Rivalry Between Poets Al-Farazdaq & Jarir | Mufti Abu Layth

you know we've spoken in the past about some about these two great our arab poets so speaking of interactions circles and dynamics between people what can be a greater example than faraz people if you've heard of diss tracks which i'm sure you all have forget about all these diss tracks and of this age and going to the these rappers dissing one another and

these people haven't got anything on jared these were the original diss tracks these people are from the time of the sahabah radial so they're from that time okay um you've got both of them are from a tribe known as bonita meme okay now

so jared and frasdak and they're from uh one from busra is born around the other from nudge but they kind of they interact so the way it works basically is everybody's rising they're saying poetry and they're kind of proclaiming themselves and what happens is you see a rival and they diss them and they start taking out their rivals one by one and you're eventually left with just the creme de la creme or the you know the the best of the best

and that just leaves a few and so from amongst them you have frozdak by the way was not his actual name his they call him that his actual name was it means something like like a loaf of bread or something like something like a loaf of something but it's because he had some kind of big face so he's calling frozdak so these two they emerge as the kind of the best of

the best so they become opponents their rivalry they start diss tracks against dissing one another and the energy is such and and this is by extension it goes as a lesson for all of us the energy is such that it consumes you you get sucked into it

their rivalry lasts as long as harbaugh if you remember the other jahilia pre-islamic wars that lasted it last over 40 years and they live right into their old age into their early 90s so for decades they diss each other and they spare nobody not the other person's mum not the other mother not her not their fathers not their sisters not their wives they it is

absolutely ruthless no holds bart okay people so it is absolutely just it is tyrannical that's how it is people dread it and they really have had it with each other and so they they change the style of poetry and this is why the dishes are called so poetry before that was a certain style that you know you and like you stand on the ruins and you say hey my two companions and then you talk about

your travels and then you either talk about women or warfare or your camel or your horse or you talk about wisdoms it all changed with these they just went at it straight as soon as it starts buying at each other and they really are both amongst the epic poets of the era so you get and what so as an example what you'd get is uh

he says to um he says to jareer and they they're going to hajj see it doesn't even stop in hajj and he says and this is a lesson to be learned here you know when you get so much into something that's negative that's that has this kind of toxicity it consumes you that you don't realize and you just have a momentum and you're just going going going going until you stop so here they are in hajj and

says to him says you're going to meet somebody that has you know he has something to proclaim boastfully meaning him [Laughter]

who are you going to praise as your ancestors because you see you know in jahiliya time pre-islam when the people would meet up arafat what they would do is they would kind of boast of the atafur and serb so the prophet condemned this but but the arabs it was difficult for them to kind of give it up and this is why in hadith the prophet said that my ummah won't give it up it's that kind of tribalism and so pre-islam they would stand there and they would openly say their poems and you know my dad did this my granddad did this and my you

know wow that guy's such a legend oh he's such a legend and so this is what frozdak's saying to him who are you going to praise when you meet and the reason he's saying this is because you see both of them are from banita me benita means a huge tribe of arabs spread right over the middle east and into the arabian peninsula and it's like a rough tribe as well so you see but they've obviously come from different branches of the tribe

and ancestry is actually quite boastful as in it's they they've actually done things like they're really so for example his his dad her mom uh sorry is her mom even his dad's name is he was also somebody incredibly generous incredibly kind of like known amongst his people and his dad they he was from pre-islam and i believe reaches islam and embraces islam in pre-islamic times what sasa would do is he would if he found out that somebody was about to kill an

infant girl because in jahiliya time uh for whatever reason often it was for poverty and they would bury the girls alive it's the greatest sin of you know humanity that this what they called what is what hamza done that when the girl who was buried alive will ask that why was she killed so asa one day was going and he saw some uh he saw this kind of couple and they

were digging a ditch and he asked them what's this for and they said it's they were going to bury their daughter this toddler this tiny baby and not even a toddler just like a newborn and he said that how about if i pay her ransom will you give her to me and they because first of all he asks them why and they said they said because of poverty and he said how about if i pay her ransom and he did and he would obviously he had like a huge family clan he would give the child somebody would raise the child so what he started to do was he started

to go around seeking out people that were trying to in this horrible abominable way abort a live child you know a living child they were trying to kill and bury alive the so he would save these and he saved anything between some say three to four hundred girls and may allah bless him in his afterlife for that that is an immense act of just just courage in that time and humanity

and in a certain narration the people say the prophet said about him and praised him so you can see this this ancestry is like wow that frozdak has this so this is why he's saying that you know we are and then he's got all these other ancestors that are like warriors and part because many tamim had they were like warriors anyway and so this branch especially so he says in this poem

the one who's kind of raised and built the heavens he has made for us that the allah who's made the heavens above has made our household eve with even more grandeur allah says this is one of his ancestors [Music]

so he's naming his ancestors that you know maja she and nashua and these guys are all dons and these are children these are my ancestors and he's proper like praise and this is why he's he's trying get on with jared and the pro but jared wasn't the type to kind of uh stay calm either but he's this is what he's telling and he says that and it's a famous uh line of his

