As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. A'udhu billahi min ash-shaytan ir-rajim, bismillahir-rahmanir-rahim, alhamdulillahi rabbil 'alamin.
Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem,
Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem, Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen, Wa La'udhu Billahi Minash Shaitanir Rajeem, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem,
The first thing that I will say tonight is that, alhamdulillah, this is not the last of the Firsts, contrary to what our well-dressed shaykh said, masha'Allah.
This is not the last of the Firsts, but what we're going to be doing insha'Allah ta'ala is replacing our Tuesday night with a series on the signs of the end insha'Allah ta'ala, the signs of the Day of Judgment. Why?
Because there are so many questions right now about whether or not we're there and what it means if we are there and how we're going to process that. And so the Tuesday nights will become now insha'Allah ta'ala the signs of the Hour for about 20 weeks insha'Allah ta'ala.
The Firsts, we will continue a little bit inconsistently. Once a month or so insha'Allah ta'ala, we'll get together and we'll cover some of the shorter bios insha'Allah ta'ala, 15-20 minutes each bi'idhnillahi ta'ala, so that we can process
some lessons and we're going to group those biographies by theme bi'idhnillahi ta'ala. So there was a theme at the end of the last season that I actually wanted to start with
then and it builds off of the concept of Zahir and Junayd and those people may Allah be pleased with them, that were easily overlooked in the society of the Prophet ﷺ.
They didn't have high tribe, they didn't have a lot of wealth, there were all sorts of constraints that would allow them to be visible in a jahili society, in a pre-Islamic society of ignorance,
but the Prophet ﷺ saw them and he valued them ﷺ in a way that sent a message to the rest of the ummah.
So the next batch of biographies that we're going to do bi'idhnillahi ta'ala are a very specific group amongst them and they are not people that were freed slaves or people of
no tribe or no distinction around the Prophet ﷺ. They're actually the mawali of the Prophet ﷺ himself. They're the freed slaves of the Prophet ﷺ himself. The people that the Prophet ﷺ freed himself and the Prophet ﷺ freed several people from
captivity himself that then attached themselves to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. So these are the mawali of the Prophet ﷺ, the freed slaves of Muhammad ﷺ.
When you are reading through the books of hadith, you will come through in the chain of narrators, so and so, mawla, the mawla of Rasulullah ﷺ, the freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ.
Now of the characteristics of these biographies, they're not like Bilal ﷺ or Khabbab ﷺ or Zayd ibn Harithah ﷺ where you have deep long biographies.
A lot of these are very quiet individuals and you have one or two narrations about them. But that one or two narrations gives you something so profound to work with and to think about
bi'idhnillahi ta'ala, so there are a lot of practical lessons that we derive from each of these beyond simply the excellence of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ towards these people.
Because clearly the Prophet ﷺ was a man who treated the downtrodden with such excellence that they never wanted to leave his side. And you can think about like a society, not just with slavery, slavery was all over the world, right?
Slavery is the rule of the world, right? But cruel and harsh conditions and the abuse and the way that a person could not wait for
the person that technically owned them to die. What you'll find consistently with these freed slaves who attached themselves to the Prophet ﷺ is that they had the opposite reaction.
That their greatest honor was being attached to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and their greatest tragedy was the death of the Prophet ﷺ. So these individuals, you can often capture a story or two with the exception of one that
we're going to cover tonight, bismillah ta'ala, or we'll cover next which will be Thawban ﷺ who has a long biography. Otherwise it's usually just a few snippets, a few snapshots and I want us to focus on
the underlying themes, bismillah ta'ala. So the first person that we will cover is actually someone whose name came to my mind with the flotillas to Gaza, the ships sailing towards Gaza.
And I remember, subhanAllah, with, you know, the biggest flotilla that was sent or the delegation of flotillas that was sent last year. I really wanted to talk about this companion of the Prophet ﷺ but I ran out of time.
Because there was something so symbolic about that, right, seeing the ships going towards Gaza. May Allah ﷻ break its siege and may Allah ﷻ liberate its oppressed ones, allahumma ameen.
And by the way, side note, the delegation of flotillas continues. I actually spoke to the organizers a few days ago. They insha'Allah ta'ala plan to send another delegation of flotillas, may Allah ﷻ protect them and grant them success, allahumma ameen.
The reason why I wanted to talk about this sahabi is because his name is Safina, ship. His name is Safina.
If you see the name Safina, in the books of narration, it's talking about this single companion, Safina, the son of who, we don't know.
But his name is Safina, mawla Rasulullah ﷺ, Safina, the freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ.
