". Miscellanea Hadriatica et Mediterranea, University of Zadar v.5, 2018: 113–179.

Himdad Mustafa

#Israel #Jerusalem #Islam #Judaism

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trailofstardust · 6 days

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The zionist claim that Palestinians are "colonizers" piss me off so much it makes me see red.

I could go on about how Palestinians have mostly levantine DNA and descend from the indigenous population who converted from Judaism to Christianity and Islam, but I'll stay off from now to talk about something more important:

Definition of colonizer from Merriam-Webster:

"a country that sends settlers to a place and establishes political control over it."

and:

"Portugal was a major colonizer in both Brazil and parts of Africa"

a person who settles among and establishes political control over the indigenous people of an area."they are among the few indigenous groups who were never converted to Catholicism by Spanish colonizers"

A population who is being oppressed, occupied and are being denied the right to self-determination and sovereignity are by definition not "colonziers".

Someone who calls Palestinians "colonizers" are implying (whether they mean to or not) that their existence is invading, oppressing and exploiting Israelis, which to say the least bears no resemblance to reality.

That's no different from far-right fascists who claim that immigrants from Asia and Africa in Europe are "colonziers" and invaders intruding upon white Europeans.

The claim of Palestinians being "colonizers" hinges upon the belief that since they identify as arab it means they all or mostly descend from the Arab conquerors.

That shows extreme cultural ignorance-the present-day populations of the Levant, North Africa and Middle East which identify as arab are the indigenous inhabitants who became arabized; but their cultures were never erased. Palestinian culture is unique and very different from say, Yemeni and Saudi Arabian culture.

Historically, Palestine were ruled by different conquerors like the Ummayads, Abbasids and Ottomans, but the people who were conquered aren't interchangeable with their conquerors.

But regardless of what percentage of Palestinian DNA is levantine, that still doesn't take away from them being oppressed in the present and thus have no privileges associated with being a colonizer.

#israhell #zionism #anti zionism #hasbara #palestine #liberate palestine #palestinian liberation

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mathhombre · 1 year

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Ummayad Star Variations

Samira Mian shared some ideas for variations on a star and I loved that idea, and the checkbox menu came to me, so... there we are!

Play in GeoGebra.

Samira's always entrancing work.

#mathart #GeoGebra #IGP #islamic art

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loverandservantoftheahlulbayt · 10 months

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🍂🥀🍂 Karbala and Ashura

🥀 Stops on the Imam’s Journey

🥀 Tan’im

The Imam left Mecca, and at Tan’im he met a caravan which carried luxury goods and royal robes and gowns. It was a delivery for the “king”, Yazid Ibn Muawiyah from his governor at Yemen. The Imam ordered that all the cargo of the caravan be taken and given to poor people.

He said, “Who is to have this luxury while poor people starve?” Then, he announced to the people and to the workers on the caravan, “Whoever wants to come with us, is welcome, and whoever wants his wages, we will give him his pay, and whoever wants to leave is free to leave.”

The Imam and his followers took none of the silk robes and royal gowns woven with gold thread. Those who wanted their pay received their portion and the rest was immediately given to poor people.

🥀 Safah

Here, a man was on his way to Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage. The man came closer and asked someone, “Whose caravan is this?” And he was informed that it was the camp of Imam Husayn. To himself, he thought that he should pay his greeting of peace to the grandson of the Messenger of God.

The Imam asked him, “Who are you?” He replied, “I am al-Farazdaq, son of Ghalib.”

The Imam greeted the famous poet kindly, then after some time, he asked him, “What do you know about the attitude of the people?”

Al-Farazdaq answered, “Their hearts are with you, but their swords are with the Umayyads, and the destination comes from heaven.”

Imam said, “You spoke the truth, and everything is up to God. He does what He wishes, and we ask help only from Him.” Then, al-Farazdaq asked him some religious questions.

