https://www.alhejaz.org/athar/146601.htm



The divine religions have given special attention to historical monuments with religious connotations, especially those related to the first generation that founded the nucleus of each religion and those who followed them in kindness, in order to preserve and strengthen the spiritual bonds between believers throughout the course of religions. Ancient societies have always immortalized their monuments as landmarks of their experiences and lessons from which future generations can draw special meanings. The Holy Quran has documented some of the past experiences and distinct events because of their paramount importance in providing societies with lessons. God Almighty says, "Say, 'Travel through the land and observe how was the end of those before you. Most of them were polytheists.'" And in another verse, "Have they not traveled through the land and observed how was the end of those before them?" And in a third verse, "Have they not traveled through the land and observed how was the end of those before them? Allah destroyed them and for the disbelievers the like thereof." And regarding the stories of ancient societies, God Almighty says, "And 'Aad and Thamud, and it has been made clear to you from their dwellings..."

Perhaps the most prominent immortalization of human experiences is what is mentioned in Surat Al-Kahf, which begins by mentioning the purpose of revealing the Book, as Allah the Almighty says: {Praise be to Allah, who has sent down to His servant the Book and made therein no crookedness. [He is] upright, that he may warn of a severe punishment from Him and give good tidings to the believers who do righteous deeds that they will have a good reward.} The blessed Surah then moves on to focus intensely on the story of the People of the Cave, as Allah the Almighty says: {Or do you think that the Companions of the Cave and the Inscription were, among Our signs, a wonder?} Then the blessed verses come later to emphasize the identity of the young men, as Allah the Almighty says: {We relate to you, [O Muhammad], their story in truth. Indeed, they were youths who believed in their Lord, and We increased them in guidance.} The Surah explores the story of these faithful youths, highlighting important aspects of their experience with the people of their time and the ruler of their country. This ultimately made them an enduring symbol and a unique experience of faith, narrated in the Holy Quran as a lesson, a moral, and an enduring legacy. Such are the stories of the Holy Quran and the circumstances of the prophets, whose experiences and biographies are mentioned in separate and sometimes detailed chapters of the Quran.

When we move to the Islamic monuments, we find that some of them are linked to historical experiences that Islam approved and even made into a religious obligation for Muslims, such as Hajj, which represents a unique experience lived by the Prophet of God, Abraham, peace be upon him, with his wife Hajar and his son, Ishmael, from building the Holy Kaaba, to the path between Safa and Marwa, to the Station of Abraham, which the Holy Quran immortalized by name, saying (And take, [O Muhammad], the Station of Abraham as a place of prayer). Among the sacred and eternal monuments is what is mentioned in the Holy Quranic verse (In houses which Allah has permitted to be raised and that His name be mentioned therein, that He may be glorified therein in the mornings and the evenings by men whom neither commerce nor sale distracts from the remembrance of Allah).

In Sahih Al-Bukhari, we find a hadith narrated on the authority of the Chosen Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, in which he said, “A prayer in this mosque of mine is better than a thousand prayers in any other mosque, except the Sacred Mosque.” This indicates the status of the Prophet’s Mosque and symbolizes it among other mosques, and even encourages people to travel to it and pray in it.

During the miraculous journey of the Messenger of Islam, may God bless him and grant him peace, when he ascended to heaven, he stopped at several stations, including Medina, Mount Sinai, and Bethlehem, and he prayed in all of them. Al-Suyuti narrates in (Al-Khasais Al-Kubra): Gabriel said to him: O Messenger of God, do you know where you prayed? You prayed in Thebes, to which you migrated. You prayed at Mount Sinai, where God spoke directly to Moses. You prayed in Bethlehem, where Jesus, peace be upon him, was born.

As for the Muslims' interest in the relics of the Chosen One (peace and blessings be upon him), his wives, his family, and his noble companions (may Allah be pleased with them all), this interest has acquired a distinct character, to the point that the biographers of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) have gone so far as to record the most minute details of the life of the beloved Chosen One (peace and blessings be upon him). Al-Bukhari devoted a chapter in his Sahih (Part Four, p. 82) entitled: "Chapter: What has been mentioned about the armor of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), his staff, his sword, his cup, and his ring, and what the Caliphs used of them after him, as well as his hair, sandals, and vessels, from which his companions and others sought blessings after his death." Muslim, Al-Tirmidhi, Al-Mawardi, and others followed this tradition, and it is something Muslims have always practiced even during the life of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). They cite many narrations in this regard. Muslims have inherited the interest in the relics of the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, in food, clothing and drink, to the point that the scholar Al-Samhudi collected in his book (Wafa Al-Wafa - Part Three) the names of the wells from which the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, drank, performed ablution or bathed, and the historians’ investigations about them were confirmed. Muslims also kept some of his relics, may God bless him and grant him peace, and even the utensils and vessels that he used in his life, such as the cup in which he was drawn. Caliph Omar, may God be pleased with him, used to seek blessings by drinking from the cup of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, and sprinkle its water on his face. Anas bin Malik also used to keep the cup of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, and it remained until Al-Bukhari saw it in Basra and sought blessings by drinking from it. Al-Qurtubi mentioned in (Mukhtasar Al-Bukhari) that he saw in some old copies of Sahih Al-Bukhari: Abu Abdullah Al-Bukhari said: I saw this cup in Basra and drank from it. It was bought from the inheritance of Al-Nasr bin Anas for eight hundred thousand.

[[ where the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) stayed, the places he stayed in, and the spots where he prayed to seek blessings from them, glorify them, and pray in them. They consider this to be a recommended action. ]]

The interest in tracing the sites where the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) stayed, the places where he stayed, and the spots where he prayed, seeking blessings from them, venerating them, and praying in them, and they consider this to be among the recommended deeds. Al-Maliki included in his book (Shifa al-Gharam bi-Akhbar al-Balad al-Haram) the narration of Muhammad ibn Isa ibn Khalid ibn Awsaja who said: I was praying one night to the corner of the house of Aqeel ibn Abi Talib, which is next to the house, and Ja’far ibn Muhammad passed by me and said to me: Is it because of a trace that you stopped here? I said: No. He said: This is the place where the Prophet of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) would stand at night when he came to seek forgiveness for the people of al-Baqi.

On the authority of Musa bin Uqbah, he said: I saw Salim bin Abdullah bin Omar looking for places on the road to pray in, and he would narrate that his father used to pray there and that he had seen the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, praying in those places. Ibn Hajar al-Haythami comments on this in Fath al-Bari, saying: It was known from the actions of Ibn Omar that it is recommended to follow the footsteps of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, and to seek blessings. It was narrated in Sahih Muslim on the authority of Abdullah, the freed slave of Asma, may God be pleased with her, who said: This is the cloak of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace. A Kisrawan cloak was brought out to me, with a brocade border, and I saw its clitoris trimmed with brocade. He said: This was with Aisha, may God be pleased with her, until she passed away. When she passed away, I took it out, and the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, used to wear it, and we would wash it and seek healing from it.

In (Safwat al-Safwa), it is mentioned that a son of al-Fudayl ibn al-Rabi’ gave Imam Ahmad three hairs while he was in prison, and he said: This is from the hair of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace. So Imam Ahmad instructed upon his death that a hair be placed over each eye and a hair on his tongue, and that was done for him. Al-Bukhari also did the same.

Ibn Al-Athir mentioned in the biography of Anas bin Malik: He had a staff of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, and when he died, he ordered that it be buried with him, so it was buried between his side and his shirt. Al-Tabari mentioned in the fourth volume of (The History of Nations and Kings): (Muawiyah said during his illness in which he died that the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, gave me a shirt, so I took it and one day he clipped his nails, so I took his clippings and put them in a bottle, so when I die, dress me in that shirt, cut those clippings, crush them, and sprinkle them in my eyes and in my mouth, so that God may have mercy on me through their blessing.)

