Sulaiman bn AbdulMalik | Mitigating Ommayad Damage | Mufti Abu Lath

let's go to today's history i want to teach us a bit of history you know let's take a look at solemn abdul malik now why sulaiman ibn abdul malik so first of all let me bring this up those of you that are just tuning in people right okay that's it like share you know the drill right so bismillah a bit of history suleiman

abdul malik a candle of light in a dimly dynasty people who was this caliph he's definitely somebody worth learning about and i thought maybe by telling a story of his we could also bump into several other people along the way right so she's from the children of abdul malik ibn marwan so those of you that remember a quick just intro into this

and i wanted to really get to just an interesting story where he meets a scholar sulaimani and they have this hypnotic exchange of of profound words and this scholar is known as abu hazim and this discussion takes place in medina or makkah and but to get to that i want to put more to this canvas okay and introduce us along the way to other people so look out for names like um

in fact let me see it because i did see so look out for names like uh um will have abdul malik he'll be a uh a character in this you'll have marwan and think you know when i say these names maybe if you want jot them down research them if you're interested explore uh look out for that they'll be in this will have um abu hasim obviously the scholar raja ibn haiwa will be introduced to him who who was he abdul aziz

what a profound caliph what's his story even though but he will will bump into these characters and the reason i'm saying this is because they will be connected at other levels of muhammad

interesting people and you can connect them separately um and research them in your own time so okay people let's look at the landscape those of us studying familiar we know that after the prophet sallam there was the rashida which is the and then you've got hassan

what happens is the umayyad dynasty starts but it kind of goes from muawiyah mainly it's just him starting with him within his own immediate family and then yazid which is a terrible um instance and we'll you know we've spoken about that in the past as well but then what happens is you have yazid's son but it doesn't he just kind of drops it and and people wonder what's going to happen you know because uh yasid's son is kind of either he's completely disinterested or because when he becomes caliph he just

doesn't even come out of his room for like months and then he comes out and he says you know what do you know what he says he says it's up for grabs it's literally what he says he says people it's up for grabs and people are thinking whoa okay is it and so the close household of malawia yazid then all these people they for example their cousins and so on that kind of immediate clan think look whoa before this gets out of hand let's grab it and other

voices have risen elsewhere so abdullah zubaid has risen in um in mecca and we've had the tragedy of karbala has already happened and you've got these these other things are happening so marwan who is the cousin he's like a cousin to or a second cousin to yazid he people say what about him he's a senior figure you know he's quite old in age and and there's this whole kind of uh clash and we can speak about this on another day but what happens by by fate

it ends up that marwan ends up becoming the caliph more important than him is his son abdul malik he really cements the foundation for bani um he is this um and we have to speak more about him on another day but he is this um incredibly you know this formidable force that comes to the forefront and he's kind of like

a connect between old school and the new and so he has old values but he's also very you know up into this whole new what's at stake here and and he really lays down these roots and so it becomes his now he he's there he has a brother whose name is abdul aziz and and the way it's set out is after abdul malik it's meant to be abdul aziz that's supposed to be the caliph but abdul aziz

dies before him so his brother's dead so he thinks you know what let's give it to my sons and lock it in so what he does is he tells people i'm going to give the caliphate to my and he's got a bunch of sons solemn yazid and and a few others as well and all of these that i've named will end up becoming caliphs of this maya dynasty within this

this 100 years less of its span so what he says to waleed is that you are going to take control after me and he's very strict by the way and he tells him that look i don't want no you know this or that he says anybody that's not firm with you any kind of hints that chop is his head off like you need to be absolutely firm so okay waleed but then he tells him that after you it's going to be suleiman

and he makes the more pledge to this whilst he's alive so it's going to be you then it's going to be the next son um you know the bro so the brother will leave the brother suleiman then it's going to be the other brother you know he's got this kind of like a brotherly sequence going on and he dies and waleed becomes the caliph and waleed is obviously uh you know he is ruling he's he's got a firm iron fist and it's during this time by the way abdul malik had one of the things he had laid the foundations for was the jerusalem the kubbato sahara dome of the

