The Love Story of Al-Barraq ibn Rawhan & Laila al-Afeefa | Mufti Abu Layth

for this i think i need to one moment i need to pour myself i think a little drink oh oh oh right i gotta wait for that tool too much fizz in that it's probably a sign

okay that's all right i like it i like it i like it there you go that's good enough all right so let me just put this down right now people who was barack we've spoken previously of the great kind of battle in pre-islam and we spoke of zir salim and the harbul basu which lasted for 40 years

obviously whilst they're young and his older brother kulaib which triggers that whole thing there he would have been their cousin as in the uncle's son or i think some people put him as their uncle and others have said his son their son but much older than them though there was this person by the name of barack ibn but they they are there as well but he's just senior to them in age he was somebody that was not only one of the most epic poets of

um of arabia in his time one of them but he was an outstanding kind of warrior outstanding and you know very kind of noble as well you know we spoke previously of these sa ali can we spoke of these fat some of these people on this crazy like psychopaths just approach someone and say all right get ready i'm gonna kill you it's like what he was he was like a very noble person and barack ibn and the whole of rabia kind of rated this guy he was from that

tribe of rabia yeah and they all rated him and he was specifically from talib but obviously ultimately they're all part of rabia now what happens is he in his he falls in love as one does with uh with a woman from his tribe known as leila bint lucas so leila she's also known as leila fifa the modest layla and the and i will come to why she was called modest but he he obviously falls in love with her she falls in love with him this becomes a kind of like a proper that and

everybody in banu taglib knows about this and he remember he's a don he's like what somebody people feel proud that he's part of their tribe that's how so nobody's got a problem with the love story here this love story this one this one all good man all good so uh now right so what happens is the father lucky's obviously speaks to is related to uh he's related to him as well in the tribe they're all kind of related and

he says it's kind of known it's one of those things that it's putative like without being expressed people know he's going to marry her and even the father of laila al-afifa he's cool with it he's like yeah in fact when it's mentioned publicly he even says yeah yeah of course they're going to marry everybody knows they're in love man the law the law the law so right so it's all happy days for this person

until what happens is you know how you have social media today in that day and age you had the kind of people who would spread news as well it was either through poems often through poems sometimes just you had the gossipers you know like the the aunties they had their fish here of neighborhood aunties as well it's like oh oh oh oh proper falcon eyed vision and so what happens is layla was incredibly beautiful so people knew that about it i mean her beauty was kind of known

so people started talking about it so you know somebody said oh you know from oh my god from that from rabia oh my god leila she's so beautiful and she's so wow so people are speaking about this so this news somehow reaches the the royalty in southern arabia so one of the the kings of the southern arabian tribes it reaches him somehow through people you know as like as time goes by he hears so now that it reaches the royal courtyards so you see royalty they rub shoulders

with royalty so you know they kind of like chatting so now it becomes news in the royal circles that this apparently you know people praised the beauty of some woman layla pinch uh you know look haze okay lately they catch easy so so he gets curious so as it happens the there's an as it happens it coincides with an occasion where layla's father locates he is traveling to southern arabia on some trade and he goes into that part where this king is and

because they had the kind of the hamir kind of kingdoms and stuff so he goes there and he's uh he's trading and he's in that royal courtyard thing and he's kind of and the person says oh is this this person he says oh he said i've got business with you yeah it says hey our business he says why should we resort to the office says to him look listen i've got better than all this business deal got a better offer for you he says what's that he says aren't you the father of layla and so on says well i'd like to marry her so and some people say he was trying to

marry her to his son but whoever but he puts a proposal so the father says you know but she's gonna marry barack but then then again this is royalty huh royalty is royalty man it's like royalty is royalty bank balance here he says you know what it's a deal dearly our dear dear dear dear so now he comes back and he comes back to bonita lip he's is the

way they live and they lived in around uh these people in the kind of nudged region of arabia so he comes back and and he tells you know like some people ask him oh so what happened you know somebody comes back from their journey and they've got stuff and say how did it go and he says yeah he says oh i've also by the way set up uh my the marriage from leila with you know the king so some people say ah i thought she's engaged to barack he said oh well you know now now i've said it now so this news now reaches barrack

