Thursday, December 04, 2008

Zad al Talibin keeps me Smiling

"Anyone who reads them (the hadiths) and memorizes them is illuminated, and anyone who listens to them and studies them is delighted." -- Shaykh Ashiq Ilahi al Bulandsherhri in the intro to Zad al-Talibin.

After listening to several explanations by shaykh hussain of ahadith in this book, "Zad al-Talibin" (Provisions for the Seekers), i figured I should buy it and started reading it. Man it has been a blast. I've gotten through like 6 ahadith in memorization (they're very very short, but PACKED with meaning), and have read many more. That statement above is absolutely correct -- the one who memorizes it is illuminated. I actually feel a spiritual lift. They're having lay-offs at work, and everybody is depressed (AH my job is ok), but i'm walking around with a huge smile on my face because of the noor in these ahadith, while everybody else is looking quite gloomy (with good reason). What a rush.

Here's the book (in my friend's bookstore ;-):
http://albalagh.net/bookstore/?action=view&item=1016

Each hadith has a short explanation in the book, but shaykh hussain abdul sattar has an approx 1 hour explanation on each one. Here's shaykh hussain's explanations:
http://sacredlearning.org/classrooms/hadith/zad_talibin/index.htm

I wish i could freely type in arabic, I'd LOVE to quote what i've memorized so far, seriously, what an "eman rush"! (Ustadh Muhammad AlShareef)... here's a translation of one of them that are on my mind right now:

4. "Calmness and patient deliberation is from Allah and haste is from Satan."

And here's shaykh hussain's commentary on it:
http://sacredlearning.org/audio/hadith/zad_talibin/hadith_4.mp3

Where this book came from:
So there are 6 popular books of sahih hadith -- sahih bukhari, muslim, tirmidhi, abu dawood, etc. For various reasons, a scholar later wrote a book with a collection of ahadith that is a subset of what was contained in there of around 4000 ahadith. This was called "Masabih al-sunnah", then another scholar wrote "Mishkat al masaabih" and also added like 1500 ahadith -- this is a VERY popular book especially in indo-pak madrassas. Then like 140 years ago Shaykh Ashiq Ilahi wrote this book from Mishkat -- and he especially made it so intro madrassa students can benefit, and also organized it so taht it would help them learn arabic -- starting with the ahadith with the easiest grammatical constructs. Now Mufti AbdulRahman ibn Yusuf translated it -- and man it's an AWESOME translation.

Alhamdulillah, knowledge is TRUELY a light.