In contrast, we find that the extremist Salafi school has adopted a path contrary to the way of the Salaf in immortalizing the works of the Chosen One, may God bless him and grant him peace. The situation has reached the point where the Wahhabis reject everything related to the glorification of the Prophet of Islam. Ibn Suhaim said about Ibn Abd al-Wahhab that he burned the book (Dala’il al-Khayrat) because its author spoke of the Prophet as “our master and our lord…”, while Ibn Bishr’s eulogy for Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was filled with expressions of sanctification, as if he were speaking of a prophet or a messenger. In his book (History of Najd, p. 182), Ibn Bishr says: “The Sheikh of Islam has passed away, the benefactor of mankind, the suppressor of innovators, the builder of the flags of religion, the establisher of the proofs of evidence, the reviver of the landmarks of religion after their decline, and the manifestation of the signs of evidence after the setting of its moons and suns.” He adds: “He is the Sheikh of Islam, and the roaring sea whose knowledge has spread to mankind, so he supported the Sunnah, and through him the grace of God was great, after Islam had been a stranger, so he established this religion and there was nothing in the country except its name, so it spread to the horizons and every matter took its share and portion from it.”

While the followers of the Salafi Wahhabi school of thought still cling to the position of removing the Prophet’s grave, may God bless him and grant him peace, from the enclosure of his mosque, despite the fact that his wife, the Mother of the Believers, Aisha, may God be pleased with her, took a room next to the Prophet’s chamber, which contains the noble grave, and the burial of the two Rightly-Guided Caliphs, Abu Bakr and Umar, may God be pleased with them, near his noble grave is further evidence of the blessing of the resting place of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace.

Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik built around these graves when he expanded the mosque, and the scholars of Medina did not object to this. The Caliphs Umar and Uthman (may Allah be pleased with them) had also done the same before them, and so did the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ashraf eras. When the Muslims conquered Jerusalem during the time of Caliph Umar, the graves of the prophets (peace be upon them) were built, and the Caliph did not order their demolition. Therefore, Ibn Taymiyyah says in his book (Al-Sirat Al-Mustaqim): “When Jerusalem was conquered, the graves of the prophets had buildings there, but their doors were closed until the quarter century AH.” Their closure, if proven, does not constitute evidence of sanctity, because the Muslims were victorious conquerors, and they had the ability to demolish them, but they did not.

It is the custom of Muslims to honor the Messenger of God (PBUH), his family (PBUH), and the men of Islam. This custom is widespread in all parts of the Islamic world, especially in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Iraq, the Levant, and from Egypt to Morocco, to the point that the Wahhabi al-San’ani acknowledged this in his letter (Purifying Belief from the Impurities of Atheism):

(This is a matter that has spread throughout the country and has been agreed upon by the inhabitants of the valleys and the highlands and the entire land, east and west, Yemen, Syria, south and Aden. So that there is no town in the lands of the Muslims that does not have graves and shrines in it. Rather, these are the mosques of the Muslims, most of them do not lack a grave or something close to it or a shrine.) See: Al-Jami` Al-Farid - p. 582

It goes without saying that commemorating historical monuments has become a human tradition that peoples pay great attention to because it preserves their entity, identity and cohesion. Saleh Jamal wrote an article in this regard, published in Al-Nadwa newspaper on 5/24/1387 AH, in which he spoke about the greatness of Islamic monuments, saying: (Those who now visit Shakespeare's house in Britain and Beethoven's residence in Germany do not visit them out of adoration and deification, but rather out of a spirit of appreciation and admiration for what the English poet and German musician offered to their countries and people, which deserves appreciation. So where are these insignificant houses compared to the house of Muhammad, Dar Al-Arqam, the Cave of Thawr, the Cave of Hira, the site of the Pledge of Ridwan and the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah?)

He also says, “A few years ago, Egypt began recording the history of the Sphinx and the glory of the Pharaohs, and began sending out voices that spoke of and depicted the glories of the fathers and grandfathers. Tourists came from everywhere to listen to this empty talk when compared to the glory of Islam, the history of Islam, and the men of Islam in various fields.”

This call is not unusual, but Muslims have been committed to working with it since ancient times. The traveler Ibn Jabr visited the Baqi’ cemetery in the sixth century AH, and wrote about his observations on this visit, saying: “Baqi’ al-Gharqad is located to the east of Medina. You go to it through a door known as Bab al-Baqi’. The first thing you encounter on your left when you exit from the aforementioned door is the shrine of Safiyya, the aunt of the Prophet (peace be upon him), who is the mother of al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam. In front of this grave is the grave of Malik ibn Anas, the Imam of Medina, and over it is a small, truncated dome. In front of it is the grave of the pure lineage, Ibrahim, the son of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and over it is a white dome. To the right of it is the grave of the son of Omar ibn al-Khattab, whose name is Abd al-Rahman al-Awsat, who is known as Abu Shahma, and whose father flogged him, so he became ill and died. Opposite it is the grave of Aqeel ibn Abi Talib and the grave of Abdullah ibn Ja’far al-Tayyar. Opposite it is a garden in which are the wives of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Opposite it is a small garden in which are three of the sons of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Next to it is the garden of al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib and al-Hasan ibn Ali (peace be upon them), and it is a dome raised in the air.” Close to the mentioned door of Al-Baqi’, and to the right of the one who exits it, and the head of Al-Hassan (peace be upon him) to the foot of Al-Abbas and their graves are raised above the ground, wide, covered with panels stuck together in the most wonderful way, studded with sheets of brass, and crowned with nails in the most wonderful craftsmanship and most beautiful view, and in this form is the grave of Ibrahim, the son of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Next to this Abbasid dome is a house of lineage for Fatima, the daughter of the Messenger of God (peace be upon him), and it is known as the House of Sorrow - Sorrows - it is said that it is the house to which she sought refuge and committed herself to mourning the death of her father, the Chosen One (peace be upon him). At the end of Al-Baqi’ is the grave of the Caliph Uthman, and over it is a small, short dome, and close to the shrine of Fatima bint Asad, the mother of Ali bin Abi Talib.

Ibn Jabr comments on this, saying: “The scenes of this Baqi’ are too numerous to count, because it is the burial place of the great majority of the companions, the immigrants and the helpers, and on the grave of the aforementioned Fatima - Fatima bint Asad - it is written: ‘No grave contains anyone like Fatima bint Asad, may God be pleased with her and her Prophet.’”

In Makkah Al-Mukarramah, there was Al-Mualla Cemetery, which contains the graves of the family of the Chosen One, may God bless him and grant him peace, and the noble Companions, may God be pleased with them, as well as the graves of the wives and relatives of our Chosen Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, such as the grave of the Mother of the Believers, Khadija bint Khuwaylid (peace be upon her), the grave of Amina bint Wahb, the mother of the Messenger of God (peace be upon him), the grave of his uncle Abu Talib, and the grave of his grandfather Abdul Muttalib.

In Medina, there is the grave of the father of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, Abdullah, along with ancient and beautiful mosques and houses that exude the fragrance of the message, including mosques with the names of the Companions, such as the Salman Mosque in Medina, and the house of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, in which he resided when he first came to Medina, as well as the house in which he was born, may God bless him and grant him peace, and the Hashemite Valley in Mecca, and the house of Lady Khadija and the house of Fatima al-Zahra in the Alley of al-Hijr in Mecca and the house of Hamza bin Abdul Muttalib, the uncle of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, and the house of al-Arqam, which is the house in which the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, used to meet with his companions at the beginning of the emergence of Islam, and the graves of the martyrs of Badr and the place of the throne that was erected for the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, in the place of the Battle of Badr and the house of Ali bin Abi Talib, in which his two sons, al-Hasan and al-Husayn, may God be pleased with them, and the wall of Medina, and the neighborhood of Bani Hashim in Medina and the Thaniyat al-Wada’ Mosque and the Na’la Mosque, and the Salman al-Farsi Mosque... and hundreds of Islamic monuments that were well-built and a source of radiance for the general Muslims who looked to These monuments embody the movement of the Islamic message and engrave in people's memories the story of that elite group of believers led by the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, as he fulfilled his divine trust and spread the message of Islam throughout Mecca, Medina, and the rest of the world. Throughout history, Muslims have drawn inspiration from these monuments for the spirit and values ​​of the message, which instilled within them the meanings of dignity, pride, and determination to preserve that Islamic glory and the glorious history of the heroes and leaders of Islam.

