Reflections From Uzbekistan w/ Mufti Azeemuddin Ahmed | The Compass Ep #18 | 04/06

Opening Supplications

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. O Allah, send blessings and peace upon our Master Muhammad and upon the family of our Master Muhammad. Blessings and peace be upon you.

O Lord, open my heart and make easy my affairs. Remove the tightness from my tongue, so that my words may be understood. You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

O Allah, teach us what benefits us, and benefit us with what You have taught us. Increase us in knowledge and action. O Allah, enlighten our hearts with Your knowledge, employ our bodies in Your obedience, and enable us to do what You love and are pleased with — in what we say, what we do, our actions, our intentions, and our guidance. You are the All-Powerful. O Allah, O Wahhab, O Fattah — open us up to one another.

Introduction: The Purpose of The Compass

Alhamdulillah, Allah has brought us back together here, after having a break in Ramadan from our weekly Monday night sessions. For those who are joining here for the first time, the reason this program has been called The Compass is to grant us an ability to, insha'Allah, hear or share something which will help guide us in our daily life, and serve as a compass.

Most definitely we are in a time of so much tribulation and fitna, and it's really hard to find ourselves heading in the right direction. Truth and falsehood are constantly being replaced with one another — falsehood being presented as the truth, truth being presented as falsehood. It becomes quite challenging to figure out exactly where we are headed. And hence this is the reason why we have this type of session, where we can share and hear ideas and thoughts on different events and travels, hoping that we get some guidance and benefit in a way where we lead our life in a manner that is according to how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wants us to lead.

May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allow us all to gain more than we expect, Allahumma ameen. And may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us a true, proper compass in our life — all the time, 24/7, every day of the week — where we are guided to that which Allah and His Rasul would have us follow. Allahumma ameen.

The Journey to Uzbekistan: Background and Purpose

Immediately after I'tikaf ended on the night of Eid, Allah granted us the opportunity to travel to Uzbekistan for a week, and Umrah for another week after that. Mawlana Sulayman Mahmood was asked to join to share some reflections as well. Alhamdulillah, he was on the trip — he had come back for classes earlier from Umrah, but he was there for the whole Uzbekistan trip as well as a portion of the Umrah.

The purpose of the trip was a couple of things. One, my father had mentioned for a long time that our family lineage goes back to this portion of the world. His father, when he was a young child, had mentioned that about 70 years ago, our family's heritage goes back to the Bukhara-Samarkand area, and how our ancestors had migrated from there to India 13 or 14 generations ago. So that was something my father had a great interest in — visiting that portion of the world, just to see where it all came from.

The second part was that my ustad, may Allah have mercy on him, for a few years had been wanting to visit this region. Because this is not only the place from where a lot of the ilm that we have in the subcontinent — in terms of fiqh, in terms of aqeedah, the external sciences — has come from, but also the ilmul batin, the internal sciences, the science of tazkiyah and tasawwuf, has come from this region to our part of the world.

The scholars of the Naqshbandi silsila, many of them — those who formalized it — were from this region as well. Just as you have the four different madhhabs in fiqh, and a whole multi-generational, multi-century effort of formalizing jurisprudence in every era, adding to it what is needed for that time based on the original principles derived from the Qur'an and Sunnah — similarly, in the science of tazkiyah, you have the same system. Ulama from every region focused on this and developed a science whereby thousands of people benefited in their era and thereafter.

We all know Mujaddid Alf Thani, Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, the reviver of the 12th century. He led huge efforts in the subcontinent in reviving many of the sciences, and the aspect of tazkiyah as well. Where did he get this from? Where did his teachers come from? It was from this region. So this is the reason why, subhanAllah, we decided to go on this journey.

We were planning for quite some time, but the way it ended up coming together at the last minute was because we were waiting for the visas. Alhamdulillah, we got the visas quickly. Within a matter of days, we planned the trip, and ended up going on the night of Eid.

Alhamdulillah, we spent about three days in Tashkent, about two days in Samarkand, and about a day in Bukhara. This area has opened up quite a bit. Right before this program, someone messaged me saying they're going there in a few days and asked for a tour guide. While we were there, we met a brother from the East Coast who was there with two buses — a hundred tourists with their tour guide from the United States. Alhamdulillah, a lot of people are going now, traveling and seeing that portion of the world.