so barack obviously he's like you gotta be you gotta be this uh some there's gotta be a joke he goes straight to the dad luke's and says look some people are saying this this can't be true but you know you've because and the dad says well my son you're right i had said she would marry you but you know what

it is what it is he said that look he proposed and to be fair i think that's noble it's better for her that she marries royalty i haven't got nothing against you my child he's like it's not you right you're good man good man but he better even gooder man so he says you know what i'm he says he's royalty at the end of the day and you know i think he'll be better for her future so barack is fuming fuming

he says that this obviously he says you know what i'm he says i'm asking you to reconsider he says no he says forget this he goes straight finds layla he says to layla he says do you know this is what your dad has said so she says i've heard as well he says well this is nonsense you and i are gonna elope we're gonna elope the good old dilwale this is the good old ddlj right so

the classic shahrukh khan so he says to her that we're leaving and we're leaving right now you're going to elope with me and you know what the best part is nobody's going to stop me and and fair play nobody would stop barack i mean he's he's like the the rated absolute warrior of whole of rabia i mean nobody would be that stupid so he says look nobody's gonna stop us and you and i are leaving right now i guess what people guess what this is a true story so guess

what she says way before dilwale dolanya le jang was written she's she says that dialogue that kajal is going to say millennia later in bollywood she says she says that this will bring shame to my father allah says

that that only with the blessings of my dad can i get married i will not run away and bring shame onto my family said i can't do that she says i i love you pero no puerto you know this is i can't this one no it's possible you know i can't bring shame on to my family you've taken care of me then all look at the see this confusion in the loyalties you know the loyalties so obviously barack obama is

he's just completely heartbroken because he says look this isn't fear this was the one thing i wanted and everybody knew it and just because i'm not super rich they married you off and she isn't even running away with me because she doesn't want to hurt and it's not like he wants to hurt their family either because they are ultimately good with him and he's good with them so heartbroken in this way that he is he switches from dilwale to devdas and he sets off

for the mountains on his own with his alcohol and this is it he doesn't want to you know what he's heartbroken he says i don't want to know the world parameter all of you go to hell and he just he just becomes this recluse momentarily he's completely gone he's just on his own doesn't want to meet people doesn't wanna days go by and the days turn to weeks to you know months what happens is

tribal fighting breaks out because tribal fighting at that time anything could trigger it and from the northern kingdoms there was uh there was um there were certain tribes known as the so people probably all heard of a very famous generous person we'll speak about him another time pre-islamic but he's from that tribe of tri so they were in the northern kingdoms and we spoke of previously they have this fight which breaks out against uh arabic so and especially against the these uh

you know uh bunny taglib and baniwal and all these people so so this fighting breaks out but as i mentioned previously are such a large number of arabs so large that are if you remember last time we said that when people were asked who are the majority of the arabs they said that if claims to be adnani then it's this if they claim to be then it's that because we're just huge in number so

and they were ruthless as well those of you that recall a hadith that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said that in the end of times they all he's not end of times he said a time will come when uh peace will prevail or seek or safety will prevail that a woman will be able to come from the northern kingdom all the way to visit the kaaba without being harassed like she will come on her own this is also used by scholars to say that look women can travel on there's nothing wrong with that it was a safety issue but the narrator of the hadith and this is in bukhari he says and i thought to

myself when the prophet said that so what about the what about the tribe of day because the tribe of state were ruthless for being bandits they were these kind of like bandits along the way that would always harass people so you got this kind of bandit kind of culture and these huge numbers they combine and they've attacked rabia and this this fighting going on and rubia are getting rinsed they are getting slaughtered just because of the sh it's a numbers game like for every hundred they've got like a thousand they've got ridiculous numbers

and they're just slaughtering and slow and these people are just dying so what happens people start thinking where is barrack where's our warrior our don he's that bachara duki atma he's in the mountains just on his own so they send people please please join us please please he says look get lost get lost i'm not joining you i'm not joining you i don't want anything to do with any of you guys you guys

you know it's like you only want he he you only have a purpose like from people it's just selfish people that's all you are and so he doesn't join and they continue to be getting and so what happens is this wolfy lasts for considerable months and it would have certain interim breaks so whilst this is going on people are worried that oh we're gonna get you know we're gonna get obviously looted by these you know northern kingdoms the northern tribes they're gonna be killing us our numbers you know they're reducing our numbers they're taking our women they're