However, the absence of this lofty meaning among the Wahhabis led them to use their demolition machine against all Islamic monuments, contributing, whether through ignorance or premeditation and stubbornness, to obliterating the landmarks of Islam, a plan that no one had ever attempted throughout Islamic history.

https://www.alhejaz.org/athar/146601.htm

https://www.alwahabiyah.com/ar/Articleview/25830/

Allah the Almighty said: “And their prophet said to them, ‘Indeed, the sign of his kingship is that there will come to you the Ark, wherein is reassurance from your Lord and a remnant of what the family of Moses and the family of Aaron left behind, carried by angels. Indeed in that is a sign for you, if you are believers.’” (The verse is from Surat Al-Baqarah). Al-Hafiz Ibn Kathir said in Al-Tarikh: Ibn Jarir said about this Ark: Whenever they fought one of the enemies, they would have with them the Ark of the Covenant, which was in the Dome of Time, as mentioned above. They would be victorious because of its blessing and because of what Allah placed in it of tranquility and what remained of what the family of Moses and the family of Aaron had left behind. Then, during one of their wars with the people of Gaza and Ashkelon, they overcame them and forced them to take it, so they snatched it from their hands. Ibn Kathir said: They would be victorious over their enemies because of it. There was in it a golden basin in which the chests of the prophets were washed. (Al-Bidayah, Vol. 2).

Ibn Kathir said in his interpretation: It contained the staff of Moses, the staff of Aaron, two tablets of the Torah, and Aaron’s clothes. Some say: The staff and the sandals. End quote. [Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol. 1, p. 313]
Al-Qurtubi said: The Ark was mentioned to have been sent down by Allah to Adam, peace be upon him, and it remained with him until it reached Jacob, peace be upon him. It was with the Children of Israel, and they used it to defeat those who fought them until they disobeyed and overcame the Ark. The Amalekites overcame them and stole the Ark from them. End quote. [Tafsir al-Qurtubi, vol. 3, p. 247]
This is in reality nothing but an intercession based on the traces of those prophets, as there is no meaning to their presenting the Ark before them in their wars except that, and Allah, the Most High, was pleased with that, as evidenced by the fact that He returned it to them and made it a sign and a proof of the validity of Saul’s rule, and He did not denounce them for that action.

M. MY INTERPRETATION OF ABOVE THAT THE RELICS THEMSELVES HAVE NO POWER , BUT THAT THE ACTUAL THING WAS DONE BY GOD, AND THE RELICS WERE A DEVICE/MEANS TO SEEK INTERCESSION, AS WITH THE PROPHET'S SAW NAILS, WUDHU WATER, BEARD HAIR, SECONDLY THESE THINGS MAY ALSO HAVE CONTAINED BARKAT, BLESSINGS, OR BE HOLY, BESIDES BEING A MEANS OF INTERCESSION---- NEED TO CHECK THIS LATTER POINT.

The House of the Prophet (PBUH), the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), is a holy place of pilgrimage for Muslims and marks a deep spiritual connection to the beginning of Islam and the life of the Prophet. Although the place has undergone many changes over time, it has a unique symbolism for the Islamic community and offers visitors a historical and religious experience. Where is the House where the Prophet (PBUH) was born? Directions to the House where the Prophet (PBUH) was born, Features of the House where the Prophet (PBUH) was born, What is the name of the Prophet's house? The House of the Prophet (PBUH) 360 degrees The Entrance Fee to the House where the Prophet (PBUH) was Born, What is the Place of the House where the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was Born? Is the Prophet's House Still Standing? What can be done around the House where the Prophet (PBUH) was born?

m the prohibitions by ews can at most apply to those few who share their beliefs. they do not apply to the 95% of muslims, whose ulema tell them these practices are OK.. unless the ews say, thru their signage that the the ulema of the other 50 countries, in non-muslim countries and muslim governments are all categorically wrong, and sinners... which they have not so far

https://seekersguidance.org/answers/general-counsel/preservation-of-the-prophets-hair-and-seeking-blessings-through-it/

Yes, some of the blessed hairs of the Prophet Muhammad [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] are still preserved to this day. Due to their blessed nature by Allah’s will, for centuries since the time of the Companions those hairs have been used by Muslims to seek cures for illnesses both physical and spiritual, for blessings, and success in both worldly affairs and those of the afterlife. They have indeed been the locus of miraculous events and the object of love and veneration by Muslims since the prophetic period itself.
Yes, one can – and should – seek the blessings of these hairs and other prophetic relics if one is gifted by Allah with the chance to do so. Wasting this opportunity is something no Companion or Follower would have ever done, as we will soon discuss. Muslims know that it is Allah alone who can create the blessings in these hairs, and that He has willed for them to be a means of mercy to His servants.

The Blessedness of the Prophetic Relics and Their Reality

Although this matter may seem to be about a few small pieces of hair cut more than fourteen centuries ago, whether we understand their importance or not is a great determinant of how we regard and respect the most beloved of Allah’s creation, the Prophet Muhammad [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him]. Hence, this matter is of direct import to our faith itself.

There is no room for doubt that the Messenger of Allah [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] was the most blessed of creation to exist in his person and personality, and that the personal effects that left his body – such as his trimmed hair, nails, saliva, sweat and more – were indeed immense sources of blessings by the permission of Allah Most High. The hadiths that show how eager the Companions were to obtain and maintain these blessings are innumerous.
Every aspect of this prophetic blessedness is owed to the mercy of Allah Most High on His creation, as He says regarding the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] in His eternal words, “And we have not sent you except as an immense mercy to all the worlds [ie. realms of existence]” [Qur’an 21:107]. This mercy is imbued in every aspect of the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him], from his words and prayers, to his personal possessions and physical relics also.

M. SO A PART OF THE MERCY WAS THE ABILITY OF RELICS TO HRELP PEOPLE, AS THE PERSON OF THE  pROPHET SAW ITSELF.

The Prophetic Command to Collect and Distribute the Blessed Hairs

According to the most authentic sources of the hadiths, the Companions would rush and vie to obtain the hairs cut from the head of Messenger of Allah [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him].

Anas ibn Malik [Allah be pleased with him] narrates that, “I saw the Messenger of Allah [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] while the barber was shaving his head [after the Farewell Hajj], and his Companions were circling around him, ensuring that a single hair would not fall except into the hands of one of them.” [Sahih Muslim]
Other versions in Muslim show that it was the Prophet himself [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] who ensured his hairs were distributed to his Companions when “he said to the barber, ‘Here,’ and pointed with his hand to the right side of his head in this way, and then gave the hairs to those around him… then he gestured the barber towards the left side, and [when it was shaved] he gave [those hairs] to Umm Sulaym [Anas’s mother]…” while another narration says, “he distributed one or two hairs to each person,” and that he gave a significant portion to Abu Talha, and explicitly commanded him to “divide it between the people”.

This clearly shows that it was not just the desire of the Companions, but the imperative of the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] himself to distribute his hairs during his Farewell Hajj, for purposes and reasons we will see below.

Sometimes the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] would even ask the person who was collecting and using one of his personal effects, such as his hair, sweat, blood or the like, why they were collecting and using it. “O Messenger of Allah,” answered Umm Sulaym one time, “we hope for its baraka [blessings] for our children.”
“You are correct in what you have hoped for,” returned the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him], affirming the correctness of her intention and action, and other times as a response, he would simply pray for the person who demonstrated their love in this way, or promise them safety from certain illnesses or even from the Hellfire.
The reason that the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] asked this question was not because he did not know what they were doing – far from that, as he was fully aware of his blessed nature. Rather, perhaps it was to bring out the admission of love and respect from that Companion for him, and explicitly approve of such actions and their purposes in order to teach the Muslims in generations to come, how to regard and revere his person, lest anyone doubt, deny or be confused in the future.

The Miracles Associated with the Blessed Hairs

The Companions and those after them would use these blessed hairs and other personal effects to seek blessings and cures, both in the lifetime of the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] and afterwards.