We flew from here to Istanbul, and then Istanbul to Tashkent. Very surprised to find such a nice, quite new airport. One thing we can say about the whole trip is that the place is very clean and very presentable. Even the train stations are, alhamdulillah, so nice — they have indoor plants and trees. I shouldn't even just say plants and trees; it's like a full-fledged garden, indoors. Throughout the journey that was something we noticed. Even the bathrooms and rest areas are super clean, and many places have proper facilities for wudu. Many train stations have musallas, alhamdulillah — a person can perform salah. These were things I didn't expect going in.

The Inception of Islam in Uzbekistan: Qutham ibn al-Abbas

Mawlana Sulayman Mahmood shares:

Uzbekistan as a whole — where and how did Islam even come there? You see hundreds, thousands of ulama that are buried there. There's such a rich history in terms of ilm, in terms of ulama. But you probably wonder: where did this all start? How did Islam make it so far, and why?

This was nothing more than the vision of the Prophet ﷺ. From the early days in Mecca, he had that vision that a day would come when Islam would reach:

"Until the night reaches its furthest reach" — an expression meaning that all across the globe, this deen of Islam would spread.

In Uzbekistan in particular — in that whole area, in the Mawara'un Nahr, past the Oxus River — there was actually a Sahabi by the name of Qutham ibn al-Abbas رضي الله عنه who journeyed all the way there. During the time of Muawiyah رضي الله عنه, when he became the khalifa, he sent Qutham ibn al-Abbas on this mission. This also shows you the importance of ita'at al-amir — listening to the leader. Though there were differences between Muawiyah رضي الله عنه and the Banu Hashim, to which Qutham ibn al-Abbas belonged, still he obeyed his instructions and went all the way to what is now modern-day Uzbekistan.

Qutham ibn al-Abbas رضي الله عنه was the cousin of the Prophet ﷺ — the younger brother of Abdullah ibn Abbas رضي الله عنه.

He was among those who buried the Prophet ﷺ, and was the last to come up from his grave.

The Prophet ﷺ said regarding him:

"Qutham resembles me the most from all of mankind in terms of his physical features as well as his character."

When we stood at his grave, the only thing you could think about was: how did this Sahabi travel so far? We flew from there to Jeddah — it was about a seven-hour flight. The Sahabi didn't have any plane, any train, any car. He was traveling on the backs of animals. One of my friends mapped it out and said it's about a 40-day journey just walking straight, on Google Maps, without any breaks.

They say he is the only Sahabi buried in that area in Central Asia. Later on you had Qutaybah ibn Muslim who came and actually conquered that land, which became an Islamic state, and the Umayyads and then the Abbasids ruled, and history moved on. But before all of that, it started with Qutham ibn al-Abbas. That was the inception of Islam in that area. It was his efforts and sacrifices that Allah ta'ala used to open up a country which today is home to about 40 million Muslims — 95% or more are all Muslims. All of that thawab, all the good that came out of it, is going back to the deeds of Qutham ibn al-Abbas رضي الله عنه.

When we stood at his grave, it was amazing — very high up, at the top of a hill. We were looking around and the entire hill is covered with graves. All the sultans and rulers wanted to be buried there because they wanted to be close to the cousin of the Prophet ﷺ. Our teacher, when we entered the room where Qutham ibn al-Abbas was buried, said, "I felt something very special. This was a very unique personality." And how could it be otherwise, when this was the cousin of the Prophet ﷺ?

Tashkent: The Islamic Cultural Center

Coming to the Islamic Cultural Center — the old name of Tashkent was Shash. Many students would be familiar with scholars bearing the title al-Shashi — that's because they were from this city. I was reading in Mu'jam al-Buldan by Yaqut al-Hamawi, where he writes that the area became known as Shash because of a scholar by the name of Abu Bakr al-Qaffal al-Shafi'i al-Shashi. He was a scholar who traveled from that region, studied in the Arab lands, and then came back and introduced the Shafi'i fiqh to that region. Because of his influence, Tashkent became predominantly Shafi'i — even though Uzbekistan as a whole mostly follows the Hanafi madhab.