doing all this taking slaves so during this location thinks that you know what i might might as well send leila to be married because right now the way this is going we're all going to get killed and she's you know obviously either going to get killed or enslaved and so i might as well so he sends a message and and the southern arab king says the yemeni king he says yes of course we're ready sender we want to get you know get let's get this wedding going so so whilst

that king says that there's this news in the royal you see because each platform when you're on social media you're being followed by your equal your peers see celebrities follow celebrities isn't it it's like that the celebrities are not going to be following you like normal people so the kings rub shoulders with kings and they keep up to date with each other's news so now this king in yemen starts preparing for a marriage and says yes you know all this you know this beautiful stunning woman is coming laila

fifa and the reason they call it fifa some people say the modest because she refused to run away with barrack and she you know she and she had this effort this modesty for a family some people say that's the cause why they call it that but this news spreads from kingdom to kingdom like the kings here that oh yeah that yemeni king is is doing this so whilst this news is spreading it spreads to the northern kingdoms as well they hear that oh by the way there's a wedding and that's going to take place in the coming weeks of that king so it reaches the sassanid empire the persian king he hears

because the persian and the yemeni kings had a we'll speak about this another time in pre-islamic arabia they had very close ties that the assassinated empire and the the yemeni kingdoms the southern arabian kingdoms had a close tie with each other and this is why there were a lot of persians that were settled and they were called the abner because they were sent there by this empire but anyway so the persian king finds out so whilst he's he's asking about her people start really glorifying her beauty they say oh you know but this

woman laila lavifa oh miss world oh miss world ain't got anything on her so this persian king thinks he's like this that pretty so he gets a bit stirred yeah so what happens is he obviously has contact with people and he says you know what hmm i wonder if i could if we could get her so now this

incentive has been put out there so whilst this is happening locates is preparing his daughter leila to send her to the yemeni king and they're going to go from nudged down south towards yemen so whilst they're going there is a tribe that's that was often in between which was from yad now yet if you remember we spoke previously that from adnan you're going to have the main branches that come down were these alleged brothers there were these four so you've got mother which and from mother come uh and i'll bring bring it up i may actually have a picture of it yep there it is

uh you can see it there that is coming down from adnan you've got from nizar you're going to have these four brothers starting on the right hand side mudder which is going to be quraysh and all these people case aylan and bonita meme and all these people and then you're going to have rabia which we've spoken of and coming from them and all of these but another brother was yad and another one was so yeah this tribe was a lot of them were settled in that middle region and yeah yeah had an affiliation with the

sassanid dynasty so they were often seen as an affiliate tribe to the persian kingdom so they got news that the kisrad the king is interested in this layla so when she's coming through the desert they kidnapped her so layla gets kidnapped so leila fifa is kidnapped now by year to transport her all the way to persia and she is now in front of the kisrah the king of the sassanid

empire oh he's like he's like i i'm king he's like welcome i am king is king [Laughter] so so what happens is you see but you know and this was like i mentioned that the arabs generally and especially some tribes like rabia and they always had this self-pride remember they were very strong fighter people and it's a misunderstanding to assume that women were weak the women were equally strong i mean they may not have been always

fighting but they were a very proud women people as well they weren't this kind of like subdued kind of like they were very kind of confident and very outspoken as well they would so sometimes people think back thinking they like these kind of rural quiet village women that were like anybody told them shut up and they just shut they were nothing like that you know these were not these were like some you're dealing with some proper from warrior clan kind of women so layla gets taken in front of the sassanid king kisrah and he says [Laughter]

very beautiful this one so he says look you're very lucky you know reverse psychology psychology you're very lucky that i've decided to marry you so she says that ain't going to happen and he says to her like sorry what this one my ear no used to hearing no he says to you better watch yourself and she says very clearly that look she says

what are you gonna do you're going to kill me you're going to torture me she says you're going to force me and rape me is this what you're going to do she says like but you can't have me i refuse and if you're gonna if you if you're if you are that low of a man that you have to force yourself to be with me then what kind of a king are you this aren't true man this ego huh eagle male eagle and then on top of the male you got the