Uthman ibn Abdullah ibn Mawhab said that, “My family sent me to Umm Salama, the wife of the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, after he had passed away] with a bowl of water,” and [the narrator] held three fingers together to indicate the size of the small container that held some of the blessed hairs of the Prophet, “And whenever anyone would be afflicted by the evil eye or any type of harm, they would send a vessel [of water] to her [to dip the hairs into, then drink for its healing ability]. So I peered inside the container, and inside I saw a few reddish hairs [of the Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him].” [Sahih al-Bukhari]

Imam al-Ayni mentions in his commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari that the sick people who drank of this water would be healed, and then the hairs would be returned to its container. [al-Ayni, Umdat al-Qari]

It is also narrated that the great military leader amongst the Companions, Khalid ibn al-Walid, took some of the hairs from the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] while the latter was shaving his head. He would kiss those locks, and press them against his eyes out of reverence and love.

He placed those hairs in the front of his cap, which he wore to every one of his battles thereafter, and later remarked, “I put them in the front of my cap and I did not face any direction [in battle], except that victory would be granted for me there,” and in another narration, “I did not attend any battle except that I was given victory by means of them [ie. the blessed hairs].” [Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah]

Once, when his cap fell onto the battlefield in the thick of a great battle, he cried “My cap! My cap!” and went after it at all costs. One of his kinsmen snatched it up from amidst the melee and returned it. When he was later chided for putting himself and his men at risk of losing their lives for a simple cap, Khalid [may Allah be pleased with him] responded that wasn’t the cap he wanted, but that it contained the blessed hairs.

These are just two incidents showing how the early Muslims used the blessed hairs of the Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] for cures and blessings, and a means of divine assistance.

The Reverence of Early Muslims for the Blessed Hairs

The early Muslims did not simply preserve the blessed hairs for utilitarian purposes due to the benefits they attained from them in this world. Rather, they loved them as they were a part of their beloved Messenger [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him], and would even desire to be buried and meet Allah with no object than these personal effects touching their bodies.

Thabit al-Banani narrates that, “Anas ibn Malik [may Allah be pleased with him] told me [before he died], ‘This is one of the hairs of the Messenger of Allah [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him]; put it under my tongue.’ And so I placed it under his tongue, and [after he passed away] he was buried while it was still under his tongue.”
[Ibn Hajr, al-Isaba]

Ibn Sireen [one of the great Followers of the Companions] remarked, “For me to have one of those hairs would be more beloved to me than the world and all it contains!” [Ahmad]

The Wisdom Behind the Blessed Hairs Remaining Amongst the Ummah

As Imam al-Zurqani is quoted as saying, “The Prophet [Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him] only distributed his hairs amongst his companions so that the divine blessings [baraka] could remain everlasting amongst them [after him], and be a reminder for them [of him], as if [when he did so], he was indicating that he was going to leave the world soon.” [al-Mubarakpuri, Sharh al-Mishkah]

And so while the beloved Messenger is not with us in the same way he once was, his baraka and the fond memory remains amongst us through these blessed hairs and other things he left for us, if only we can recognize this mercy and be blessed by Allah Most High to see them in this life.

https://seekersguidance.org/answers/general-counsel/preservation-of-the-prophets-hair-and-seeking-blessings-through-it/



https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/orient/42/0/42_71/_pdf

However, the holy relics are also tangible objects that strongly arouse feelings of respect and affection for the Prophet, as well as act as a reminder of his life and times. It is likely that those who view the relics perceive umma or all Muslims, rather than a specific individual or group, as the successor to the relics. [[me so we should be grateful that we have now had the privilege to curate take care of these relics - and earn the pleasure of God and spiritual reward - and pass them onto those after us.

What are called here Islamic holy relics refer to visible and tangible objects which have attracted religious faith ............. A large proportion of them are articles which are believed to have belonged to the Prophet Muhammad.

relics become a powerful medium that creates a dyadic chain between the successor and the successee, which links the past owners and the present owner, and constructs some kind of social relation. Via the succession of holy relics, their present owner seems to make a claim, in a visible and tangible form, to have succeeded to some power from the previous owner. This power may be symbolical political power, or it may be supernatural magical power.

They gather to acquire knowledge of the Prophet's life and miracles, as well the baraka emitted by the relics that act as their proof, at the shrine of a saint who is a "descendant" of the Prophet's family. In this sense, one may say that the relics possess the power to periodically transform the shrine into a place where "communion" with the family of the Prophet is possible. 

They are not simply looking at the relics; they are praying to acquire baraka, namely God's blessing, their hands held facing upwards at chest height. When they have finished this viewing people take home with them a tabarruk in the form of rose petals, which are placed in the center of the room to be continually bathed in the baraka emitted by the re lics. 

In this way the relics become a powerful medium that creates a dyadic chain between the successor and the successee, linking the past owners and the present owner, and constructs some kind of social relation between them. However, this is not the only important thing. Essentially, the relics and their ownership are in a complementary relationship that mutually endorses their authenticity and divinity as well as legitimacy. M. ARE WE OF A SIMILAR CALIBRE AS THE PREVIOUS MUSLMS WHO CARED FOR THE RELICS, IN TERMS OF PIETY.

It is safe to say that the serious attitude adopted by the provincial government towards the theft serves to demonstrate that the holy relics are symbolic assets which are linked with the dignity of the provincial government. 

However, the relics are also tangible objects that strongly arouse feelings of respect and affection for the Prophet, as well as act as a reminder of the times in which he lived. 

Whether or not they are aware of the political agenda of the successor/owner, the people who come face to face there with the holy relics forget where and what they are as they transcend time and imagine the days of the Prophet.

Thus the holy relics are also tangible objects that strongly arouse feelings of respect and affection for the Prophet, as well as act as a reminder of his life and times. The zeal of the devotees who come to view the relics takes a variety of forms depending on the case, however they were all extremely earnest. 

"I do not pray to the holy relics, but I love and respect them as things which are derived from the Prophet. The holy relics are things to tum our thoughts to the Prophet when we look at them." 

The existence of charms and amulets that take holy relics as their motif demonstrates that dignified and historied relics, even after being made into colourful and compact "reproductions," are believed to be vehicles for baraka.  Thus holy relics are venerated not only on pilgrimages and visits to the holy places in which they are kept, but also, by way of the charms and amulets modelled upon them, in a more individual and everyday space. In other words, the political, poetic and pop cult of relics is by no means a pre-modem and dying faith that can be expected to wane. Rather one may say that, as in van Gennep's folk theory [Gennep 1943: 96-98], it repeatedly undergoes "invention" and "modification" in a shape that conforms to the times, and is a faith brimming with the energy to live in the present. 

https://academic.oup.com/past/article/206/suppl_5/9/1453339

Nevertheless, it is necessary to make a preliminary attempt to identify some of the relic’s properties and characteristics. At the most basic level, a relic is a material object that relates to a particular individual and/or to events and places with which that individual was associated. Typically, it is the body or fragment of the body of a deceased person, but it can also be connected to living people who have acquired fame, recognition, and a popular following. Alongside these corporeal relics (skulls, bones, blood, teeth, hair, fingernails, and assorted lumps of flesh) are non-corporeal items that were possessed by or came into direct contact with the individual in question. These may be articles of clothing (hats, girdles, capes, smocks, shoes, and sandals) or pieces of personal property (cups, spectacles, handkerchiefs, weapons, staves, and bells). They can be printed books, written texts, letters, and scraps of paper bearing an autograph signature or graphic inscription. Or they might be rocks or stones upon which the impression of a foot, hand or limb has been left as an enduring testimony of the presence of a departed saint, martyr, deity, or secular hero.

A relic is ontologically different from a representation or image: it is not a mere symbol or indicator of divine presence, it is an actual physical embodiment of it, each particle encapsulating the essence of the departed person, pars pro toto , in its entirety. [[THEY ARE AN INDICATOR OF THE PROPHET SAW, AND ULTIMATELY OF GOD...]]