So the first morning I was there, I asked the imam after Fajr about this. I said, "We're in Tashkent, so are there a lot of Shafi'is in the area?" He got very offended. He said, "No, over here we follow Imam al-A'zam, Imam Abu Hanifa. We study only the fiqh of Imam Abu Hanifa." So today it's no longer that way — it's once again a very Hanafi-predominant region.

The Islamic Cultural Center is one of the landmarks of the country today. It's a multi-billion dollar project that they recently completed. It was packed — tourists from all across the world were visiting. One brother who met us in the line was from Singapore. He asked me, "Why are you dressed like this?" — everyone else was in regular pants and shirt, and we were dressed in our traditional attire. So I said, "This is the way of our Prophet ﷺ." And for some reason, subhanAllah, that really hit his heart. For the next five or ten minutes, as he was with us in the line, he just kept repeating that line: "This is the way of our Prophet ﷺ, the way of our Prophet ﷺ." He said, "I've never heard something like that."

The tour was about two hours long — very long and very tiring, as the whole time you're walking through various exhibits showing different eras of Islamic history in Uzbekistan. One thing which really stood out was the level of technology. They had a room showcasing many of the great legends of Uzbekistan — Imam Bukhari, Imam Tirmidhi, Imam Abu Mansur al-Maturidi, Imam al-Marghinani — all these great scholars who hail from Uzbekistan. Their images were formed from small magnetic tiles pieced together. But what was truly astonishing was the AI-generated machines — replicas of these imams would appear on screen, and you could have a full conversation with them. You could speak in Arabic, Persian, or English, and Imam Bukhari would respond. It was like next-level AI technology.

This brought to mind the hadith regarding the Dajjal:

(Sahih Muslim, Book 18, Hadith 105 — narration regarding the Dajjal)

The Dajjal will come to a layman and say: "Can you imagine if I can revive your dead camel for you? If I can resurrect your father or your brother?" And then somehow a replica of the person's father or brother will be created for them to converse with. So this was one thing which showed us a path perhaps leading toward the ultimate fitna of the Dajjal — they are already creating these images of deceased people. Imam Bukhari passed away 1,200 years ago, and now we have this replica to speak with.

Reflections on the Preservation of History

Walking through that exhibition, you see a great effort in the country to preserve their history. When the Mongols came, and then later when the Soviet Union came, they lost a lot of the ilm and the ulama. Everything was destroyed. They were telling us you could count the number of masajid in the country during the Soviet era — ulama, madrasas, everything was destroyed.

Now, since independence, there is this effort to try and revive things. But it's very historic — everything is "this was Imam Bukhari," "this is the place he used to teach," "this was Imam Tirmidhi," "this was the madrasa." There's nothing live happening. We tried so hard when we were in Tashkent to visit a madrasa. The person actually opened the door — it was after hours — but then he said, "Sorry, I can't even let you in because of government restrictions." To find people of ilm, living ulama, was so difficult. Everything was just historic, ancient: "This is what used to happen, this is how it was."

Mufti Azeemuddin mentioned at one point in the trip: "If you want to see ilm and ulama in action, you have to travel to the Arab lands, to America, to the subcontinent. That's where you see all of these things live." Here in Uzbekistan, they're talking about ilm in theory — "This is how hadith were taught, this is where tasawwuf and khanqahs used to be, this is where mashayikh would come." It's all in the past. There's nothing live, nothing present.

So that's one of the reflections from the Islamic Cultural Center — yes, it's great that they've put in billions of dollars to preserve their history, the history of Islam in the country. But it would be even nicer if they could also invest those resources in people — in ulama — who can guide the masses and guide the youth.

The Mushaf of Uthman ibn Affan

One of the highlights of the Islamic Cultural Center was the mushaf of Uthman ibn Affan رضي الله عنه. They say this is the one original copy — though I've heard the same claim in Madinah al-Munawwarah, the Uzbeks say this is the real one. Their proof is that on the morning Uthman رضي الله عنه was martyred, he was reading from the Qur'an, and he had reached the verse:

"Allah will suffice you against them." As he was reading that verse, the rebels broke into his house and brutally assassinated him. His blood spilled and stained that very ayah of the mushaf. They say the mushaf in Uzbekistan has blood on that exact ayah. Others say the blood was placed there later — Allah knows best. But they say that is the original mushaf of Uthman ibn Affan رضي الله عنه.

