Seerah Series | Part 2: Specialties of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) | Shaykh Yasir Qadhi

And of course there’s a beautiful hadith which is well-known to many of you and that is the hadith of Jabir ibn Samura. Jabir ibn Samura who says that he was going home one day, the middle of the night, and it was a clear moon in the sky and he’s walking home and he just happens to pass by the Prophet who was also out in the middle of the night in the streets of Madinah and he was wearing a red hullah, the same red hullah that has already been described by Baraa ibn Azib; red hullah like the red over covering. And he said, “I looked at the face of the Prophet and I looked at the full moon.” Now he’s physically comparing the two. He’s literally comparing the two. I looked at the face of the Prophet and there is the full moon…fa wAllāhi, he said, he was more beautiful in my eyes than the full moon. And this really shows us that Allāh had given the Prophet not just these physical, but these spiritual characteristics that are just emanating from him. One of the best examples of this is the fact that many people accepted Islam just by seeing his face.

The most famous convert like this is the chief Rabbi of the Jews of Madinah and his name was Abdullah ibn Salam. Abdullah ibn Salam was the chief Rabbi of the Jews and he was the most respected of the Yahood and he heard this man coming claiming to be a prophet. So he said, and this is the first day that the Prophet came to Madinah, the first day. And so he said let me go see. Now he wants to go see what his message is, right. Notice now he’s describing in the first person, the hadith is in Bukhari. He’s describing in the first person…he said, as soon as I saw him…now he’s not coming to discuss theology, he’s not coming to convert to Islam, he’s simply coming to see what the commotion is, to see who this guy is, right. He goes, as soon as I saw him I knew that this face that he has cannot be the face of a liar. And one conversation and he accepts Islam right then and there. Just by looking at the face of the Prophet Muhammad , and he was not the only one to do so.

Along with the external beauty of course our Prophet was blessed with internal beauty and he was blessed with humility and he was blessed with modesty. And of his modesty and of his simple lifestyle is the famous hadith that you all know of Umar ibn Al Khattab who entered in upon him when the Prophet was lying down, he had a small compartment in the masjid as well…and that was his own compartment, he did not have any wife living there, it was his own compartment. And in that compartment there was nothing other than a jug of water and a bed that he would lie down on or sleep on and this bed was made not out of the leaves of the date palm, but out of the branches of the date palm. You know, many of you have been back home, there’s the bed that they make from that type of, if you like, fiber, right. And then we put the mattress on top of the fiber, right. You know what I’m talking about, like that type of fiber you have here, and then you put the mattress on top of that. Prophet only had that fiber. He only had that with no mattress. And so he’s lying down on that and so when Umar comes in, he sits up to greet him, and when he sits up, you all know the famous hadith, that’s when Umar sees that the fiber, that stick, those date palms, if you like, the roots, the stalk, it has left a mark and you can see the reddish. You know when you’re lying down, you come up, and you see the reddish mark. And Umar ibn Al Khattab begins crying. When did this happen? This happened in the seventh, eighth year of the hijrah. This happened when the Prophet is the undisputed leader, not of all of Arabia right now, but at least of a large chunk of Arabia. And he has money coming in and pouring in.  And so Umar cannot control himself, he begins to cry. He goes, “Ya Rasul Allāh, how can we allow you to live like this? Look at the kings of Rome and Persia. Look at the Qaiser, look at the Caesar, look at the Shahinshah, and look at these people. Look at how they live. Surely Ya Rasul Allāh you deserve better.” Instead of saying, “Maybe you’re right, Oh Umar,” instead of saying, “I’ll think about it,” he got irritated at Umar. He said, “Umar, is this what we’re here for? Oh Umar aren’t you happy that they have the dunya and we have the akhirah?” He rebuked him. I’m not here to do this. I’m not even thinking about this.

And Ai’shah describes that the bed of the Prophet , this is in Tirmidhi, the bed that the Prophet would sleep on was a leather skin that sometimes, he would stuff with date palm leaves. The bed that he would sleep on was leather. Leather is not what you sleep on. Leather is something you put on the saddle. Leather is not what you sleep on. But that was his bed; he goes, “Sometimes I would put some date palm leaves to make it a little bit softer.”