Relics may also be defined as material manifestations of the act of remembrance. They sublimate, crystallize, and perpetuate memory in the guise of physical remains, linking the past and present in a concrete and palpable way. In the words of Annabel Wharton, they are ‘remnant[s] of a history that is threatened by forgetting’: they ‘postpone oblivion’ and evoke ‘an absent whole’. 6 A kind of umbilical cord that connects the living and the celebrated dead, they carry messages from beyond the grave and provide a mnemonic ligature to a world that has been lost. Vestiges, fossils, and (literally in Latin) ‘leftovers’ of individuals, traditions, and cultures that are in danger of disintegration and extinction, relics cannot always be neatly distinguished from souvenirs, mementos, and antiquities. Like them, they serve as reminders and memorials and create senses of belonging and identity. Some societies, in fact, collapse them together completely, and use the words more or less interchangeably. 

RELICS

Relics ....their capacity to operate as a locus and conduit of power. This power can take various forms. It can be supernatural, salvific, apotropaic, and magical: religious relics within the Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic systems are often conceived of as ‘a potentially wonder-working bridge between the mundane and the divine’, physical and metaphysical realms.

They channel redemptive and intercessory forces and are vehicles of grace, blessing, and baraka in the guise of miracles of healing or inner enlightenment. They operate as ‘spiritual electrodes’ that transmit waves of sacred energy into the sphere of the terrestrial and temporal. Technically, theologians may insist that they do this though the intervention of a transcendent deity, but in the minds of the faithful the holy is often believed to be immanent in them......their capacity to tap and focus it is inherent in them.

This brings us to the important point that material remains have no intrinsic status as relics. The former become the latter as a consequence of the beliefs and practices that accumulate around them. They are the products and confections of the cultures that engender and reverence them. The making of them is both a social and a cognitive process. Outside the cultural matrix and environment within which they were created, they are inert and lifeless objects devoid of significance and worth. 

The manner in which relics are discovered, identified, preserved, displayed, and used by particular communities is thus singularly revealing about the attitudes and assumptions that structure their outlook. ‘Relichood’, as Paul Gillingham comments below, ‘lies in the eye of the beholder’. 12

Historians and archaeologists of death have also taught us to read bodies as products of the myriad practices in which they are enveloped. Approaching mortuary customs like burial, cremation, and mummification as strategies for perpetuating the physical presence of the dead in the world of the living, they have explored what the treatment and disposal of corpses reveals about how particular communities conceptualize the connection between the invisible soul and carnal flesh, and between earthly existence and the realm of the afterlife. They have shown that the propensity of different cultures to revere relics is related in direct but complex ways to these assumptions. Transformed by the funerary rituals carried out by mourners, cadavers and skeletons supply striking insight into how the body functions as a metaphor and synecdoche of the central values of a given society.

OBSERVERS SHOULD READ THE WAY THE THAT THE PROPHET'S SAW BURIAL HAS TAKREN PLACE, ITS LOCATION, ITS CONTINUED PRMONENCE AD GUAGE THAT OT WAS INTENDED TO BE THIS WAY... HAVING THE GRAVE VISIBLE PUTS THE PROPHET SAW FRONT ANDCENTRE AND THE FOCUS OF ATENTION, WHICH ISLAM DEMANDS HE BE, BY MOVING THE GRAVE TO A LOCATION UNMARKED OUTSIDE THE MOSQUE WOULD REDUCE THE VISIBILITY OF THE PROPHET SAW AND THE EFFECT ON PILGRIMS - SOMETHING THE EWS WANT.

But they are also objects in which he is thought by those who venerate them to retain some kind of physical presence and essence and which have the potential to provide karmic benefits.

The tendency to ............ is ostensibly hard to reconcile with the idea of the resurrection of the body to rejoin the soul on the day of judgement that lies at the heart of Christian dogma.

Reverence for holy relics is also somewhat difficult to square with the practice of subjecting the corpses of those beyond the spiritual pale—heretics, suicides, and criminals—to the humiliation of dismemberment and mutilation.

Fraught with controversy and inconsistency, the wahhabu philosophy...

 Forms of remembering the revered dead

The politics

The second thread that links many of the essays in this collection is the manner in which relics and remains operate as instruments of legitimation, as vectors and embodiments of authority, and as foci for political protest and ethnic rivalry. The capacity of the relic to act as a form of symbolic capital has already been widely recognized.

West Saxon kings were likewise alert to the value of aggregating and dispensing this special type of royal treasure for bolstering insecure dynasties and consolidating claims to territory and hegemony .... Offering a sacral ‘plus factor’ in times of conflict as well as stability, they allowed rulers to demonstrate a magnanimity that bound the privileged recipients of their gifts tightly to them. Possession and control of the sacred also strengthened the credentials of monastic houses, diocesan prelates, and regional churches: their acquisition—whether by purchase or by the ‘ritual kidnapping’ of theft—supplied protection and bestowed a sense of heavenly sanction.

The collection that Philip II of Spain assembled in the Escorial from the four corners of Europe has recently been presented as a mechanism for the sacralization of the Habsburg monarchy—as ‘an active instrument of a broader rhetoric of power’ and as one strand of an elaborate programme of propaganda for his regime and for the triumph of Catholicism over its Protestant enemies

The fresh wave of relic ‘discoveries’, such as the bodies of the Christian martyrs allegedly uncovered at Sacromonte in Granada between 1588 and 1595 .... gave expression to an attempt to harness the ‘useable past’ [[That part of islamic history thaat supports their philosophy]]

 Here too Catholic elites deliberately sought to revive the memory of the Czech nation’s pre-Hussite heritage and to repair a major rupture in its history by means of a species of ecclesiastical antiquarianism. The recovery and translation of relics was central to the resurgence of ........ Bavaria was one beneficiary of the new trade in relics initiated by the excavation of the Catacombs of Priscilla in 1578: the Wittelsbach dynasty imported thousands of bones from Italy as part of a strategy to re-sanctify a land that had temporarily been stained with heresy. This was inextricably linked with an aggressive project of confessional state-building. 43

Relics have also functioned as political devices in a range of other cultures. Muslim rulers and caliphs yoked themselves to the prophet Mohammed through ownership of his staff and mantle, by employing these objects in investiture ceremonies, and by carrying them into battle as powerful totems. These portable artefacts provided a tangible link between states and the origins of Islamic civilization, as well as evidence of the Fāṭimid dynasty’s descent from the hallowed founder of the faith. 

In early medieval Japan Buddhist relics were likewise instruments of political power brokerage and charisma exploited by imperial families and shogunates. 45 Their continuing ability to act as a palladium is demonstrated by ...: the legitimacy of British colonial rule of Sri Lanka after 1815 in the eyes of its inhabitants was apparently sealed by its custodianship of the Buddha’s tooth—possession of which was an ancient prerogative and attribute of kingship. And as recently as 1994, the state of Myanma transformed the tour of a similar Chinese relic into a piece of ritual theatre to validate the rule of the Burmese military. 

Initially buried anonymously to hinder veneration

The manipulation of corpses and other material objects as nationalist symbols is, as he argues once again here, ‘a cross class activity’ in which peasants, politicians, and bureaucrats ‘co-author’ a mythical narrative about the material remains they have excavated and/or invented.

 The exhumation of corpses of priests, nuns, and saints in Civil War Spain was a graphic symbol of the rabid anti-clericalism that infused this revolutionary movement and a dramatization of the country’s liberation from bondage to its religious past.

 These episodes are reminiscent of the frenzied desecration of the graves and skeletons of the Valois and Bourbon kings at the height of the French Revolution and the vicious treatment of the English regicides after Charles II’s restoration in 1660. 48 The expulsion of Stalin’s body from Lenin’s mausoleum in Moscow in 1961 was a measure of shifting attitudes towards his dictatorship within the political establishment,

Ekaterinberg in 1918 is symptomatic of the undercurrents of ideological tension and conflict that persist within Russian society. Disinterred from their obscure grave in 1991, controversies between communists, monarchists, and the leaders of the Orthodox Church ensured that seven years transpired before the remains of the Romanovs were solemnly reburied in their crypt in St Petersburg. 