There are also many other very old manuscripts in that library — old copies of al-Hidayah, of Sahih al-Bukhari, of Jami' al-Tirmidhi, and many other kitabs. That's what fascinated us. Alhamdulillah, Allah has granted us the good fortune of being attached to ulama. We wanted to spend so much time there. Our local guides kept saying, "Okay, let's go, let's go." They didn't understand the benefit of just standing there and looking at these manuscripts. That's what was truly attractive to us.

Dar al-Hilal: A Living Legacy

Moving on from the Islamic Cultural Center to modern-day Tashkent, we visited Dar al-Hilal. I wouldn't even say a glimmer of hope — there's a lot of hope here. Because what happened during the USSR, where people were not allowed to take Allah's name, where names were changed, where the adhan was not allowed, where masajid were not allowed — everything was under such tight control — we met people who spoke about that era not as hearsay, but as lived reality.

The Qur'an was taught inside dungeons. The Qur'an was taught in basements. We've heard from people who went to visit Uzbekistan at the beginning of the post-Soviet era, where people would make one single request: "You are a Muslim — we just ask that you give us an opportunity to at least look at a mushaf. Because in our entire life, we have never seen how a Qur'an looks." That was about 35 to 40 years ago.

We went to visit the al-Hilal printing press, which was established by the last grand mufti of the Soviet era, Mufti Muhammad al-Sadiq Muhammad Yusuf. His son, Sheikh Ismail, is running the place now, along with his whole family and amazing team. He was born in 1952 and passed away in 2015. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala used him to study ilm in Lebanon, and he also became the rector of the Imam Bukhari Madrasa — one of the longest-running, still-active madrasas in the region, where many great scholars studied.

Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala used him in all different facets — political, social, and academic. He undertook the effort of translating the meanings of the Qur'an into the Uzbek language. Now they have beautiful copies printed at this press. It is the only 100% Muslim-owned, beginning-to-end Qur'an printing press in the entire region — not just the country, but the entire region. There are other presses that print Islamic books, but those are owned by non-Muslims. This was the only Muslim-owned press, 100% dedicated to the khidmah of the ummah, running 24/7.

He wrote approximately 100 books in this short span of life. Amazingly, he also completed translations of all the Kutub al-Sitta — Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan Abi Dawood, Jami' al-Tirmidhi, Sunan al-Nasa'i, and Sunan ibn Majah — plus three more books, along with brief commentaries. These are printed in sets that can be bought separately or collectively, and also translated into multiple languages beyond Uzbek.

He also established multiple websites that, to this day, are the most visited websites in Central Asia for Islamic knowledge, dedicated to all different aspects of the deen. For those who cannot afford to purchase the books, they've installed a system in masajid — through a device or QR code — whereby you can download thousands of translated books onto your phone for free while you are in the masjid. And for those who cannot read, he himself took it upon himself to audio-record all his books, reading them in his own voice, so they can be listened to as well.

He also met personally with the president and introduced Islam to him. Through his one-on-one meetings, Allah opened up the country to Islam again — madrasas and masajid, all opened up.

The Secret Behind His Legacy

We visited the grave of Sheikh Muhammad al-Sadiq, and we were greeted by his personal driver, who is also the muezzin of the masjid next to the grave. When we got to the grave, he started reciting the final verses of Surah al-Zumar:

Allah speaks about the people of taqwa when they'll be ushered into Jannah, until when they reach it and its gates are opened, and the gatekeepers of Jannah greet them: "Salam alaykum, you have done well — enter here, to reside forever." When he got to that verse, he just broke down, crying and crying.

There they have a beautiful culture — wherever you go, you recite Qur'an. After every salah, there is a recitation of Qur'an. Every gathering, every visit to a grave — you must recite some portion of the Qur'an, and then end with:

If you don't say it, they just stare at you, waiting. Wherever you went and you spoke about Sheikh Muhammad al-Sadiq, everyone knew him. It was a manifestation of the ayah:

Those who have iman and do righteous deeds — Allah says: We will place love and muhabba in the hearts of people. They will naturally gravitate toward such individuals. Sheikh Muhammad al-Sadiq was certainly one of them.