rock and building masjid al-aqsa as a masjid and so he had abdul malik had begun that however it's in waleed's lifetime that this really gets set up and waleed spends phenomenal amounts of money on it and raja ibn haiwa he's a scholar now he's interesting um why and you'll see his name coming up but he's a scholar who

when islam or muslims entered jerusalem that region sharms or the neighboring kind of towns and cities his family were christian and they uh obviously they you know there's no battle in jerusalem it's a peaceful handover to ahmedabad and many people later on embrace islam including rajab nahiwa's family and raja grows up he studies with olema of you know the sahaba he listens to certain sahaba he's he's this great tabari he's very interested in hadith he has

you know he's a thicker generally people except from him in hadith he and during this time he earns his kind of right within the um court so they have him as a minister almost as a kind of counsel so one of the projects they hand him was this this masjid uh aksa and the kubbatsu sakhra building that the dome of the rock and they build it with such splendor that uh people are shocked and people almost go to it like a pilgrimage because they

say that in its time there was nothing that could rival the splendor of the dome of the rock and what happens is there's so much uh gold that they spend on building the dome now when this project finishes and this is what why this scholar also becomes very important and close to bani umeja the the caliphs is in charge of this masjid project so when they finish they have quite a bit of leftover gold and walid says to waleed is the caliph he says to raja

that what what's left over and he says and he tells him that there's so much left over and he says to him you keep it and you know you can distribute it to one two people that you like and rajiv na haiwa says so that's not right see you know people lie you know people had a code didn't they they had these kind of values he said that look this money that was taken out this gold it was set about for a you know for a sacred

place of worship for a place you know a house of god where people will come and contemplate god you know and yes we've built it but now if i take this money it's staying right and so this really hits hard with the caliph and he's very impressed with this so what he tells him is i tell you what he says whatever's left i want you that gold to melt it and add it to the dome of the dome of the rock so there is this huge amount of gold

that gets added to the dome of the rock in jerusalem the masjid and it was so spectacular that they say decades and generations later when in the time of the abbasids when abuja from uh comes and and there's been fighting going on and there's been fightings kind of poured into different towns and and masjid masjid al-aksan jerusalem have been impacted and i think they've been some i don't know whether it was a flood or there'd been something some kind of weathering that had uh caused buildings to dilapidate

and combat was also impacted that abu dhafra sadiq what he did is he just took some of that excess gold and he had that removed and with it they were able to with that money rebuild the entire structure that's how much gold was on it so just to give you an idea so rajab nahiwa is really prominent he's this scholar disturbed he's mentioned in the hadith books so he's now become this kind of wise counsel to um

so everything's going fine waleed's in his heydays he's being really strong he's got people he's doing his business and you know the umayyads were very heavy-handed with people they were very clear my way or the highway and um you see this is something that really left a terrible taste in the mouths of people and it so what happens is waleed in his time he's expanding he's doing all these things along he sets about he wants powerful people he wants powerful

kind of people so along comes he finds hajjaj now here's a character that you guys can look out for this name and you can research him and we'll we'll also pick up on these characters in other stories and the whole point is you make a map mentally of these people and they get connected so hajjaj is this ruthless kind of front for bonnie umayyah who is just so cold that he you know he doesn't flinch to kill someone he's just that ru i mean you can just picture he's like a real kind of uh like

attila the hun but the muslim version and so waleed is using him to do stuff like do this set out campaigns do all these things and one of the campaigns he sets out just to give you an idea is he sends his cousin or one of his kind of related i think he may have been a second cousin or something is muhammad ibn qasim to go in the conquest of sin which is in india so which is modern-day pakistan so today in pakistan muhammad bin qasim is a legendary figure that was this relative of hajjaj who gets sent for this conquest