king eagle oh kisrah is hurt obviously now you see remember people of position and people of power it's a huge insult to them that they have to rape a woman like that is such an insult to them because they thinking look i'm this person that everybody wants me if i have to force a woman like look how denigrating and insulting that is to my reputation it's like the legend of the world some

kind of celebrity superstar that all women want to be with and he's trying to be with a woman and if he has to force her can you can you imagine that like you see in because in the king's ego this is like that's something like she ought to be dying to be with me i like i can force her but that's you know that's not kingly to do that so he says okay torture her so he has a locked up so so what happened somebody said kisrah

simped so hard after yeah he's mega her because you know then the thing is this you know psychology the thing you can't have this you pursue with even with even more vigor like you want it that much more now that why can't i have it so she's now imprisoned in this courtyard so i mean in this not courtyard but in this palace there's a place where they've kind of got because they don't put her in a prisoner's cell because she's a woman beautiful woman and remember he's still hoping they're going to convince her

so although he's torturing her but not in that sense torture like like obviously they're roughing her up and maybe she's being denied food and then maybe they're slapping her around occasionally and that kind of stuff and she's in these kind of like with the servant quarters she's having to stay there and a prisoner against her will so whilst this is happening her family back you see you pause this and you go back to arabia and so the war is still going on they're being attacked by the northern tribes and and the father doesn't know anything's happened right so

he doesn't know he thinks she's got married to the southern king the southern king thinks that oh because there's a war going on the father still hasn't sent her because they're not stable enough to send her so nobody knows she's missing so nobody's looking for her because let's say the yemeni king knew then maybe he could have kind of fro with a royal kind of open the channel of communication with kisrah and said look you know i said kisara this one not nice

he could have probably said this but nobody knows so everybody is thinking leila is in the other place leila lafifa so they're thinking leila is there in yemen yemen are thinking nudged with the tribe and so the war still meanwhile it's going on rinsing um somebody said i wonder if it was common for the ancient persians and arabians to be multilingual those were many of them were that had close alliances the ones who had alliances often were so and hence you see certain farsi words

creep into arabic as well because of the them being used so much all right so whilst this is happening um the northern tribes like are rinsing rabia they make a mistake you know sometimes people make a mistake by trying to be good see they realize they also have heard of the reputation of barrack

so they don't wanna they didn't wanna mess with him to be honest because they knew a lot of their soldiers and a lot of their people they just have a fear in their hearts about him but they were really glad he had abstained from this war because it gave their soldiers much more courage so what happens is they one of them out of this happiness decides to send him a gift to say thank you for abstaining

your ethics ethics so this gift comes to barack is this kind of soul ranger solo he's going solo in the mountains dave das mode he's like just him his alcohol he's not doesn't want to speak to people he has a little you know he's he has a little kind of crew that are around with him and they just live together suddenly they get this gift they're like what's this about they go oh this is from and they're like why they go no they're thanking you

he goes why are they thanking me he go they go no because you're abstained this hits him like an insult that wow you know that because remember he was a very dignified person that is he thought is this the propaganda that you guys are you know or that you guys are spreading that i'm in cahoots with you he's like you guys like who the hell are you

so he says to his uh people that you know what take he says take these gifts back and tell them to forget the gifts i am coming her eyes coming [Laughter] boy this sent tremors obviously this had rabia got so when they heard the news they were jumping in joy because you know sometimes it's just the person you

see sometimes a person holds people together serves as the social clue his presence just knowing that he's there it mobilizes people and this news served it catalyzed the strength in panira and they started to fight and and he comes and he joins them and this fighting is taking place and and all of a sudden the spirit stop you know the the opposing tribes can feel it and they start to back off so this is going on

so they eventually come to a truce so this is what's happening but we've got to pause this for a moment we gotta go back to the palace man the palace royal palace in the royal courtyard oh sorry royal court laila la fifa it's been weeks and months now she refuses to give herself to the sassanid king and this is like an insult but she's like one of the servants like that she's wandering around you know doing stuff cleaning whatever she comes across she's outside the

palace because they have to obviously work with certain animals as well and stuff but this is in persia and she sees a shepherd this kind of like nomad guy that looks like an arab because you wouldn't really get my arabs over this so sh she calls out to him and she says hell answer arabi are you an arab and he says yeah