🥀 Dhat al-‘Irq

The Imam set camp here, and met Bishr Ibn Ghalib. When Bishr met the Imam, he saw him leaning on something, reading a book. Bishr asked him, “O grandson of the Messenger of God! What made you come to this desert?”

The Imam replied, “These people have threatened me and these letters arrived from the people of Kufah whom I know are going to turn against me. If they do so, God will send someone to humiliate them.”

The Imam asked him about the people of Kufah and he replied, “Their swords are with the Umayyads and their hearts are with you.”

The Imam said, “You are speaking the truth.”

🥀 Hajir

Here, the Imam set camp. He wrote a letter to Muslim Ibn ‘Aqil and gave it to Qays Ibn Mashar al-Saydawi to take to Kufah. In it he wrote, “O people of Kufah! I have received the letter of Muslim Ibn ‘Aqil stating that you have gathered to help us and ask for our rights. I ask Almighty God to reward you for this action. For this reason, I left Mecca on Thursday the 8th of Dhul-Hijjah. When my messenger arrives, be united until I reach Kufah in a few days.”

Meanwhile, the spies of Yazid were following him. For some time, the Imam stayed at the water of ′Abdullah Ibn Muti′ who tried to convince the Imam not to go to Iraq, but the Imam refused.

When Qays Ibn Mashar al-Saydawi reached al-Qadisiyyah, Ibn Ziyad’s army captured him. When they tried to search him, he tore the letter apart. He was brought to the governor’s castle in Kufah, and Ibn Ziyad asked him, “Why did you tear the letter?”

Qays replied, “So you will not know what was in it.”

Ibn Ziyad said, “You have to tell me what was in it!”

Qays refused. Then Ibn Ziyad said, “You have to go on the pulpit and curse Husayn, his brother, and his father. Otherwise, I am going to cut you into pieces!”

Qays went on the pulpit and blessed Amir al‑Mu′minin Imam ′Ali and Hasan and Husayn, and cursed Ibn Ziyad and his father and the Ummayads. Then he said, “O people! I am the messenger of Husayn to you!” He told them where he left the Imam and said, “Go help him!”

Ibn Ziyad ordered for him to be thrown from the top of the castle. He fell and died.

🥀 Khuzamiyyah

The Imam set camp and stayed in Khuzamiyyah one day and one night. In the morning, his sister Zaynab came to him and told him that she heard someone reciting this poem:

“O, the eyes try to be firm!

Who would cry after me, on these martyrs?

Cry on those people who are led

By death to the final destination.”

The Imam said to his sister, “Whatever God wishes will happen.”

🥀 Zarud

Here, the Imam set camp. Zuhayr Ibn al‑Qayn al‑Bajali was in the area and set camp near him. Zuhayr did not like the Imam and did not want to set camp near him, but, because there was water at Zarud, he had no other choice. At mealtime, a messenger of the Imam came to him and said that the Imam wanted to meet him. Zuhayr hesitated to reply but his wife, Dilham, told him to go to the Imam and see what he wants. Zuhayr went to him and immediately came back to his people with a happy face. He ordered to take his camp closer to the Imam’s camp and told his wife, “Go join your family, I do not want any of you to be harmed in any way because of me.”

Then, he faced his people again and said, “Whoever wants to help the grandson of the Messenger of God should come with me. Otherwise, Goodbye!”

He revealed a conversation he had with Salman al‑Farsi long ago. He said, “We went with Salman in Balanjar. Salman told me ‘When you reach Imam Husayn and are able to help him and fight on his side, you should be more than happy to.”‘

His wife said, “Whatever you decide, I go with your decision. Please remember me on the Day of Judgment with Imam Husayn’s grandfather.”

Also at this stop, the news of the murder of Muslim and Hāni Ibn Urwah reached the Imam. The Imam was deeply upset and many times said, “God bless them.” He and other people cried with the sad news, the ladies wailed, and the whole camp was in mourning.

Then, two of his companions stood and said, “O grandson of the Prophet of God! Please change your decision and do not go to Kufah.”

