The Unsealed Nectar

Strange are the ways of God.

Not all books lying at home get read. Just like that, ‘The Sealed Nectar – Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum’ by Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri was snoozing there for years. I never thought I would move back to this genre.

But then, of course… strange are the ways.

It happened in a unique yet beautiful setting: 50 pages per session, to complete it in nine sittings. I had to orate the book to a very close and special audience of one, who is somehow a page ahead of me without peeking at the book and is waiting for the next in line. Surah Maryam. Christ. Moses. Waraqah ibn Nawfal. Bilal ibn Rabah.

“Woe to every slanderer and backbiter.” [104:1]

Feel that in Arabic. Al-Humazah is the one who publicly mocks a person… and Al-Lumazah is the one who secretly declares the defects of people and defames them.

Just like she loved me secretly but hated me publicly. Sorry – that wasn’t related.

Anyway, there is such beauty in the two words, which aren’t polite in this context. This verse is my daily reminder on the phone to display at 10 am. Yet…

Such is that beautiful book – it is engaging, well-paced, to the point, and informative.

It reminded me of K. L. Gauba (Kanhaiya Lal Gauba, who became Khalid Latif Gauba), who wrote ‘The Prophet of the Desert’ in 1934, which is written in a unique style.

How did idolatry enter Arabia when it was a monotheistic region of Ibrahim’s Kaaba?

It was Amr ibn Luhayy in the 3rd century AD who adopted this idea during his travels. Then we had to discuss who among us could have been Luhayy, and we agreed on a mutual friend. Just as we couldn’t fathom the extreme resilience of Bilal ibn Rabah, Ammar ibn Yasir, Yasir ibn Amir, Sumayyah, and others who suffered torture but stood by the words of Prophet Muhammad.

This isn’t about the book to be honest. It’s about the call where the command had to be accepted. Just like that:

“Read!”

Ending this on some fragments from the book that can make a little sense of today:

The migration of the Jews from Palestine to Arabia passed through two phases:

First, as a result of the pressure to which they were exposed, the destruction of the their temple, and taking most of them as captives to Babylon, at the hand of the King Bukhtanassar [Nebuchadnezzar II]. In the year 587 BC some Jews left Palestine for Hijaz.

The second phase started with the Roman occupation of Palestine in 70 AD. This resulted in a tidal wave of Jewish migration into Hijaz. Here, they made proselytes of several tribes, built forts and castles, and lived in villages.

In 523 AD, Dhu Nawas, a Jew, despatched a great campaign against the Christians of Najran in order to force them to convert into Judaism. Having refused to do so, they were thrown alive into a big ditch where a great fire had been set. The Quran referred to this event:

“Cursed were the people of the ditch.” [85:4]

This aroused great wrath among the Christians, and especially the Roman emperors, who not only instigated the Abyssinians (Ethiopians) against Arabs but also assembled a large fleet which helped the Abyssinian army, of 70,000 warriors, to effect a second conquest of Yemen in 525 AD, under the leadership of Eriat, who was granted rulership over Yemen, a position he held until he was assassinated by one of his army leaders, Abraha, who, after reconciliation with the king of Abyssinia, took rulership over Yemen and, later on, deployed his soldiers to demolish Kaaba, and, hence, he and his soldiers came to be known as the “Men of the Elephant”.

The Event of the Elephant took place in the month of Muharram, fifty or fifty five days before the birth of Prophet Muhammad which corresponded to late February or early March 571 AD.