And once it is narrated that the Prophet ’s bed, one of his wives she folded up her own half to give him extra, right…so, she made it a little bit more comfortable. Because it was more comfortable, he slept longer than usual. And then when he woke up, he said, “What happened? Who did this?” so, when she explained, he rebuked her and said bring it back to the way it was, I need to pray my tahajjud. Basically, I need to wake up for tahajjud. Don’t make my bed too soft for me. Now this is something SubḥānAllāh again, ya’nee I’m the most guilty, everybody here like we buy our beds mashaAllāh, ya’nee we, I don’t know what ratings these days…there’s different this and that, we compare this now to the Prophet , he didn’t want this type of bed. He wanted a bed that is a little bit harsh because it provides him now opportunity to pray tahajjud.

And sometimes, the Prophet , as A’ishah says, would not taste meat for six weeks, for six weeks he would not eat meat, and even by the time of the Tabi’oon, this was unbelievable, so Urwah, forty years later, is saying, “Oh my mother…” Urwah is her nephew but he calls her mother because she is the mother of the believers. Urwah is saying, “Oh my mother how did you live?” Now even for us, six weeks without any type of serious food if you like, even within forty years, Urwah is saying how did you live? So she said, “By eating al aswadaan…the two dark things: dates and dirty water.” Because they didn’t have this clean, filtered water did they? They got their water from the well. They get their water from the streams. And there was no purification system. Even the water is going to be filthy in terms of looking at it. So she said we subsisted off of these two aswadaan.

And once Abdur Rahman ibn Awf, and Abdur Rahman ibn Awf as you all know, he was a business man. He started poor. The famous hadith, you all know, he started with nothing, right? And he came with only the clothes on his back. And that famous sahabi of the Ansar said, “Look I have so many things, I’ll split everything in half, everything in half.” And Abdur Rahman ibn Awf said, “May Allāh bless you, keep your wealth, tell me where is the Sooq.” And he had some butter with him. So he came and he started buying and selling, buying and selling, buying and selling and slowly he became one of the richest people of all of Madinah. One of the richest people of all of Madinah and he came with nothing on his back. And so once many years after the death of the Prophet , Abdur Rahman ibn Awf is now living that life and he is brought a dish with meat and with bread and of course to this day, meat and bread is the staple food item. This is what you pay good bucks for, to get a good steak here. This is what you do, to this day. Of course, rice, they never ate it. The prophet never ate rice. Rice was not a commodity that was available in Arabia at the time. Rice is a water crop. You’re not going to get rice in Arabia. So he would only eat bread. So he was brought meat and bread and as soon as he saw this platter, he began to cry. He was asked: Oh Abdur Rahman ibn Awf, why are you crying? He said, the Prophet , till the day that he died, he never ate wheat bread, forget this fine refined bread, he never ate wheat bread to his fill. Forget with the meat…he never ate wheat bread to his fill, and not even his family. Not one day they could eat to their full. And I worry, he says, that Allāh has allowed us to remain for such a long time that we’re seeing all of these blessings come and the Prophet has gone on to something that is better. In other words, I’m worried that I’m getting everything back now and I want something back then. And I’m worried that Allāh is allowing me to live much longer and everybody else has gone by.

And as for A’ishah, many times it is narrated that she would begin to cry when good food was given to her. Now remember, A’ishah, she lived until forty years after the death of the Prophet and the ummah began to, the money began to come in as they say. And so she would get gifts and she would get a stipend from the government and she would get…and Alhamdulilah she would be generous with the poor. But sometimes people would gift her large items, good food. And it is narrated multiple times that when she saw all of this food, she would begin to cry. And she would say the same thing…that the Prophet never ate rusty bread or hard bread to his fill even one day in his life. He never got to eat all of this full, of course he ate bread, but not to his fill, even one day of his life.