Others disagreed and said, “We have to continue and die the same way as Muslim and Hāni died for the cause.”

The Imam listened to each conversation and looked deeply into their faces and then said, “There is no goodness in life after these two.” (Muslim and Hāni)

🥀 Tha’labiyyah

Here, someone came and asked Imam Husayn, “What is the Verse of Quran ‘The day when we shall call all people by their leader.’1 about?”

The Imam replied, “A leader who calls to guidance and people obey his call and a leader who calls to misguidance and others follow him. One leads to heaven and the other leads to hell.”

Also at this stop a man from Kufah met with the Imam and the Imam told him, “If I had met you in Medinah, I would have shown you the place of Gabriel in our house. (The window, in the house of the Prophet Muhammad, which was used as an entrance by the angel Gabriel, whenever he came to visit the Prophet) Do you think we do not know what we are doing?”

Another came and said, “O son of the Messenger of God! I see you with only a few followers.”

The Imam pointed to a sack of letters and said, “This is filled with letters.”

🥀 Shuquq

Here, the Imam saw a man coming from Kufah and asked him about the people there. The man said, “All of them are against you.”

The Imam said, “Whatever God wishes will happen.”

🥀 Zubalah

There was still no reply from his third messenger to Kufah, Qays Ibn Mashar al-Saydawi, but here, at Zubalah, the news reached the Imam that ′Abdullah Ibn Yaqtar, his second messenger to Kufah, was killed.

When he was captured he was sent to Ibn Ziyad, and Ibn Ziyad ordered him to go to the pulpit and curse the liar son of liars. ′Abdullah showed his willingness to do so, but when he went up he said, “O, people! I am the messenger of Husayn son of Fatimah, to help him against son of Marjanah! (Ibn Ziyad)”

Ibn Ziyad ordered him to be toppled from the top of the castle. He fell and broke most of his bones, but he was still able to talk. A man named Lakhmi, one of Ibn Ziyad’s soldiers, came and cut off his head. When the people in the street asked him why he did that, he said, “To put him out of his misery.”

After this news, the Imam announced, “Anyone who has joined this caravan for any purpose other than dying for this cause should leave now.” And people left him except for those who chose to stay, his family, and his companions.

🥀 Batn al-Aqabah

Here the Imam announced, “I am going to be killed and I saw in a dream that dogs are going to eat my flesh and the worst of those dogs will be an albino dog.”

At this point, ‘Amr Ibn Luthan asked the Imam to return to Medinah. The Imam replied, “I know your opinion but I do not do but what God wishes. Indeed, they are not going to leave me alone until they take out my insides and if they do that, they will be the most humiliated nation in the world.”

🥀 Shiraf

Here, the Imam set camp and asked his children to re-supply with water and carry more water than they needed. When he heard one of his followers saying “Allahu Akbar,” the Imam asked him, “Why did you say that?”

He answered, “I see palm trees in the far distance.”

All the people around him said, “There are no palm trees around here in this desert?”

When they looked carefully, they saw spears and horses.

The Imam agreed and said, “That must be it.” Then he asked, “Is there any shelter here?”

They told him there is a place called Dhu-Hasm on the left and that is the best place to take shelter. The Imam went there and set his camp.

Then, at noon, Hurr al‑Riyahi, with 1,000 soldiers, appeared in front of the Imam, carrying a message from Ibn Ziyad ordering him to prevent the Imam from returning to Medinah or capture him and bring him to Kufah.

When the Imam saw that the army of Hurr was thirsty, he asked his followers to give them and their horses water. They gave all of them and all of their horses water except for the last animal. The inexperienced rider of this last camel came to the Imam, not knowing how to water his animal, and Imam Husayn told him, “Anikh al‑Rawiyah.”

In the Hijazi Arabic dialect, it means “loosen the ropes around the camel’s neck” (so it can drink), but in the Kufi Arabic dialect it means “loosen the neck of the water bag.” So, the soldier loosened the knot around the water bag and the water spilled out.