Here too dead bodies have become the focus of efforts to ‘reorder meaningful worlds’ and re-evaluate national pasts in the wake of the collapse of communism. 

forging of narratives about .......... have the capacity to tell alternative stories. ............ they have had to be carefully ‘repackaged’ in the museums that now memorialize them ‘to exclude inconvenient truths’. .... provided a further example of how human bodies have political afterlives. 

the remains of Cecil Rhodes be disinterred from their resting place on a hill in the Matopos National Park held sacred by the local people as the ‘home of the spirits’, which is perceived to have been desecrated by his burial there

to have the grave of the Prophet saw, in the splendor of his saw mosque, where it easy and convenient to visit... most other religions wish to have this.... the benefits to pilgrims to ge able to get close to the Prophet saw, and recite durood, th effect of his saw presece on pilgrims having his grave there, is the next best thing to having the Prophet saw alive in this world....

Such attempts to insist upon the rights of the dead are inseparably linked with efforts to defend those of the living. 

If corporeal vestiges and material artefacts function as forms of religious and political capital,

Protestantism’s horror of relic idolatry had the side-effect of assisting the migration of items formerly venerated as hallowed traces into a different realm of apprehension: it transformed them from things valued because they were able to transcend time to things valued because they were bounded by it.

Responses to ..... and revered artefacts have always involved a compound of emotion, wonder, curiosity, and devotion.

Devout Catholics might consider them as secondary, contact relics scarcely less sacred than the items whose aura they have absorbed.

Archaeologists and museum curators have struggled to steer a course between defending the integrity of their research and acknowledging the dignity of the deceased as human beings rather than historic and anthropological artefacts. 

and on the belief that they ought to be preserved for the edification of posterity.............[[THEY WERE PRESERVED FOR HEIR SACREDNESS, OUT OF RESPECT, TO SHRE THE SACRED ITEMS WITH OTHERS TO COE, TO EDUCATE LATER GENERATIONS , ALONG WITH OTHER MEANS, ABOUT THE PROPHET SAW]]

M. PROPHETS AMS ARE BURIED WHERE THEY PASS AWAY. SO THE SUGGESTION TO MOVE THE PROPHET'S SAW BOY AWAY CONTRADICTS THIS POLICY. THIS POLICY IS SO IMPORTANT THAT THOSE PROPHETS AMS WHO DIED IN THE VICINITY OF THE KAABA, WERE BURIED WHERE THEY PASSED AWAY, AND NOT MOVED AWAY BECAUSE THE KAABA WAS THERE.

https://academic.oup.com/past/article/206/suppl_5/9/1453339

Underlying Catholic esteem for relics..........God uses the material order to sanctify us, especially through the sacraments.

God doesn’t need the sacraments; they are gifts to us, to sanctify us in a manner commensurate with our physical nature. We don’t honor God if we disregard with indifference the gifts he has so graciously given us.

When God performs miracles through the mediation of a saint’s relics, it’s the same thing—a gift to us, through the power of the saint’s intercession, through the medium of his or her earthly remains. The relic as such doesn’t perform the miracle; it’s always God working through the relic (and God working through the saint’s prayers). God chooses on occasion to act this way in order to help us grow in our faith, giving us a physical sign of his constant spiritual work, not to mention a physical sign of the true reality of the communion of saints..

Biblical Basis of Relics

Further, relics actually have a basis in the Bible. In the Old Testament, a brief story is recounted of a man who died and while he was being buried, a marauding band came by; the man was quickly thrown into the prophet Elisha’s grave which was nearby. The Bible tells us that “as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet” (2 Kings 13:21). Here, God worked a miracle through contact with Elisha’s earthly remains, his relics. Of course, God could have done this without the relic. But doing so through the mediation of the relic gives us a tangible sign of the power of the saint’s ongoing presence.

Two other examples stand out in the New Testament. In Acts of the Apostles, healings are said to have occurred through contact with Peter’s shadow: “Now many signs and wonders were done among the people by the hands of the apostles … so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and pallets, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them” (Acts 5:12-15).

Later, with Paul, a similar incident occurs: “And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them” (Acts 19:11-12).

The early Church eagerly gathered the remains of her saints, especially the martyrs. This was not a matter of superstition, but a conviction that God works through the material order. And he often graces his Church with physical signs of his abiding spiritual presence, as well as physical signs of the ongoing vitality of his saints and their continued love for us.

showing an earnest desire to be where Jesus was, to walk where he walked—or to travel where God’s mighty work had been manifest in a particular saint.

Reliving and encountering how God’s presence was manifest through the life of Karol Wojtyla in the midst of the Nazi and communist occupations can strengthen our sense that God can and will act in a similar way in our lives today.

May we always recognize the grandeur of what God has done for us [[left signs of the Prophet's saw presence on earth to motivate and teach us, 1500 years after he saw passed away, since his saw is the prophet in residencetill judgement day]]  and the infinite distance he has traveled to reach each and every one of us. 

SO IT IS GOD WHO HAS LEFT THESE SIGNS FOR MUSLIMS TO KEEP THEM ON THE RIGHT PATH

the reason why the BP and other sites ar important, is because it was God Himself, who chose those sites for the occurence of immensley important events in the formation of islam, how can humans feel they have the authority to destroy sites that wre landmarks in thehistory of this planet, that wre chosen by God as sgns for humans for all time, which the Prophet saw himself, and the most senior Muslims have declared must not be

any expression of reverence to God must be done exclusively in the manner indicated by Him, otherwise it is superfluous. 



And What, Exactly, Is a Relic?

First, let’s clear up what it’s not. Catholics do not, under any circumstances, “worship” relics.

St. Jerome wrote, “We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore him whose martyrs they are.”

There are three different types of relics:

• First-Class Relics are items directly associated with the events of Christ’s life (the manger, the cross, etc.), or the physical remains of a saint (a bone, a hair, skull, a limb, etc.).

Catholics believe that only God can heal, but that God may in some cases permit healing through physical means, such as a relic of a holy person. The Holy Spirit’s indwelling can affect the physical body, and God can work miracles through the bodies of deceased saints. As far back as the Old Testament, the relics of the deceased have been shown to possess a power which certainly comes from God.

A relic is a material object that relates to a particular individual or to events and places with which that individual was associated. Typically, it is the body or fragment of the body of a deceased person. Alongside corporeal relics such as skulls, bones, blood, teeth, hair, and fingernails, are non-corporeal items that were possessed by or came into direct contact with the individual in question. These may be articles of clothing: hats, girdles, capes, smocks, shoes, and sandals, or pieces of personal property like cups, spectacles, handkerchiefs, weapons, staves, and bells (Walsham 2010: 11).

A relic is ontologically different from a representation or image. It is not a mere symbol or indicator of divine presence, but an actual physical embodiment of it, each particle encapsulating the essence of the departed person, in its entirety



https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/552651349.pdf

Unlike other prophets and holy persons, Prophet Muhammad became the object of veneration precisely because his teachings, sayings and silent affirmations were meticulously preserved by his companions and his family and transmitted to subsequent generations, who also preserved and employed his relics: hair, and sweat and water from prayer ablution as relics, seeking to derive baraka from them even after his death (Meri 2010: 102-104). Islamic commentaries and reports indicate that the Prophet distributed his hair after shaving for ihlal (the desacralisation ritual) after his final and only pilgrimage to Mecca.11 Al-Bukhari and Muslim cite a report in which it is said that the Prophet cut his hair upon completing the pilgrimage, and instructed Abu Talhah to distribute one share of the hair to each of the sahabah (male companions of the Prophet), and to Abu Talhah’s wife Umm Sulaym to distribute two shares to the women (Wheeler 2006: 72). According to another account, it was this distribution that established the tradition of baraka being associated with the hair of the Prophet. Other reports and accounts mention that the Prophet Muhammad made this distribution at the completion of his pilgrimage so that his followers could keep the objects as relics, and that there 

was no hair that fell from his head that was not collected by his followers (Wheeler 2006: 72, 2010: 341-388). There are also multiple traditions and accounts associated with the further transportation of the Prophet’s hair and other relics. The transportation of hair by the companions of the Prophet and farther distribution of this hair through conquest is evident from the records of burial, especially at sites of martyrdom or conquest, as Brannon Wheeler mentions in his book. 