We asked his personal driver: "Can you tell us the secret? How come Sheikh's legacy has lived on, when so many people do great work and then pass away, and that's the end?" He cried, and cried even more. He said, "I was his personal khadim, his driver, and I had the honor of traveling with Sheikh." He said:

"Whenever I would travel with Sheikh, he would perform 100 raka'at at night. From after his Isha, he would finish his Isha salah, and then start performing his qiyam al-layl, his Salat al-Tahajjud, and he would end at the adhan of Salat al-Fajr. Every time I traveled with Sheikh, whenever I was with him at night, this was his routine — a minimum of 100 raka'at of nafl salah at night."

Allahu Akbar. You can imagine the types of du'as, the types of crying that Sheikh would make. So he wasn't just an academic personality — gathering knowledge, translating books, writing over 100 books, and that's it. No. Rather, he also had this ruhaniya, this spirituality. And that was really the secret ingredient — the ilm, coupled with the ibadah, coupled with that spirituality.

SubhanAllah, imagine 100 raka'at every single night. He would never sleep at night. And then after the adhan of Fajr — you'd think that's it, he'd rest. But his driver told us: "After Salat al-Fajr, when the adhan would go off, Sheikh would open his books and start writing, start his research." The whole night he spent with Allah ta'ala, and in the day he was engaged in writing, researching, and delivering lectures.

This is reminiscent of what Umar ibn al-Khattab رضي الله عنه once said. An ambassador came to visit him in the afternoon. The ambassador hesitated, thinking Umar might be resting at that hour. But Umar رضي الله عنه heard he was in the city, called him, and asked why he delayed. The ambassador said he was afraid Umar might be resting. Umar رضي الله عنه replied: "If I sleep in the day, how will I take care of the creation and all my responsibilities? And if I sleep at night, how will I take care of my relationship with Allah? You tell me — how do I find time to put my head on a pillow between these two?"

So this was Sheikh Muhammad al-Sadiq also — busy in the day, spending his nights with Allah ta'ala. His driver said: "This was the secret ingredient that gave him that divine acceptance — qabuliya — from Allah." Till this day, 10 years after his passing, thousands and thousands of books continue to be published by Dar al-Hilal.

Sheikh Ismail and the Masjid of Sheikh Muhammad al-Sadiq

When we entered the printing press, Sheikh Ismail stopped us and pointed to a sign on the wall:

According to one tafsir, referring to the Qur'an: "None may touch it except those who are purified." He said, "This is our rule in this facility. All of our workers, while they are working here, must be in the state of wudu. If their wudu breaks, they go make wudu and come back. And the women, when they are in a state where they cannot pray, they are not allowed to touch the masahif — we have them in other departments."

The government of Uzbekistan got involved after Sheikh Muhammad al-Sadiq's passing and said: "We are going to build a masjid in his name." — This is not something they generally do; masajid there are mostly built by private donors. They appointed his son Sheikh Ismail as the imam. Sheikh Ismail told us that for one Khatm al-Qur'an, they had 17,000 people attend. And on a daily basis, the number of musallis are in the thousands.

This is also one of the things we noticed throughout Uzbekistan — wherever you go, the masajid are full. At the local masjid by the hotel in Tashkent for Salat al-Fajr, there were a few hundred people. At some of the larger masajid, they said for Fajr salah they have 3,000 to 4,000 people attending.

Sheikh Ismail also shared an interesting reflection about the name Dar al-Hilal — hilal referring to the crescent moon. He said that Sheikh Muhammad Awwamah, one of the leading scholars of Hadith currently in Turkey, whenever he calls or visits, always asks: "Has the Hilal become a Badr yet?" — meaning, has your crescent become a full moon? Has your institution reached that full stage?

Samarkand: The Grave of Imam Abu Mansur al-Maturidi and Imam al-Marghinani

While in Samarkand, there is a graveyard known as the Muhammadi Graveyard. The rule over there was that in order to be buried in that graveyard, your name had to be Muhammad, and on top of that you also had to be a faqih — a top-caliber scholar. There are about 3,000 individuals whose names were Muhammad and who were also ulama buried in that graveyard. This gives you some idea of how many thousands upon thousands of ulama hailed from Samarkand, Bukhara, and the greater region.