Then, Imam Husayn did it himself and showed the soldier how to loosen the ropes and let the camel drink. Then, after all of the army and their animals were finished drinking, the Imam stood and said, “I did not come here until all of your letters came to me, and the letters say that you do not have any leader and that you need me to help teach you guidance. If that is still your demand, give me something that shows that you are truthful in your promises, and if you do not like me, I will return to where I came from.”

The soldiers were silent. No one spoke a word. Then, Hajjaj Ibn Masraq made the call to prayer for the Dhuhr –Noon- Prayer. The Imam said to Hurr, “You are the chief of your army. You go and pray with your own people.”

Hurr replied, “No. We pray with your prayer.” and Hurr, with all of his troops, prayed with the Imam.

When the Imam finished the prayer, he stood and said, “O people! Fear God and find the truth and follow it. We are the members of the House of the Prophet. We deserve trust more than those who do injustice. If you do not like us or you ignore our rights or you have changed your minds from whatever you have written to us before, then I will leave you.”

Hurr said, “Written? I do not know what letters you are talking about!” The Imam asked one of his followers to bring two sacks of letters.

Hurr said, “I am not one of these people. I have been ordered not to leave you alone until I bring you back to Kufah to Ibn Ziyad.

The Imam said, “Death is before that.” He turned and told his followers to get ready to ride their horses, but Hurr stopped them from going.

Then, for the first time in his life, the Imam spoke an insult, “Your mother sits mourning you.” Then he said, “What do you want from us?”

Hurr replied, “If anyone beside you had said those words to me, l would have replied the same to him, but I cannot do that to you. However, take a road between you and Kufah, which does not reach Kufah nor goes to Medinah, until I write to Ibn Ziyad and see what his orders are. May God relieve me from this catastrophe.”

Then he said to the Imam, “I bear witness that if you fight, you will be killed.”

The Imam said, “Are you threatening me with death? Are you going to kill me? Are you helping the Messenger of God?”

When Hurr heard this, he turned around and left the Imam. He did not want a confrontation with the Imam.

The Imam’s caravan continued in an unknown direction, and Hurr’s army followed behind.

🥀 Baydhah

Here, the Imam gave a sermon to the people of Hurr:

“O people! The Messenger of God said, ‘Whoever sees an unjust governor who changes the forbidden to allowed and who breaks his promise, who is against the tradition of the Prophets, who acts unjustly and does not do anything against it in action or in words, God will enter him where the unjust person enters.’

Indeed, these people follow Satan and have left the obedience of God. They spread mischief, they abandon all rules, they misuse wealth, and they make the illegal legal and the legal illegal. I deserve this leadership more than anyone else. Your letters came to me and your deputies came to me offering allegiance to me, saying that you will not betray me and that if I lead you, you will succeed. I am Husayn, son of ′Ali and Fatimah, daughter of the Messenger of God. My soul is with your soul, my family is with your family, and I am one of you. If you do not do so and change your promise and your allegiance to me, that would not be a surprise to me. You have done so before to my father, my brother, and my cousin (Muslim Ibn ‘Aqil). If you do that, you have missed your chance and you have lost your share and whoever breaks his promise he breaks it against himself. Peace be upon you.”

🥀 Ruhaymah

Here, a man met the Imam and asked him, “Why did you leave the house of your grandfather? (meaning Medinah)”

The Imam replied, “Indeed, the Umayyads called our most honorable kin bad names, and I was patient. Then, they took my wealth, and I was patient. And they sought my blood and I ran away. Indeed, by God, they are going to kill me. Then, God will humiliate them, making them the most humiliated nation in the world.”

🥀 Adhib al-Hajanat

Here, four people from Kufah met the Imam. The Imam asked them about the situation of the people and they told him, “The dignitaries were bought by bribes. As for the common people, their hearts are with you, but their swords are against you.”