so hajjad's got things on lock during this time they come across another warrior absolute legend who uh is from a convert family once again and some people say uh so his name is i'm telling you these names just so they're just in the background but as we go through different sessions you'll start connecting names and connecting dots

some say he was a young boy sorry his father was a young boy and some say in the time of the prophet salallahu salem or just after and so he would have definitely been born in the time of the prophet salallahu but maybe he didn't meet the prophet because he's just a little boy so abu safra is one of those people as a side now here's a footnote that's quite interesting is when in the apostasy wars um some of the people that that

rise and rebel um he they they they are obviously stopped and they are suppressed and you know it's kind of quashed but they get caught so these people they captured and amongst them is abu sufra but he was just a little boy and a worker puts them in the house of this this person in ramallah's house the name is ramallah to ramallah puts these people held captive in that home and you know it's an interesting side note you know people always say that um was this

bloodthirsty you know people who try to criticize him and say he was so harsh and he was this is very interesting because wakadi transmits that obakar had these people captive they were captured because they were kind of they'd risen against uh as an insurgency and somebody had said to abu bakr that that's treason and they should be killed and omar was present and omar in his famous statement says that he says to abu bakr like what he says please he says

he says these are just these are from the believers he says they just got a little greedy over the money and you know that is a gem a fantastic gem of an inside the people say that you know all these walls were about shedding blood and doing this here's an insight i mean so this person abu safra who's a young boy there and then they're not they're not killed but that's an i thought it's an interesting point that omar mentions that his son goes on to become who's not known as mahala become this great warrior and he

rises in the ranks of the army and so he's around in waleed's time this caliph and he thinks you know what this guy can definitely i can do with him so he sets him onto the frontiers and he's the one who has all these amazing conquests where many are peaceful as well as in by peaceful i mean by truth they're not always war fighting but he he adds so much he expands the umayyad dynasty right into the you know the russian steps

all these places come from this amazing figure in islamic history and it's interesting as well because there's all these legends about him and there's a story that he's coming back one day from this from this this expedition and he meets this lady and she says to him that oh muhammad she says you know i kept an oath for you and he says for me she says i kept an oath that you're going to come back victorious and she said and i said to allah that if he comes back victorious i will fast for 30 days

and he will give me a free slave he will give me a slave and a thousand dinars i act of kindness so muhammad just burst out laughing and he actually gave her but he said to her that you know go easy on these things for not many people that you'll meet in these ranks that will meet you with kindness you kind of but these are the kind of figures in the background so okay now we're zeroing in we're kind of honing in

so you've got this going on in the background what happens is walid this caliph ibn malik he gets an idea one day he says yeah you know after me it's meant to be my brother sulaiman it's meant to be this caliph but what if it isn't him what if it's my son you know allah progeny what you know it's amazing when you think about it we share our dna and our blood

with our siblings and we share it with our children but it's amazing how and in which direction the blood leans because if you think about it that's also somebody who's who's kind of you know of you of the stuff you're off but

it's right but it's amazing that how and in which direction this this kind of goes so walid says to um he says that's how i'm gonna do it so suleiman remember his father has decreed that he is next to be caliph walid says it's not gonna happen and what he does is he he starts spreading the news that i want people to pledge the next allegiance as in we're gonna have a

draft allegiance and i want you to pledge it to my sons so he sends it to key figures he sends it to hajjaj hajjaj pledges and he makes people under him pledge it he sends it to now certain people they're reserved you see he sends it to muhammad who's remember a key general in his military he says no he says we already have an oath in our necks from your father that is after you it is

suleiman he sends this to raja ibn hewa you know the scholar the terbei who's remember a minister for the umayyad kind of household he says no he says that this isn't right that we have an allegiance um with you know with your father that it's after you with suleiman so here suleiman realizes right the lines are being drawn and he realizes who's on his side and

who isn't so in the months that follow things start to intensify and waleed thinks you know what i've had enough of my brother and suleiman is a bit of a nice guy you see so walid thinks i've had enough of him you know what he says you know in the famous old bollywood quote he says