Unfortunately, when the Soviets took over, they completely decimated that area and allowed some Jewish families to build their homes on top of the grave of Imam Abu Mansur al-Maturidi and the graves of these 3,000-plus Muhammad-named fuqaha. Today, alhamdulillah, there is an effort to restore it. They are building a huge masjid — still under construction when we visited — along with a museum, and a large structure around the grave of Imam Abu Mansur al-Maturidi.

We just snuck in — it was an open construction zone. Shaykh Muhammad Abdullah said: "When I walked into the room where Abu Mansur al-Maturidi was buried, I could just feel ilm flowing through my body." And this is not just him — there are over 3,000 scholars of the top caliber buried right there.

From there, an imam came to us — we don't know where he appeared from, but throughout the trip, Allah just sent people and opened doors. He clarified something we had been confused about: the grave of Imam al-Marghinani, the author of al-Hidayah.

He mentioned an incident recorded in al-Jawahir al-Mudiyya: Imam al-Marghinani was sick and had become paralyzed. His students thought he had passed away and buried him. But then one of the students went back and looked at his teacher's writings and found that al-Hidayah had been started on a Wednesday — and there is a narration (though there is academic discussion regarding its authenticity) that if you begin something on a Wednesday, you will be able to complete it. The student said: "There is no way my teacher has passed away — he started writing al-Hidayah on a Wednesday and he hasn't finished it." They went back, checked, and found that he had not actually passed away — he was paralyzed. They brought him out of the grave, Allah ta'ala granted him shifa, and he was able to complete writing al-Hidayah. Later, he truly passed away in Samarkand, and that is where his actual grave is. This explains why there are so many conflicting reports online about where he is buried — he was, in a sense, buried twice.

And as for why his grave is separate from the Muhammadi Graveyard — it is because his name did not contain "Muhammad," and the condition for burial there was to bear that name and be a scholar. SubhanAllah — he was a great scholar whose fiqh manual is taught at Dar al-Salam and all over the world, but because his name did not have Muhammad in it, he was buried separately.

The Grave of Imam Bukhari in Samarkand

Imam Bukhari himself is not buried in Bukhara. He was from Bukhara, and we did go to visit the place where he was born — they made it into a large pond, which is now dry, just to ensure no one builds anything over that sacred ground. But he passed away in Samarkand, and so we went to visit his complex there.

It is unlike anything else I've seen in my life — the level of effort they've put into making this place extremely beautiful, massive, and attractive. Everything is lit up: the domes, the minarets, the entire building — continuously changing lights, like a high-end light show. It opened after a seven-year renovation, on Eid al-Fitr, just before we arrived.

It is huge — you can fit thousands and thousands of people. Buses upon buses arrive, flying into Bukhara's airport as well. And what struck me was: in this day and age, these people are coming to visit the grave of a scholar of hadith. That for me was huge. Because we're living in a time when, in different parts of the world, there are entire movements invested in undermining hadith — millions of dollars being spent to rewrite Imam Bukhari's Sahih, to say that not everything in it is authentic, that not everything is progressive enough, that not everything aligns with modern times. Even in this country, people reject hadith. So to see a genuine revival of belief in hadith — people traveling all this way to honor someone who compiled the statements of Rasulullah ﷺ — was something very beautiful.

Some of the brothers there got emotional beside us and said: "Until now we had no idea. It's so bad that foreigners are coming to see someone from our own country." Many had thought that Imam Bukhari actually wrote these hadiths himself. Now they're learning that he simply compiled the statements of Rasulullah ﷺ. So there's an educational effort now underway there to help people understand their own heritage.

The entire complex is massive. The mock tomb at the top level is where tourists and visitors come and say salaam to Imam Bukhari. But his actual grave is down below — down many flights of stairs, through tunnels and corridors. The first day we came, we only reached the top. The second day, Allah ta'ala opened the doors: we had to wait in the courtyard for an hour and a half, two hours, until everyone else had left. Only then were the security guards allowed to take us down to the actual place where Imam Bukhari رحمه الله is buried.

It was just so nostalgic. Just the previous year, in Dora's newly established Alim program, every morning we would start our day with the sanad:

We'd read our chain back to Imam Bukhari رحمه الله, and then from him the chain going back to the Prophet ﷺ, and the whole day we'd be reading through the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ. So alhamdulillah, reading a few hadith at his very grave, with the sanad back to him — that was an amazing, amazing experience.