They told him how Qays Ibn Mashar al-Saydawi was killed. Then, the Imam recited,

“Among the believers are men who are true to whatever covenant they made with God. Some of then have fulfilled [their covenant], some of them are waiting [to do so], and have not made any changes [in the religion].”2

Tarammah Ibn ′Uday al‑Ta’y said to the Imam, “I saw people before leaving Kufah and asked what the commotion was. They said that they were being recruited and sent to fight against the Imam. I urge you, by God, not to go to them. I do not see anyone with you. I request you to come with us to our mountain called Aja. We were able to isolate ourselves from the kings of Ghassan and Himyar. If you stay with us for ten days, I guarantee you that 20,060 of my tribe, the Tays would follow you and do whatever you order.”

The Imam refused and said, “We have a promise between us and these people and we can not leave until we see the result.”

The Imam thanked him, but refused. Then Tarammah asked permission to go by himself to deliver what he has to deliver for his family, and then return to join the Imam’s camp. The Imam allowed him to do so, and he went, but he was too late in his return. On his way, he heard that Imam was killed.

🥀 Qasr Bani Maqatil

When the Imam set camp here, he saw another camp already set. He asked about them and they told him it is for ‘Ubaydullah al‑Ju’fi. When the Imam sent some of his followers to see him, Ju’fi asked them what they wanted, and the messenger said, “This is a message from Imam Husayn, asking you to help him.”

Ju’fi replied, “I swear by God, I left Kufah only because of what I saw, that people were leaving to fight against him and I knew that he is going to be killed and I am not going to help him. That is why I left Kufah so that I would be safe. I do not want to see him and I do not want him to see me.”

The messengers brought the reply back to Imam Husayn. The Imam got up, and with a group of his followers, went to Ju’fi’s camp. Ju’fi received him well, honored him, and said, “I have not seen anyone of better character or more handsome than Husayn.”

Then, Ju’fi asked the Imam if he used red henna or black dye to dye his beard.

The Imam replied, “O! Aging and gray hair came to me soon.”

When they sat, the Imam said, “Your people have written to me and asked my help and invited me to come to them. Now, it appears that it is not the case. You have sins in your life. Do you wish to erase them by repentance?”

Ju’fi said, “What is that, O son of the Messenger of God!”

The Imam replied, “You help the son of the daughter of the Prophet and fight by his side.”

Ju’fi said, “Indeed, I know that whoever follows you will be happy in the Hereafter, but what can I do to help? I saw no one in Kufah who would help you, and I do not like to die. Therefore, I give you my horses as gifts to you. This horse of mine, which is called Malhaqah, is the best horse to give victory to me, and I was not willing to give it to anybody in my life.”

The Imam replied, “If you are not willing to fight with us, we do not need your horses and we do not need you.” Then, the Imam quoted, “And I am not one who takes the support of people who are astray.”3

The Imam said to Ju’fi “I do not take those who are astray as helpers. Now I will advise you as you have advised me. If you are able to avoid our call and not watch us die, do so. Indeed, whoever hears us and does not help us will go to hell.”

Also at this stop, the heads of two other Arab tribes met the Imam. The Imam asked them, “Are you coming to help us?”

They said, “We have children and we have been trusted with the wealth of people and we want to keep their trust.”

The Imam said the same to them, “Leave. Do not hear our call for help. Indeed, whoever hears our call for help and does not help us will end up in hell.”

At the end of the night, the Imam ordered his followers to leave Qasr Bani Maqatil

🥀 Naynawa

When the Imam’s caravan came near this place, they saw a man on a horse coming towards them. He was carrying a message from Ibn Ziyad to Hurr.

Hurr came and read the letter to Imam Husayn, “Be firm with Husayn. When you read my letter, do not let him camp anywhere but in the desert where there is no water and no fortification.”

The Imam said, “Then, let us go to Nineveh or Ghadariyyah or Shufayyah.”

Hurr replied, “I cannot do that because the messenger is a spy on me.”

Zuhayr Ibn al‑Qayn said, “O, grandson of the Messenger of God! To kill these people now is easier than fighting with the reinforcements that will come after them. Let us start fighting and finish them. After these will come people that we will not be able to fight.”