His kunya, because he does have children, is Abu Abdur-Rahman, Abu Abdur-Rahman. So he's the father of Abdur-Rahman, Safina or Abu Abdur-Rahman ﷺ, wa qad qila Abu al-Bukhtari,
and it is said also Abu al-Bukhtari, that was the oldest son as well. And before he became mawla Rasulullah ﷺ, the freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ, he was
a slave of Umm Salamah ﷺ, okay? A slave of Umm Salamah ﷺ, and we'll talk about the story of how he becomes then a freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ.
He was a companion of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and there are a few narrations that will be narrated from him. Now what is his actual name?
When someone's kunya is the name, I'm sorry, when someone's nickname is what they are narrated by, then the actual name is often disputed.
And in his case, the name is either Rabah, or Mihran, or Ruman, or Qays. There are four different names that are narrated as possibly being his actual name, Rabah,
or Mihran, or Ruman, or Qays. Four names that might have been his name, but Safina is the actual name that he goes by.
However, the one incident that exists between him and the Prophet ﷺ that we have, that is documented. So how does this man come into the life of the Prophet ﷺ?
We go back to Umm Salamah ﷺ, who the Prophet ﷺ would marry in a very profound gesture
after the loss of her husband Abu Salamah ﷺ, when she thought that no one was better than Abu Salamah. Abu Salamah being one of the core first companions of the Prophet ﷺ.
One of the people of the two hijras, one of the martyrs, veterans of Badr, someone with a high status. And Umm Salamah ﷺ says, I never thought that I could possibly be married to a man better than Abu Salamah.
And so she refused the proposals of every single person.
So she says, when he passed away, who is better than Abu Salamah? She's talking about her own process.
And one of those who narrates from her is Safina, right? So these are her thoughts and she's thinking to herself, who could be better than Abu Salamah?
Then she says, the proposal of the Prophet ﷺ came to me after the famous du'a that the
Prophet ﷺ taught her to say, O Allah, compensate me in my tragedy and give me better than what You took away from me.
We talked about this in detail in the biography of Umm Salamah ﷺ. And then she saw the Prophet ﷺ coming to marry her. Now when the Prophet ﷺ proposed to her, this is the one man that it was indisputable was better than Abu Salamah.
She could say, my husband was better than Abu Bakr and Umar. No one would be mad at her if she said, my husband was better than even those companions of the Prophet ﷺ. But the Prophet ﷺ himself, he is the best of the best ﷺ.
And so when this happens, what did she do? And this is where Safina comes into the picture. Umm Salamah ﷺ freed Safina.
She said, but I free you on one condition, not in a contract or in a sense of bondage or slavery, but that you serve the Prophet ﷺ for as long as you live.
That you be in the khidmah of the Prophet ﷺ as long as you live. So he becomes Safina the mawla of Rasulullah ﷺ, the freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ. He's not a slave. He's not under bondage.
But he is indebted and he serves the Prophet ﷺ to the best of his ability. And so he becomes amongst those that is often with the Prophet ﷺ.
So what does Safina become in the life of the Prophet ﷺ or where does he most find himself in the khidmah of the Prophet ﷺ? During his journeys, during his safar, when the Prophet ﷺ would travel, Safina
would travel with the Prophet ﷺ. Again, his name is not actually Safina. So where did he get that name from? And what is the story of it? He actually narrates it himself.
So if you asked him who he was, he would say, my name is Safina. He says that, that one day, we were with the Prophet ﷺ on a journey.
And he says that, while we were traveling, I was carrying as much as I could on behalf of the Prophet ﷺ and his companions. So I was demonstrating a higher capacity, right?
He wanted to be the most productive member of the caravan. And so he says, so people would give me their swords. And then after someone would give me their sword, another person would give me their
armor, and another person would give me their sword, another person would give me their armor until I started to carry a huge bunch. And you can imagine, you know, how the Prophet ﷺ looked at people like that, that wanted
to do a larger share than what was expected of them. And you know, we have the whole incident of Ammar ibn Yasir radiAllahu ta'ala anhuma, who was carrying two bricks, right? That became the whole basis of our campaign of carrying a brick.
So the Prophet ﷺ looks at him while he's carrying this huge load on the journey, and the Prophet ﷺ says, ma anta illa safina. It's as if, wallahi, you're a ship, right?
You're a ship, you're a safina. So he took on that identity, I'm a safina. I am a ship, from the day that the Prophet ﷺ called him that.
And so he used to introduce himself, and he used to say that the Prophet ﷺ praised me and said, you are but a safina, you are but a ship, and so my name is Safina. I am a ship.