A Transformative Experience: The Chillagah and Muraqabah al-Mawt

One of the most powerful experiences of the trip was visiting a chillagah — a place of seclusion where the mashayikh of the past would spend 40 days in khalwah, focused entirely on building their relationship with Allah. There was a place connected to the grave of a 14th-century scholar. You go past his grave to his masjid, and there are two domes, one on top of the other. You go in, there's a musalla on top, then you take a narrow, circular flight of stairs down below — two layers. It's very, very cool down there, and they've carved a window-like opening into the ceiling, intentionally designed for the study of astronomy and observation of the celestial cycles.

What was truly ajeeb was connected to this place of ibadah — a grave. Just the size of an actual grave. Maybe a foot and a half wide and about six feet deep. You go inside, you lie down on the ground, and all you see is the soil above you. You force yourself to face the Qibla. We were a group of five brothers. Just thinking about going there alone, and spending 10 to 15 minutes there — it truly is a transformative experience. We only did one to two minutes, making tasbih, and it was really something unique. I had never had an opportunity to do something like that.

This is muraqabah al-mawt — contemplation of death. It is mentioned regarding Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz and many of the mashayikh of the past that this was something they would do on a regular basis. When you read their stories, you ask: how did they have that level of zuhd? How did they live their lives like that? This is the reason. If you go inside a grave every single night — go to the graveyard, lie in a dug-up grave, spend 10 to 15 minutes there, and come out — there is no way your lifestyle will be the way it is right now.

The reason we live the way we live is because we are in a state of complete heedlessness. We don't realize that death is around the corner, and when it comes, none of this will remain. Prepare for the first night of the grave. At the very least, think about death — close your eyes and just contemplate dying. The Prophet ﷺ directly commanded:

"Remember the destroyer of pleasures — death." (Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 2307; Sunan ibn Majah, Hadith 4258)

This is something very effective. May Allah grant us tawfiq to remember death on a regular basis.

Reflections on Traveling for the Sake of Allah

The grave of Qutham ibn al-Abbas رضي الله عنه — and the desire we should all have to serve the deen and to travel for its sake — is something that is slowly evading us. People travel for vacation, people travel for other things, but how often do we travel purely for the sake of Allah, to spread His deen, spending our own money?

When we go out in the path of Allah in Tabligh, people say, "Why are you leaving your wife and kids?" We would be sitting in a very different place right now, if the companions thought that way. Imagine if they had said: "I'm already at Isha, I read Qur'an, I do my dhikr — what more do you want from me?" Did the companions not do dhikr and Qur'an? Did they not do ibadah? They were sitting right next to Rasulullah ﷺ all day long, and they gave that up to spread Islam. And that is the reason why we are sitting here today as Muslims.

So that is something I hope we can all take — the jazbah and the desire that, insha'Allah, we will also travel for the deen of Allah and spread it to the best of our ability.

Visiting Graves: The Purpose and the Benefit

Every time we visited a grave, people would ask: what do you do when you visit a grave? Always perform isal al-thawab — recite Qur'an and dedicate the reward to the person who has passed away. Recite Surah al-Fatiha, Surah al-Ikhlas eleven times or three times, and dedicate the reward. You will receive a great barakah for that.

Secondly, we believe that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's mercy is descending upon those who are special. If someone is alive and is a wali of Allah, Allah is looking at him — that person is under the blessed glance of Allah. And if someone has passed away and they were a wali of Allah, Allah's attention and mercy continue to descend upon them even after death. So what we learn from our teachers is that when you visit a wali of Allah — whether alive or deceased — one of the focuses should be: "Ya Allah, this is a special servant of Yours. Your rahmah and Your nur that descend upon his heart — O Allah, allow that to also reflect upon me, to fall upon me as well." We are not benefiting from the dead so much as we are benefiting from the rahmah of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala that descends upon these pious souls, both living and deceased. This was the focal point of why and how we visited these various ulama and mashayikh.

Closing Remarks and Announcements

We have covered perhaps half of the trip — there is still a great deal more to share. We will, insha'Allah, do a Part Two next week.

Additionally, all our weekly programs have started again. Tomorrow night, same time, Maghrib to Isha, will be Mufti Muhajir's Tafsir program. Thursday night will be the Shama'il program. And Iftitah Fajr is also back, starting on Saturday morning, insha'Allah.

Assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.