The Imam said, “I am not going to start the fighting.”

Zuhayr said, “There is a village here on the Euphrates and has a fort and the Euphrates crosses it. Let us go there.”

The Imam asked, “What is it called?”

He said, “It’s called Aqr (in Arabic, means ‘the cutting’.”

The Imam said, “I seek refuge with God from Aqr.”

Then, the Imam asked Hurr to let him go a little bit further. Hurr agreed and the Imam’s caravan went with Hurr’s troops following behind until they reached Karbāla’.

~ Ali Husayn Jalali

•┈┈•⊰✿✿⊱•┈•💔•┈•⊰✿✿⊱•┈┈•

1. The Holy Quran; Sura of al-Israa

(17:71)

2. The Holy Quran; Sura of al-Ahzāb

(33:23)

3. The Holy Quran; Sura of al-Kahf

(18:51)

•┈┈•⊰✿✿⊱•┈•💔•┈•⊰✿✿⊱•┈┈•

🍂🥀🍂 al-Islam.org 🍂🥀🍂

#ahlulbayt #islam and shia #imam hussain #imam mahdi #fatima #imam ali #prophet muhammad #ahlulbait #fatima zahra #imam husayn

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harisophile · 8 months

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The Qubbat-aş-Şakhra ( Dome of Rock ) Located in the masjid Al - Aqsā , Al-Quds was built during the Ummayad Caliphate and historians claim it is the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic Architecture .

#islam #architecture #islamic #photography #al aqsa mosque #dome of the rock

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minisgatewaytoinsanity · 1 year

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Hob's Travel Binge 👀👀 DO TELL

(you made me google sonnet 50 and that. will be living in my mind constantly now)

Thanks for the ask! :)

How heavy do I journey on the way, When what I seek, my weary travel’s end, Doth teach that ease and that repose to say, ‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!’

(Sonnet 50, William Shakespeare)

“Hob’s Travel Binge” is what I affectionately call the monster that has taken over my life… It’s a wild mix between travel journal, character study, road-trip through life and love story (well, it’s Dreamling, duh).

It spans the gap years – 1989-2021 – and was supposed to be around 10k in four chapters when I came up with the outline at the end of August. As it now stands at 82k and is hopefully about two-thirds (?) done feel free to cackle at my foolishness (it’s what I do).

An early attempt at a summary reads:

After that gloomy night in 1989 Hob tries (and fails) not to miss his nameless friend.

He goes travelling and keeps coming back and builds a new inn in the process – and if he dreams a lot that's really no one's business.

It’s not a rescue fic, it’s solely Hob’s pov, and it will take you to random places around the world.

Among other things, I’m beating off a surprising amount of ocs with a stick – but they do whatever they want nonetheless –, Hob drinks way too much, and Dream is being uncooperative from the sidelines (he is allowed though, still stuck in the fishbowl and all that).

It’s total madness – and so much fun!

Here’s an excerpt from what I’m currently working at – Hob in the Middle East in 2008/09:

To reacquaint himself properly with ash-Sham he takes a walk through Al-Hamidiyah, stopping at Bakdash first, queuing for a bowl of booza covered in pistachios that he then savours in all its stretchy, chewy, icy glory while he ambles through the alleys, eyeing the stalls and smelling the spices. He circles the citadel and comes back around the ruins of the temple of Jupiter at the entrance of the souk where he buys some drinks and snacks before hailing one of the taxis waiting in the tohubohu near the mosque. The dented, squeaky Saipa almost gets swept away in Ummayad Square, in the madness of four, five, maybe six lanes, looping around the Damascene sword, but the driver – steering with one hand while he sips tea from a paper cup – joyfully explains how much easier it has become since the new traffic lights were installed.

