Hafiz Kamran Riaz visits Cali

Sidi Hafiz Kamran Riaz from Chicago, IL visited nor-cal last week, and alhamdulillah we loved having him here. He was first in my arabic class at Zaytuna, he gave us some advice and said some really inspiring things about the Arabic language. It was very motivating, and gave us quite a rush. He later gave a talk at masjid muhajireen , and again motivated especially the youth to excel in all that they do, both in matters of the deen and the dunya.

One of the things he did was recite the poem by Al-Asma'ee. He told us the story of how the Ummayad Khalifah Abu Jafar (ra) tried to play the local poets to try to score some free entertaining poetry out of them, and how a great muhadith and scholar Al-Asmaee set things straight.

Here is the entire story (you really need to hear it all to appreciate the actual poem):


and here's the poem itself:


... and of course listening to it on the internet isn't nearly as powerful as experiencing it live. But FWIW, there it is.