And subhanAllah, in that, like if you just took the tangent on that, the ulema, when they comment on this, they comment on it from a few different things. Obviously, wala tanabazu bil alqab, people used to put bad nicknames on people, and they
used to call them by the ugliest of things, they used to call them by like a deformity or they used to call them by something 'ayb, some sort of flaw that they had. The Prophet ﷺ used to not only change people's bad names to good names, if their name had
a bad meaning, he would actually nickname people with good nicknames. And that became their identity for the rest of their lives, and it became something precious that they held on to, like the Prophet ﷺ gave me a good nickname.
And so, the opposite of wala tanabazu bil alqab, when Allah azza wa jalla says, don't call people by derogatory names, instead call them by beautiful names. So it shows you the sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ in that regard, to not just change bad
names to good names, but to call people only by the best of nicknames. The second thing is how when you give someone a good nickname, then that can become an identity shift for that person.
This becomes now the identity that Safina is going to place on himself, strength and capacity for the rest of his life. And so, the ulema speak about this from the perspective of parenting, at-tarbiyah, right?
Like first of all, the sunnah of how you name your child in the first place, naming your child is important. I've spoken about this many, many, many times, and may Allah help us, right?
Like the names of the sahaba are disappearing in the naming schemes, good names are disappearing in the naming schemes. We've lived to see a time where, like, I'll never forget, like, when we named our daughter Khadija, that's an old name.
I was like, what in the world does an old name mean? Right? Khadija is an old name, right? As if there's something wrong with it. That you name them either by a person or a quality that you want them to be.
You want them to live up to a quality, and so you name them either by a person or a quality you want them to be. As Ibn al-Qayyim says, the name is a niyyah, it's an intention. I want my child to be this.
The second thing is, when a person calls out to their children, when they reprimand them, the Prophet ﷺ warned us from using a bad nickname, because that bad nickname can become a du'a.
So you call your child a whatever it is, and that actually becomes like a means of cursing them, right, and putting them down, not only embedded in their psychology, but they start to live into that, like, my parents call me this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this.
And even when it comes to friends with each other, or siblings with one another, right, this isn't just parents, or a teacher to a student. On the other hand, to name the good quality of a person, and then to help them craft an
identity around that quality, you're smart, you're intelligent, you're strong, mashallah you're so empathetic, mashallah you care about people, mashallah you never backbite, you're this person, you're that person. To give them a quality to live up to.
So Safina, radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, took this one interaction that he has with the Prophet ﷺ that's documented, and he crafts an entire identity from that, radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, and this is the only narration we have between him and the Prophet ﷺ.
Now let's move beyond that just a little bit, inshallah ta'ala, about what his life looked like, and then we'll move on, bismillah ta'ala. After the death of the Prophet ﷺ, he resided in a place called
Batn Nakhla, which was a valley between Mecca and at-Ta'if. So he kind of avoided the political scene, he wasn't someone that was very involved in these types of things, and his contract with Umm Salama, radiAllahu ta'ala anha, was
that you're free, you serve the Prophet ﷺ as long as he lives, 'alayhi salatu wasalam. Once the Prophet ﷺ died, he no longer was bound by anything, so he lived a quiet life, radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, but one of the most famous narrations
of al-karamat, karamat are the miracles of the righteous people, comes from Safina, radiAllahu ta'ala anhu. So to make the distinction between two types of miracles that we have, you have a mu'jizah,
a mu'jizah is a miracle of a prophet, and a mu'jizah poses a challenge as well. So it's not just a sign of piety, it poses a challenge as well, right? So the Qur'an is the greatest mu'jizah, the miracle of parting the sea of Musa, 'alayhi
as-salam, the miracle of raising the dead of 'Isa, 'alayhi as-salam, all of these are mu'jizat. Karamat al-awliya, a karamah is a miracle that a righteous person has, it's not used as a
challenge to a people, it's not used to introduce any type of burhan, any type of proof, it is merely a gift that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives to a righteous person in a very difficult circumstance as a result of their taqwa or their tawakkul, their piety or their reliance
in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. The ayah, wa man yattaqillaha yaj'al lahu makhrajaa wa yarzuqhu min haythu la yahtasib wa man yatawakkal 'ala Allah fa huwa hasbuh, Allah praises these two qualities, whoever has
taqwa, piety, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will make for them a way out and will provide for them from places they never expected and whoever demonstrates their tawakkul, their trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, then Allah will be enough for them.