he says the these relations of blood can only be settled by spilling blood this is so what he does is he thinks let's you know we got to deal with my brother sulaiman and this is not something that you know obviously suleiman is aware that you know things are true and and he starts getting invites solemn that look you need to come visit me i'm at this court and turn up and suleiman's kind of avoiding him he's kind of like oh tell him that i'm out of town and i'm here and he keeps avoiding him and wha what do you know fortuna allah and

fate when sulaiman eventually feels the pressure damn i think i'm gonna have to face my brother his brother falls ill and in that illness he passes away you see this is an interesting and a very important point in islamic history why because sulaiman he once again goes on to to kind of kindle the lamp of hope for the muslim legacy

and you'll see how so solemn as soon as his brother passes away people around him start pledging allegiance to him because this was already decreed by his father raja ibn hewa pledges allegiance muhammad the great general pledges allegiance and people start to follow so suleiman he's very quick to kind of secure his ground and he starts you know getting all these and he says anybody who's not pledging allegiance i want them to be dismissed as in removed from that post of authority we're going to replace them and quite

readily he manages to grasp the the thing and one of the people he does is he removes her judge see because he's had enough of her it's fascinating and anybody that was pro hajjaji has them removed and so he manages to secure this this kingdom but that's not it one of his first opening speeches let me see if i've got it here for you right this by the way is a map of his kind of dynasty that is under him during body m these are some gold coins that you can see

that were minted in his time what suleiman does by the way he goes on to set up a an entire city ramla and that minaret that you can see there was part of the masjid that he created that still stands today in ramallah in palestine now you will see the rest of it obviously over time has kind of withered and dilapidated but so he builds this whole city as his part of his legacy let me just bring this back slightly and that is an an older photo of ramallah and some of the and a picture on the left of some of the

the the dilapidated buildings of his palace and royal court um that were built then some further coins you can see above there so let me take us to and i think this is really interesting because see this is his speech that you see he gives this as a royal decree and has it sent out he tells people that i want you to fix yourselves and he says that look he begins by actually religious

stuff like reminding them and now if you take a look at this i'll just zoom in for you this is an important point completely changing the style of banikumiya he says any governor who the population are not happy with i will have removed look at that and he says

and whosoever any village or town tell me is the best of them i will have him as their superior and look at that and he says and he says anybody who wants to go out on military campaigns i've restricted it to four months so you go back to your families

and check this out any person who who goes on a military campaign with with them the soldier his children at home will also have a portion in the reward when he comes back so whatever allotment so for example let's say um soldiers had i don't know they were going to get a certain amount of whatever is distributed in the end that portion an equal portion is allocated to his children as well so if he had two kids then he's taking home three allotments now look at that straight away now

you can see that and and look how he says uh and he says that is taken from a region will be distributed in that region from now on obviously that portion of and he'll take a look at that and then he says so you can see now this is why this is important because scholars after him will mention this about him in fact ibn sireen one of the great

tabeen says about him you can see that look look at them speaking about him suleiman was laying al-janib he was somebody very soft and kind-hearted he would not kind of he wasn't about spilling blood like the other banu before him even the cathedral look at him saying he was a person of love and compassion and deen and respect value for the quran

and look at he says he was from the best of them somebody who loved justice and you have to uh check out what ibn kotaiba said he said and this is important he says he began with with goodness and he ended with goodness why he says he began by restoring justice and stopping you know people bani umayya used to take money from people oppressively he said he had that restored and as you can see

in that decree of his and you know when he ends it is him who puts in place after him um and not his brother and he says to um abdul aziz at the end because remember is related because we you've got abdul malik abdul malik had a brother abdel aziz who died before him and hence abdul malik put it into his own family that abdullah aziz's son was omar so when solemn reaches the end of his of

his lifetime he doesn't actually rule for long it's only about two and a half years but when he's on his deathbed who tells him he asks rajata advise me what should i do he says to him look basically this is you're leaving this world it's you know do the right thing and he says what's that he says put umar in charge and he says he says my brothers will kill him.