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The meaning of tabarruq

Barakat (blessing, grace) has various meanings in verses, hadiths and other texts. The most common meanings in the material and spiritual planes are increase and growth. In fact, barakat is one of the Divine secrets, it is the result of closeness to Allah, it is the fruits of righteous deeds. Through barakat, a person achieves his dream and is saved from various misfortunes. Barakat is the key to good, it is the mercy of Allah. Allah has included barakat in his Book - the Quran, on this occasion in one of the verses it is stated: "Blessed is the Scripture that was sent down to you" (38:29), also a place can be blessed: "My Lord, bring me to a blessed place" (23:29), blessed is the name of Allah: "Blessed is the name of your Lord, the Possessor of glory and honor!" (55:78), Allah also blessed the line of prophets, beginning with Ibrahim (peace be upon him): “The mercy of Allah and His blessings be upon you, O people of the House!” (11:73), and Allah himself is blessed in his essence: “Blessed is Allah, Lord of the worlds!” (7:54).

Tabarruk is seeking blessings from Allah through something. And since barakat is increase and growth, then tabarruk is seeking blessings through things and everything that is connected with the righteous, in the hope of increasing the good by the will of Allah. The reason for this is again the degree they occupy before Allah.

Many faqihs of all four madhhabs wrote about tabarruk. They all confirmed the permissibility of tabarruk, but with the condition that it does not contradict the laws of Sharia. They not only wrote about it, but also practiced it themselves, imitating the righteous salaf (righteous ancestors of the first three centuries).

Tabarruk is essentially tawassul, a way of turning to Allah through the degree of those great people through whose legacy Tabarruk is performed, but again and again we repeat that all this happens by the will of Allah.

Being near or – better still – touching objects related to a sacred person was and is believed to carry merit, or even to have miraculous effects. 

According to legend, following his participation in the Hajj, Muhammad distributed his hair-clippings, seemingly aware of the power installed in these objects. Some recipients wore the strands on their clothes, others chose to be buried with the cherished locks in their mouth or nostrils. Hair, teeth, autographs, footprints and earthly belongings claiming to originate from the prophet Muhammad are known as āthār, and are still broadly venerated as ‘traces’ of the prophet. As in the case of Christianity, the veneration of saints (awliyā) who are believed to have produced miracles is a central part of popular Islamic practices. In Buddhism, Hinduism and other major religions, there are similar cults venerating especially auspicious persons, places of mythological significance or objects seen as containing special power.

Humans have a tendency to ascribe special powers and abilities to men, women, objects and places. Throughout history and in all cultural contexts – not just religious ones – people seem to spontaneously endow certain things with special powers, and to proclaim that contact with these persons and things, even by proxy, will have miraculous effects.

 many still believe in its curative powers and sacredness

relic, in religion, strictly, the mortal remains of a saint; in the broad sense, the term also includes any object that has been in contact with the saint

The basis of Christian cult veneration of relics is the conception that reverence for the relics redounds to the honor of the saint. While expectation of favors may accompany the devotion, it is not integral to it. The first Christian reference to relics comes from Acts of the Apostles and explains that handkerchiefs that touched the skin of St. Paul while he was preaching in Corinth were able to heal the sick and exorcise demons.

the great Roman Catholic theologian, however, considered it natural to cherish the remains of the saintly dead and found sanction for the veneration of relics in God’s working of miracles in the presence of relics.

Roman Catholic thought, defined in 1563 at the Council of Trent and subsequently affirmed, maintained that relic veneration was permitted 

In Islam, however, the use of relics has had no official sanction; indeed, Muslim theologians have frequently denounced the veneration of relics and the related practice of visiting the tombs of saints as as conflicting with the Prophet Muhammad’s insistence on his own purely human, nondivine nature and his stern condemnation of idolatry and the worship of anyone other than God.

Relic worship was canonically established in Buddhism from its earliest days. Tradition (Mahaparinibbana Sutta) states that the cremated remains of the Buddha (died c. 483 bce) were distributed equally among eight Indian tribes in response to a demand for his relics.

Because relics are regarded as the living presence of the Buddha, 

Hinduism has no historical founder, as do the other three religions, and it tends to regard the world of physical, historical existence as ultimately an illusion. Thus the mortal remains and earthly possessions of religious heroes or holy people are not generally regarded as having particular spiritual value.

--

According to an enduring Islamic tradition, when the Prophet Muhammad performed his final pilgrimage, he distributed strands of his hair among his followers. These relics, imbued with profound spiritual significance, found their way to different parts of the world, where they have been venerated ever since. Kashmir, too, became a custodian of one such relic, thanks to the efforts of Nooruddin Ishbari, a trader who is credited with bringing it to the region.

Over the centuries, Hazratbal has come to symbolise not only spiritual devotion but also political power in Kashmir. The holy relic has imbued the shrine with unparalleled authority, turning it into a focal point for the valley’s socio-political dynamics. 

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Regarding the miraculous nature of certain icons, it should be clarified that no icon is miraculous in and of itself. There is only one source of miracles in this world—the Lord, Who by His ineffable love sends us His mercy and grace. Thus, St. Theophan the Recluse writes: “Some icons are miraculous because it so pleases God, but the power is not in the icons, or in the people turning to them, but in the mercy of God.” A miracle is precisely a manifestation of God’s mercy towards us sinful people. The Lord creates miracles anywhere, anytime, and through anything. But in the thoughts of the holy fathers, because the grace of God is most often manifested in response to prayer, in response to our turning to our Creator, then miracles, accordingly, most often happen in those places where there is such prayer; that is, in churches: during the services, in the Mysteries of the Church, and before holy icons, relics, etc.

During prayer we open our hearts before God, and in response the Lord sends us His saving grace, healing and transfiguring us internally. God alone, and no one else, is the source of this grace, however, as man is a creature both spiritual and bodily, grace reveals itself also through visible, physical realities: icons, relics, holy water.

Regarding the practice of venerating relics, we should note that in the Old Testament there is already mention of the miraculous remains of departed saints. .............Additionally, we see in the Gospels an indication of the................We also know from Church history that the first ancient evidence of the veneration of the relics of saints dates to the middle of the second century,..........

Using this water with reverence, and also with faith and hope in God, many having problems with health received healing of their infirmities. Therefore, such water is known as “holy” or “healing” among the people, because, taken with prayer, it brings benefit to the human body.

It says in Holy Scripture more than once that not just some God pleasers had the gift of miracles, but even pieces of their clothing had special miraculous powers: The mantle of the holy prophet Elijah divided the waters of the river (4 Kg. 2:8), and handkerchiefs and aprons of the holy apostle Paul were used to heal diseases and even drive out evil spirits (Acts. 19:12).

But we never address ourselves to such items in prayer, but only to the saints to whom they belong. We do not exclaim: “Holy hat, pray to God for us,” but we say: “O Holy Father Mark, pray to God for us.” Veneration for this or that item is based not on its autonomous holiness, but its belonging to this or that ascetic: The grace of the Holy Spirit acts so abundantly in God’s chosen ones that even their everyday items become conduits of God’s power. But, at the same time, such sacred items should not become for us paramount, overshadowing God Himself, the Giver of miracles. Otherwise such perverted spiritual practice will lead us to dependence on relics, and our lives will become a search for specific relics, while the main thing—striving for repentance and communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord—becomes something unimportant and trivial. Thus, ever more justified are the words of one modern theologian who notes a quite widespread tendency today: “Pilgrims go to monasteries not for Communion, but for ‘sand from the graves.’” But this, quite unfortunately, is nothing other than a sign of a man’s spiritual illness.

Of course, as was said above, such miraculous powers of such sacred objects, like oil, does not indicate their distinctive character or independence. Holy oil is only a symbol, a means through which God acts in our lives. And therefore, the main thing is that our pious attitude towards such sacred objects would not turn into magic or ritualism. No faith in the specific actions of certain items should overcome faith in God in our lives, and in that which He has prepared for every one of us, if only we are faithful to our call to become children of God in Christ (cf. Jn. 1:12).

------------------

Scripture teaches that God acts through relics, especially in terms of healing. In fact, when surveying what Scripture has to say about sacred relics, one is left with the idea that healing is what relics “do.”