So what is his famous miracle, karamah that is narrated? Safina was on a safina, Safina was on a safina, so you remember the story inshallah ta'ala,
I'm actually being serious, he was on a safina, he was on one of the expeditions on the water and it's generally mentioned that he fought and he strove in jihad, but which battles,
any particular moment not necessarily except for this moment that he was one day on a ship and that ship lost its way, it basically broke down and he ended up on an island
and while they were on that island, a lion came, okay, now when this lion approached, what do you do if you're on a boat and the boat breaks down and you end up on an island
and a lion approaches you, this is what you learn in the first, probably run right, try to calm it down, try to feed it something else, maybe feed it someone else,
right, but this is actually one of the most famous karamat that's narrated from the sahabah of the Prophet ﷺ because it was so vivid, Safina radiAllahu ta'ala anhu,
as the lion starts to approach, he says to the lion, ayyuhal asad, ana Safinatu mawla Rasulillahi sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, oh lion, I am Safina, the freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ
and subhanAllah, when he says that, the lion stops in his tracks and he says,
guide us across this path and the lion humbles itself and becomes a guide for the companions of the safina as a result of that, the companions of the ship,
this is actually one of the most famous karamat that's narrated about the sahabah because imagine the sight and the scene and the tawakkul and the I know who I am, ana Safinatu mawla Rasulillahi
sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, I am the freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ, he didn't say I am the son of so-and-so or I am akram al-'arab, no, none of that nonsense, I am the freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ and there are two things that
come out of this beyond just the obvious taqwa and tawakkul, the piety of the man and his trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, one of them is that Rasulullah ﷺ
was honored not just by the people but honored subhanAllah even by the animals and honored even by the trees 'alayhi salatu wasalam and honored by the creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
so his saying that I am mawla Rasulillahi ﷺ put the lion in its place as if Allah 'azza wa jall caused the recognition of that lion from the moment that this man
served the Prophet ﷺ, therefore I will serve him, that's why he said dullani 'ala tariq, so instead you become a guide instead of being a predator towards me, I command you to become a guide because I serve the Prophet ﷺ
and so the lion became a servant to him as a result of his service to the Messenger of Allah sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam and of course the next point that we take from that is what we learn
of the difference between a mu'jizah and a karamah, which prophet used to command the animals Sulayman 'alayhi as-salam, so the ulema mentioned that whatever was given to one of the awliya,
one of the sahabah or the righteous ones was something that the prophets before them did and so their miracles are extensions of that miracle. Of course, Sulaiman alayhi salam didn't command one lion. Sulaiman alayhi salam commanded armies of animals, right? But Allah azza wa jal gives
you an extension of that one miracle, and so this becomes his, you know, a miracle that is in the
books of karamat. And subhanallah, he even says, by the way, that the sound, the way that the lion
responded or the way that the lion nodded, he said as if he was giving me salam, right? It's as if the
lion was giving me salam as he then moved me to the next place. So this is Safina radiallahu ta'ala anhu. He lived until the year 70 after hijrah, so he lived a very long life. There are 14 ahadith
that are narrated or preserved for him, and his narrations are narrated by his sons Umar and Abdurrahman. He was also encountered by and narrated from by Imam Hassan al-Basri rahimahullah ta'ala
and some of the others of the tabi'een. One of the consequential narrations about him when it comes to al-fitan, when it comes to the trials and the tribulations, because he did live to see the fitna but he didn't use to participate in the political arena. But he lived to see the fitna, and subhanallah,
this quiet actor in the sense of being present in the life of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam remembers or mentions the narration of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam as a way of quelling some of the fitan that were taking place, the trials and tribulations that were taking place. And so it's
in kitab al-fitan on Rasulillahi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And it's narrated from Sa'id ibn Jumhan. He says
said to me that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said that the khilafah in my ummah will last for 30 years, and then it will turn into kingdom,
will turn into kingdom. Then Safina said
he said, if you count the years that that existed under these khulafa, then we found it to be 30 years. He said that I said to Safina,
Bani Umayyah claims that the khilafah is amongst them. He said, rather, they have told the truth. Rather, they are kings. They have now fallen into the era
of kingship. And so some of the ulama mentioned, subhanallah, like the quiet companion who was hearing and listening in, and he weighs in at a consequential moment in the time of the ummah as
they're trying to figure out how they should act with the fitan that are unfolding. And though he had nothing, you know, of a large scholarship to offer to the ummah, this consequential truth was
preserved in this very quiet man who Allah azza wa jal blessed with an amazing miracle and also a tradition of how to nickname, a tradition of how to nickname. So he lived long enough to see what
the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam had predicted and prophesied in that regard. And all we know of him is what the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam described him as, and the question that we take from that, by the way, is like, if the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam
saw you, what would he nickname you? What would the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam have nicknamed you? Because if you start to work through that methodology, then you start to realize that Allah
azza wa jal and the angels, perhaps they have another name for you. Perhaps you have a nickname in the in the heavens, and they call you by something. What is the one good quality that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam would have nicknamed you,
and Allah and the angels would nickname you?