and then rajya ibn haiwa says to him you know what he says do it that you put omar but after umar you then put your brother yazid so people that way they will honor him because they will think look well they're next anyway so that's what he does and with omar even abdul aziz coming in muslims see one of the most flourishing the most kind of prosperous times in islamic history that it's been deemed the fifth of the

of the righteous and you know people say he's a great great grandson of um but that's through his mother's side that's why he doesn't have that lineage he goes through bani omega through his father's side so you can see suleiman why he is this important person he comes in a time where people are getting fed up where muslims dynasts are even though they're building these great you know splendid mosques but they're becoming more and more kings ruling with an iron fist taking money

when they need it from people imposing heavy sanctions and taxes they're not like they've forgotten that element of compassion and responsibility and solemn comes and he comes with love compassion he starts by reinstating goodness by distributing sadaqat in the regions by saying to people in fact in his time he says that all official leaders of a region should openly pray their prayers as in be with the local congregation because they had stopped this banium so he starts it

and he starts his rule with this and he ends it by putting in place ahmad ibn abdulaziz that will once again remind and show that wow you know miracles can happen and that's a different part of history so this person is such an amazing um you know it's it's an amazing personality to grasp and he's he constructs this city this is his city ramla he builds these masjids he wants it to be part of his legacy he mints coins he has things and

whilst this is happening he has a love for scholars so on a particular day he is um he is going to makkah so he's on a pilgrimage when he's there he asks people is there anybody here who has met the sahaba is there anybody alive that has met the sahaba here that happens to be here so they say yeah there's abu hasim and abu hazim people i've mentioned

he's a terrible somebody that is kurashi in essence he's he's uh he's born not only muslim but around some of the great sahaba ibn umar some people say abu hurairah ana malik he does rewire from them from the great from the great like he's a teacher of people like ibn shihab and imam malik he's their teacher imam malik transmits from him in the mata on several occasions so he is this great figure of hadith abu hazim

great scholar um and of medina so people say yeah well how's him so he says bring him here i guess you know in some ways he was still he had that kingly thing about him so he says there's a scholar here and and i'm here and he's not here so so abu hazim is brought before him and he says to him he says ya bahazim he says

mahadal jaffa you know no loyalty bit harsh he says right so um abu hazim says why so he says i've come here to makkah and you're here and you don't even come to give me salam so

abu hazim says he says that would be the case i would be disloyal if i knew you he says you've never we've never met you've never come you've never crossed parts with me i've never seen you before in my life how can i just turn up to someone who i've never even known or met what kind of disloyalty is that so suleiman says point kibate appointed point so he says you know what take a seat man take a seat

he says you know abu hazim you appear as a wise man he says let me throw one to you he says why are we afraid of death allah why are we afraid of death right so he says okay

he says that that's fine let me see if i can bring it up here actually if i've got it here no so right so no that's not it okay let me just go see if i've got the i thought if i've got it yep there it is i thought i'd bring it before you he

says to him that look why are we afraid of death i thought you know what is it that frightens us he says that that's because he says simple he says because you've really decorated your lives this worldly life and you've ruined your hera look at how brazen and

he says because you've not really concerned yourselves with what god wants from you you've been too busy trying to be a king and obviously this strikes you know this kind of brazen attitude you have to remember people don't speak like this to you know to kings and caliphs and he says to him sadakta he says you've spoken the truth he says

he said so how is it so so you know how do how does one turn to god and he says he says turning to god is like a person who returns home after returns to his family after having been on a journey it's as simple as that it was always hard

look at how he's describing this he says that's how it is and then he says to him okay he says later shayari he asks him now this is an interesting thing he says to him how do i know that if when i turn to god i am in his favor how do i know this he says by simply presenting yourself to his book and he