she and he says i'm from such and such tribe like some northern tribe she says have you heard of barrack and he goes have i heard of barack who hasn't heard of barack obama she says could you do me a favor and get this poem to him

so the guy says she goes it's neces it's a must please get this poem to barack she says all right so she says this line of this poem she says these few lines are like allah lata lil buraki ainan if only barrack had an eye that could see him what i am facing from in torment from torment and tears

and so she she says and it goes on she mentions certain things she says about uh she says that you can chain me uh that that you know chain me torment me punish me whatever you want to do but i will never kind of give myself to you and she expresses that in the face of this i've already accepted death so this this poem now she says senses tells this guy this poem she doesn't say

who she is she just says like you know say this poem i mean she's sorry she does say that you can if he asks this leila but say this poem you have to say this poem now this reaches bani taglib and reaches barak barak is gobsmacked that wait a minute i thought she's in yemen with this king she's married she's a slave by kisrah the persian king he goes absolutely wild

he says that you know what here and now i'm rallying a cry against who check this out against kisrah i'm rallying a cry against kisrah obviously his tribe and vanilla they rally around him anyway because he is who he is and in her poem she had actually addressed her tribe and neighboring tribes saying that shame on you all that a woman is taken and you guys uh you know just

can do nothing about it so her their tribe rally around him he mobilizes them says let's march up towards this palace let's go we're going north and this news reaches out to other tribes and you know it's interesting that at this point they send a they send this poem where he addresses mother from where tribes like banu tamim and even quraysha from the quraysh are not at this part of arabia there in makkah but you have tribes like bani tamim who are fighter tribes they were

known for fighting but they send this message to mother and rabi a hate mother and vice versa but they say that you know mother that if you don't stand up for this then shame on you that an arab woman could be snatched and you know you just basically because of your differences you don't kind of rise and they say that if you don't find but shame on you and he obviously mobilizes arabia and they move up to their amazement met several sub-tribes of mother joined the expedition just because of this

thing that it hit them that wait a minute that this persian kingdom okay we we hate each other but they have you know that this is how weak they think we are that we wouldn't do anything this is one of the few occasions ever in pre-islamic arabia where these diverse tribes actually were united under a cause and that to such a noble cause and they attack the sassanid uh that sassanid fort and that palace now remember the sassanid kings didn't know the king didn't know this was about to happen so when they come hundreds and hundreds

of them they obviously they start fighting and these soldiers try to fight but these guys were ruthless bunny and rabia were like ruthless fighters anyway and then you had tamim join them and all the and this is one of the times they fight side by side that the they actually the the the persian soldiers many of them are killed and the other is just kind of like crappy like they think like what the hell's going on who's he how are we under siege so many of them flee because they just they just it comes as such a shocking surprise so they enter they get into the palace

and lo and behold and he brings it back and obviously this is seen as one of the most uh like uh pride worthy moments of pre-islamic arabia and and his uh and the whole tribe obviously the father include they marry him off it's one of those uh happy endings that you have to this love story

and it's amazing and this legacy lives on much after them in generations and reaches people obviously this is like over a hundred years before islam this is over that so but the the story lives on that this was the one of the few ever occasions where it has happened on one other occasion as well but few ever occasions where the arabs attacked the sassanids and defeated them and it was and that too they united so many rival factions of tribes that hated each other under a noble cause that

resulted in that in a happy ending and a marriage otherwise fantastic i had to share that with you guys so wow so this these are the kind of people so there you go people love it can have its happy ending so that's way before any of these stories were written it's amazing you know when you read these things it brings like a more flavored nuance to islam because islam emerges then

in what nested in this history and you start to see how all of a sudden different colors and flavors and it's amazing i invite everyone to really implore people to study islamic pre-islamic history right okay many died for leila a leila yeah layla was a [Laughter] somebody said sounds made up i mean you see you'd think that but this is it often you know

often that reality can be stranger more bewildering than fiction but many of these things have happened as well this incident did happen i mean maybe certain things obviously we can't verify for a fact but it was a something passed down and celebrated so often like this individual was well known and his love for layla was well known and the struggle for their marriage was something that became iconic and passed down through generations