these are my ancestors like these people like zorara like mujasiya like national like that these are my ancestors so bring the like of them on to me either yeah if it ever happens that we come together in a gathering then bring the likes of these for me

so this is what's kind of going on and in their time these two they they not only lock horns they completely consume one another they like so uh there's these two and there's a third as well by the way known as he was a christian the proper locked in najari just to give you an idea why is he dissing jade one he's got his own ancestry which is so but jerry his parents were known one that his kind of sub branch wasn't anything special but his parents were known for being super tight-fisted super miserly and stingy

that check this once somebody came to jareev's house and he he he kind of knocks on his door and he's speaking to him he wants to meet him and then he starts asking him he says but tell me who is who is the most the epic poet the dawn poet of all arabs and because remember when it comes to do with fakhr and praising yourself and standing your ground and these guys are the heavyweights of their day and age these are like the mike tysons and the you know these are the heavyweights so jareev says to him he says come with

me so he goes for them and they go into next door into this kind of like shed he's like following him he goes in and he can see this old man who's kind of all huddled up and he's got the udder of a goat right and he's got his mouth on it and he's drinking milk directly from the other so the guy looks at jareer and jared looks at him at this this guest

and he says do you know who that is and he says who he goes that's my dad and he says it doesn't stop there he says do you know why he's he's doing that he says no he says he thinks that if he squeezes like if he milks the goat into a pan then obviously as the milk hits the pan it's going to make a little noise and he's worried that the neighbors will hear that he's got milk so he's drinking it direct

this is his own dad so he says he looks at the he turns to the guest and he says if despite having a dad like that and his dad's name is apia by the way he says if despite having a dad like that i can still manage to boast in my poetry he says then you tell me if somebody can pull that off then ain't they the most darn poet amongst the arabs if they could do that and this is where you know

every poem that frisdak would say jereer would always kind of come back at him and he'd say i would rival everything he says our rival except he says he said one he said this one couplet to me once which i couldn't reply and that is where says to him he says

he says you know the people who are generous even if they want to be generous to you they can't gift you their dad he says you're stuck basically at the end of the day you're stuck with your own dad eve no matter how generous people want to be with you and he says he says no he says

that you claim that you're so happy with your legacy that he says like at the end of the day no matter what you boast you still have to go through your dad's lineage and this is why they used to proper go at it so you have one who's a um who's this christian that i mentioned and they're like the top three and they used to all have a royal audience with the caliph that this is how these people in their day and age were so powerful because if they said a poem

they could they could ruin your career with a single lie that's how ruthless they were don't mistake i mean this jared he's not don't mistake him for on a particular occasion and i've mentioned this before there was a a there was this guy called from the tribe of nomir who took sides with farazduk and started pro saying yeah for us that's got the upper hand so jared rinse he just released one poem against him where he starts by saying

that allah has prepared me amongst the poets that i you know like a lightning bolt they you know bow their heads to me in there he has this line where he says to that guy he says that he says lower your eyes like don't look at me this one line of his it ruined it ended the career of numer who are actually quite a powerful tribe and after that

they would be so embarrassed to say that they were nominated they used to refuse to say they would just affiliate with the higher kind of clan this is how ruthless these poets were so they would often meet up in the royal courtyard and their lives got immersed in this you see the reason i'm highlighting this is when you get into something that thing consumes you and gets into you you become part and parcel of it so um he this is athal as well on so many occasions and he says to him on

jared says to him of even about because he's a christian he this is him about being a christian and he disses him and he says uh praising the caliph that the caliph is like my cousin if i wanted this actually annoyed abdul malik the king at the time caliph because he says he says he says i think i've mentioned this story before he says if i wanted he would drag you to me like like sheep and you know because you christians and blah blah blah he kind of makes this even though was highly

um respected in the royal court you know this thing he wasn't even though he's a christian he used to say what he wanted to say and he was like an epic poet and he says about jared as well dissing the stinginess check this and i think i may have cited this before he says that if guests came to their home he says he says

that if if they find out guests are coming to their house because the dog starts barking they tell their mom urinate over the fire so we don't have to cook anything and so this is what they're telling their mom so just in case the guests think oh masha'allah they've got a burning fire you know they're going to put some food on for us so they say buli says

that the mother she even then like she's conflicted because she wants to urinate and put the fire out but then she's she's so stingy that even when she urinates she does so in the stingy way that she only urinates the right amount to put the fire out this is the kind of tracks that these people are releasing on one another and check this out right so what happens is uh and jared by the way doesn't kind of go easy on the others either he says to us that like this this is an example

frozdak's dad had been killed by someone called the quran ibn hammer and that's a different story somebody they actually i think they dissed this person and he came back and he killed him so he says in this poem he says he says he says there's nothing you know that sword is kind of useless he says waffy