said how does a person do that he says haven't you read in the verse that we're taking a look at previously this is the verse that recites to him he says when you read this verse you will know where you stand in the grace of god

and you know this shocked they say that sulaiman he he became so overwhelmed with emotions that tears came out and abu hazim got up and he just went and saleman tried to send him money as a kind of like a thank you and he refused to accept it he said that you know he said that the thing is this and he asks him but you know as he's leaving he says look he says would you be so kind as to escort us as in come back to damascus with us come back to ramallah be amongst my kind of ministers my

counsel and he says that if i do that he says in no time your luxuries are going to be so convincing to me that i too will be in need of counsel [Laughter] a key figure who once again realigns for some part

the history of islam as we've known and i'll tell i'll finish on one point about him you know they say he was a handsome handsome jolly good fella handsome good looking guy and you know one time he was coming out of you know they used to have these hammams like these kind of turkish baths and he was coming out of a hammam as one does it reminds me i'm i need to i i long for the steam rooms right so he was coming out and he he's in the

palace he has this you know this kind of hammer he comes out and he sees in the mirror he sees himself in the mirror he says and you know he like it you know he he looks at himself in the mirror and he says oh you blind me good looking fella you he gets really you know in a moment you know sometimes in a in a moment in a delusion of grandeur somebody might look at themselves normally they might look at themselves we might look in the mirror and is that me again today but sometimes

upon occasion you know we might kind of look and think um you know i don't mind if i say so you know delusions of grandeur they happen to the best of us you know but the point is that

he looks at himself and he's really kind of wowed i am a bloody good fella huh handsome fella and and you know this was you see it's interesting that in those days he had actually been going through some grief because his son ayub had died and it really hit him so in these times it's in a moment of uh of almost you know of momentary oblivion he forgot his

grief and he kind of was wowed and he and he sees a one of his concubines walking past good old days of the calips he sees one of his and he says to her he says he looks in the mirror and he says to her he says he says what do you think this is not enough that i praise myself he says he says you tell me man he says to her do you what do you think any any faults allah

everything when it's complete it only goes down so he asks her can you see any he says can you see any faults so she looks at him and she says up she says lesa lana fema she says lesaphima badalana mean ibn says there's nothing there is no you know from what we see there is no i ab

except the the blemish she says there are no blemishes there aren't there is no iv no fault accept the ib of mortality that you too will that you will not be that you're not something that is eternal she says she says sorry mata is a kind of like a risk something that you have something to enjoy something to those of you that what listen to john

elia he often uses the word mata says mata this is this arabic word mata which appears in the quran as well something that you have that you can enjoy she says she says she says you know you would be the most outstanding amazing enjoyment of this dunya if only you would last

if only you were immortal but no insane or all insurance and every insane must perish allah you know even the the concubines in that

day and age listening to such person could just be like this is enough as a as a sheikh to guide me in this path such wisdom they say that you know when she said that to him it hit him um suddenly he had this you know sometimes a person says something and it's it strikes a tremor

that they say he suddenly became like he had this awakening tremor of his mortality just suddenly that he thought his own frailty and from that night you know he'd come out of the steam room that kind of hamam and he was in the mirror just looking at himself and he said this from that night he fell ill

and in that illness he died allah you know the frailty of insane and also in many ways his mindset you see they say that we are as strong that you and we can endure as much as we can will

but when a person throws the towel in metaphorically that often with that metaphorical hope and vigor and strength that we have with its loss we also find at times the loss of life it's it's fascinating and this was a story i want to share with you really just so many stories in one and this personality suleiman abdul malik a man who had to really fight for his rule but with it he began it by

restoring justice to the masses and he ended it by by leaving behind a successor like ahmad ibn abdul aziz a person who was kind compassionate he showed a different side of bani omega handsome had wise concubines [Laughter] and for a moment was beguiled by his own youthful beauty allah may there be a lesson or many a lesson in that for us

let's