Hob gets out at a picnic spot on Mount Qasioun, some Syrian families already lounging on cosy blankets surrounded by an abundance of food. They readily offer to share, letting him savour the taste of home-cooked cuisine as he tries to answer some simple questions in halting Arabic. As the sun sets he sits on a ledge, legs dangling, the whole city laid out at his feet. He opens the bottle of Almaza he brought, still somewhat cold, and sips his beer while the lights come up, the fluorescing green of the minarets outshining everything else. The call to prayer – dominated by the group of muezzins at Ummayad Mosque chanting in several part harmony – echoes wide and far over the expanse of the city limits, hauntingly reverberating in the warm night air.

#the sandman #dreamling #hob gadling #fanfic #my writing

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3linaturabi · 2 years

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THE HOLY BEHEADED HEAD OF IMAM HUSSAIN {AS} SPEAKS TO YAZID {LA} IN MASJID BANI UMMAYAD.

Before Aseer e Shaam was preparing to go inside Masjid Bani Umayyah, Sayyidah Zainab (sa) came near the door and She fall down three times then She said: Yaa Waladdi (Oh My Parents), Oh My Present Imam, Oh My Noor Ain, She means Imam Sajjad (as), And then Imam Sajjad (as) came and She said to Him (as): I won't go in, can't you see the music and drums sound inside?

Imam Sajjad (as) was looking at Holy Head of Imam Hussain (as) and said: look at the Holy Head of Babajaan (as), Sayyidah Zainab (sa) when She turned Her face and looked at Holy Head of Imam Hussain (as), she understood and said: I will go in whatever happens i will send the massage of truth,

After observing the entry of the holy caravan, Yazid (la) went to his palace at noon, there was a party arranged and a poet (Akhtal Halabi (la)) was invited to flatter Yazid (la).

During that party, the Holy Head of Imam Hussain (as) was presented on a golden plate.

Yazid (la) was having his lunch and put the Holy Head of Imam Hussain (as) in front of him.

Imam Hussain (as) Holy Head said: "Soon those who did injustice will know who is in loss".

Everyone in the party and the poet (Akhtal Halabi (la)) became silent.

Yazid (la) became afraid and went to his bedroom.

The Holy Family (saws) was waiting at the door of the court.

In the evening, Yazid (la) said that: he would see them the next day, thus the Holy Family of Prophet Muhammad (saws) kept standing at Bab-us-Sa’at from Zuhr to Esha.

There was a huge rush, after Asr prayer, one old man came near Imam Sajjad (as) and said: thank God we got rid of You, rebellion.

Imam Sajjad (as) queried: Did you recite Qur'an?

The old man replied: Yes, daily.

Imam Sajjad (as) asked him: Did you recite the verse “Qul La As'alokum Alaihe Ajran illal Mawaddata Fil Qurba ”?

The old man answered: yes.

Imam Sajjad (as) asked him: Did you read the verse “Wa Aate Zil Qurba Haqqa...”?

The old man answered: Yes.

Imam Sajjad (as) inquired: Did you read the verse “Walamu Innama Ghanimtum Min Shai’in Fa’anna Lillahe Khomasahu wa lil Rasooli wa li’zil Qurba.”?

The old man replied: yes.

Imam Sajjad (as) asked: Did you read the verse “Innama Yureedullah Liyuzhiba

Ankomur Rijsa Ahlal Baiti wa Yotahhirakum Tat’heera.”?

The old man responded: Yes, but what is the relation of those verses to You?

These are about Ahlul Bait (as) of Rasool Allah (saww).

Imam Sajjad (as) clarified: By Allah, we are the Qurba and Ahlul Bait (as) of your Prophet (saww).

The old man started weeping and asked Imam Sajjad (as): is repentance possible for me?

Imam Sajjad (as) answered: Yes.

He repented and requested Imam Sajjad (as) to stampede him with his camel for Allah to forgive him by the intercede of the Holy Ahlul Bait (as), he cried, sighed.

Yazid (la) came to know about this incident and ordered to kill that old man.

Reference: When the skies wept blood pg 169.

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ahlulbaytnetworks · 10 months

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