he says whereas you know the sword of the quran look at that winding him up that's the guy that's killed his dad he says yeah that's still you know that's where where it's happening and he says to him he says in that he says uh he has this uh line where he says he says that he would like basically suckle that this grown man would circle for for food he

says says he this guy is so destitute this is why he's saying to frisdak that if he saw anybody he would try to suckle him circle their nipples he says even if it was a disabled person he says even if the guy is disabled who not only is he disabled he's being led by a blind person so he says imagine this a disabled person who's been carried by a blind person now these two come past for us that frozdak would still beg from them [Laughter]

this is the kind of stuff that was going on people now why is this important it's important to understand that your what you get involved in the energy it locks you in in life that's exactly what's happened here and and from amongst these things frisdhak once says about um he says about jared

he's dissing him and he says um he has this uh what he says to him that he says khaled kulaib kulaib is the tribe of um the sub clan of jared he says hello he says that his his sub clan are saying you know what we better run away with uh you know jared because frozdak's gonna eat him up he's gonna eat him up and and he says

anil like check this out he says that i am death that will take your soul that you what can you possibly do about death it says anal buddha now check these lines out because frozdak becomes really proud of these lines and and he claims that jared could never out do him on them he says that ana badarham like the full moon shining in its glory

says yashi tarafal he says that the way would just you know the light it over how it overwhelms the eyes of the full moon he says felt because he says that he says if you try to reach it you son of a he calls him son of a kill is a dog like he says you son of a dog that could you reach the moon if that's what you wanted to do

and check this going back to his dad he says wataraka jaren he says we left jared in the market and he had he said he had his dad with him and he was hoping to trade him in into the market he's hoping to trade his dad

and they said to him take this donkey back says this is like such a wretched donkey they take this donkey back look how twisted his face is and this is what he's saying to to uh jared and what he does is he takes a he takes this oath that you know this poem i killed him

and he takes in one uh he he he claims that his wife is divorced he does the talaq thing that according to some stories that if that jared could never come out with an answer for that because especially the line he says i am death he says that what can you do about death so this line had jared it had him consumed mentally for for a while

and as it happened they once met up in the royal court all of them these three and this bedouin comes in and abdul malik these three poets are the bedouin doesn't know these three and he asks the the king asks this arab bedouin that who would you what's the best line of kind of flirtatious poetry that you've ever heard of so he quotes a line of jared he calls the one he says

he says that those eyes that have that they kind of that they have the the kind of almost like where the word who comes from as well they have in the the kind of dark the the kind of the blackness is incredibly black and the white is incredibly white and and they have their eyes like this they murder us and then they don't give us another d sorry they don't bring us back to life so he quotes this line which is of jade but he doesn't he doesn't recognize he just says this to the king so the king says hmm okay he says which line uh

is the most praiseworthy line that the arabs have said and he quotes this other poem which we've done previously we uh which is also from jared where he says he says to we've done this story before he says that ain't you the most generous of the world when it comes to giving and so on he goes hmm that's fragile as well and then he says okay which is the most the greatest diss track the dis poem

and he says that famous line that hud because this had absolutely shut down an entire powerful tribe then abdullah malik says to him that you know all these three are for jared belong to jalee and he says yeah he said do you recognize jared he says no he says that's jerry right there and you see what had happened prior to this arab walking in the caliph was saying that you know what if i could determine i've got a prize here but i want to give it to the most done poets of you so which who is it going to be and they're kind of like all in this

little argument and then this guy comes in and he seems to be just rating jareer so jared as you can imagine he's like over the moon and at that point also mentions his epic line that i am death people that how do you answer that he says that what can you do about death you know i am death is there anything greater than that so jareev responds to him

reply he says to him jared says to him he says he says your death he says i am time a memorial

time and he says and time can even eradicate death says so bring me something that can outstretch and outlive time itself allah and you know they say that that poem that even the the caliph then said you know what that oath you took about the talaq i think that the this was another musiba by the way back then this and the fit books are so full of this what they would do is they would just anytime they want to prove a point they would just say right if this isn't

like this then my wife is divorced from this is what they will do it's like they've got nothing better to say honestly the thick books are full of that which is a calamity in and of itself but the reason i was saying this is and i thought this story is important is these people although they produced poetry and the poetry has lived it's lived on and eternalized them but they spent almost half their lives in this kind of this hate

relationship and it was so ironic that they became so attached to one another during this time because even though they are rivals but you see it's like a yin yang that one exists by its opposite that in enantiodroma that you have that we spoke of that things with the opposite potential just as in life that you see when we have struggles the struggles

are like the yin to the yang they they carry they balance allow us to balance the goodness and the achievements that come and these two got so embroiled in this that you know when they reached after 40 years frozdak he died he must have been in his early 90s when he died jared said a eulogy a poem eulogizing him

praising him he said he says it has tore down tamim and wounded us in spite of all the calamities that we've been through the death of

says they have left in this grave today a man who had reached every sky every star in the sky that was visible allah and they say he himself jared within possibly 40 days of razdak's death died as well sometimes what consumes us

it ironically keeps us going