In each of these instances God has brought about a healing using a material object. The vehicle for the healing was the touching of that object. It is very important to note, however, that the cause of the healing is God; the relics are a means through which He acts. In other words, relics are not magic. They do not contain a power that is their own; a power separate from God. Any good that comes about through a relic is God’s doing. But the fact that God chooses to use the relics of saints to work healing and miracles tells us that He wants to draw our attention to the saints as “models and intercessors” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 828).

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PUT IN MORACLE SECTION

The prophets were all outstanding examples of honesty and righteousness, known for their pure character even before being tasked with prophethood. Therefore, their claims about the unseen could be trusted due to their reputations as being the most trustworthy of men. In addition, God granted them miracles to remove any doubts that they were sent by God. These miracles were clearly impossible for any human being to perform without divine intervention, many of which are mentioned in the Quran, the holy book of Islam. One famous example is the splitting of the Red Sea, which allowed Moses and the Children of Israel to flee from the Pharaoh’s army.

A key point in understanding the concept of miracles in Islam is that they all are a result of God’s power and permission, and not that of human beings.

------------------

I was sitting in my bishop’s apartment holding a reliquary which contained what could be a sliver of the True Cross. Beholding it filled me with a sense of wonder that is impossible to convey to those whose religion forbids the appreciation of relics. One cannot describe the ineffable fascination evoked by a holy relic; one can only experience it.

While no Catholic is compelled to venerate any particular relic (and one shouldn’t if one has doubts as to its authenticity), the Church always has maintained that the veneration of relics is proper. Harkening back to the eighth-century iconoclastic controversy and the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787), the Council of Trent maintained against the Reformers that the honor given to a relic, statue, or icon was honor not to an object (fetishism and idolatry), but to the person it represented. Latria (Greek: worship) must be given to God alone, whereas dulia (Greek: veneration or respect) may be given to holy people or articles.

A Catholic venerates a relic of Christ much as a man gazes longingly on and even kisses a photograph of his beloved. Because God so loved the world that he sent his Son to die for it (John 3:16), a Christian cherishes any memento (relic) of Christ. The Church upholds the right of Christians to express their love for God in this way against the misguided strictures of the Reformers.

We honor (dulia) the relics, statues, and images of the saints with a veneration that is directed toward the saints themselves, and in honoring the saints we honor Christ whose members they are (1 Cor. 12:27). In fact, Protestants honor the relics of their dead when they visit or lay flowers on the graves of their loved ones.

The critic who compares the veneration of relics to magic fails to comprehend either magic or the veneration of relics. Magic employs material objects in order to cause a supernatural effect through demonic forces. Using relics doesn’t compel God to act in a certain way. Miraculous events associated with relics are simply cases in which God, according to his sovereign will, uses the mementos of Christ and his saints as conduits of grace. Nothing could be more scriptural.

nor did Jesus’ prayer shawl have any magical effect. Because of the woman’s faith, the prayer shawl was the conduit of the grace which came directly from Jesus. 

We also learn from Scripture that not only power, but holiness could be transmitted through contact, even through articles of clothing.

Here again Jesus’ garment is used as a conduit of the power of God. It doesn’t seem likely that Jesus would reinforce “superstition” by allowing these people to be healed by touching the fringe of his garment if such an action were truly superstitious.

The power of God was conveyed through a relic of a departed saint............

the grace that God gave to Paul was directed through the items, specifically handkerchiefs and aprons, that came into contact with him. Later on in Church history, a custom arose of going to Paul’s grave and lowering handkerchiefs into his tomb on a string so they could touch his remains, making them third-class relics. In both Acts 5:15-16 and Acts 19:11-12 we see the power of God being conveyed through items associated with the apostles.

Yet what if Helena were right? Sitting alone, I marveled that I could be holding in my hand the very instrument used to achieve my salvation – and not mine alone, but the salvation of the world. What art can capture the sense of awe that is felt at such a moment?

https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/420362/_15700674_Medieval_Encounters_Fluid_Boundaries_Christian_Sacred_Space_and_Islamic_Relics_in_an_Early_ad_th.pdf?sequence=1

PUT IN SIGNS SECTION

THE NEED TO HAVE BIG VISIBLE SIGNS TO COMPETE WITH THOSE OF OTHER RELIGIOS AND SECULAR PURSUITS

WHY SHOULD ISLAM BE HIDDEN, AND SECULAR PRACTICES BE PROMINETLY PROMOTED

In his geographical text Aḥsān al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, Shams al-Dīn al-Muqaddasī (d. ca. 380/990) mentions a conversation he had with his uncle about the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. Bemoaning the building’s opulence, al-Muqaddasī complains that its constructor, the caliph al-Walīd b. ʿAbd alMalik (r. 86–96/705–715), had spent “so much of the Muslims’ wealth on the mosque in Damascus,” when that money might have been more responsibly spent on “roads, or water troughs, or the restoration of fortresses.” Disagreeing, his uncle responds: 

O my little boy, you do not understand! Al-Walīd was right and he undertook a worthy project. He saw that Syria was a country of the Christians, and he saw the beautiful churches with their enchanting decorations, renowned far and wide … So, he built a mosque for the Muslims that would divert their attention from [the churches] and made it one of the wonders of the world.

Al-Muqaddasī’s uncle adds that al-Walīd’s father and caliphal predecessor, ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 65–86/685–705), similarly had feared that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem would “beguile the hearts of the Muslims,” and was thus spurred to build the Dome of the Rock there. Elsewhere, al-Muqaddasī claims that ʿAbd al-Malik also had been motivated to beautify the Aqṣā Mosque, “because it was compared with the great Christian church in Jerusalem [i.e., the Church of the Holy Sepulcher], so they made it greater than that.”1

The comments of this tenth-century author and his opinionated uncle highlight a reality of the spatial environment within which these Islamic monuments of the Umayyad period were constructed: a Near Eastern landscape dominated by Christian churches and shrines. As this text suggests, authorities in the first centuries of Islamic rule contested this Christian architectural dominance, imposing their presence upon the physical environment in a variety of ways.2

1 Shams al-Dīn al-Muqaddasī (or al-Maqdisī), Kitāb Aḥsān al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, ed. M. J. de Goeje, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1906), 159, 168; The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions, trans. Basil Anthony Collins, rev. Muhammad Hamid al-Tai (Reading: Garnet, 1994), 146, 153 (adapted here).

2 This included not only the construction of visual symbols of Islamic imperial control – such as the buildings described above – but also the control of the “acoustic environment” in which places of worship participated, exemplified in the forbidding of Christians from sounding the nāqūs and Jews from blowing the shofar, and from raising their voices during services. Milka Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: From Surrender to Coexistence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 83, 91, 101–109, 157–161; Mattia Guidetti, In the Shadow of the Church: The Building of Mosques in Early Medieval Syria (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 72; Nancy Khalek, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–4.

However, while praising the Umayyads’ architectural efforts to signal Islamic superiority, al-Muqaddasī betrays the appreciation of – and interactions with – Christian buildings that Muslims exhibited for centuries. [[ APPRECIATE THE EFFORTS BY SECULAR FORCES TO PROMOTE THER AGENDA, THE CUBE, THE MALLS NEXT TO THE GM].     Indeed, early Muslims not only gazed upon churches and monasteries, but also visited and worshipped within them, engaging tactilely with the sacred materials that these buildings contained. Archaeological evidence points to Muslim visitation of the Kathisma Church – located south of Jerusalem and centered upon a stone where the Virgin Mary was believed to have sat – where a miḥrāb has been uncovered, as well as a glass pilgrimage vessel likely used for collecting water hallowed by its contact with the sacred stone.3 In his Kitāb al-Diyārāt, al-Shābushtī (d. ca. 388/998) describes a similar practice at a monastery near the Sea of Galilee visited by both Christians and Muslims: the monastery contained a stone upon which Jesus sat, and from which “everyone who enters the place breaks off a piece, in order to seek blessing from it.”4 This and other evidence suggests that early Muslims visited and venerated several such Christian spaces, in many cases collecting material manifestations of these locations’ sacredness.

3. Rina Avner, “The Kathisma: A Christian and Muslim Pilgrimage Site,” ARAM 18–19 (2006–2007): 541–57 at 546–547, 550.

4 ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Shābushtī, al-Diyārāt, ed. Kūrkīs ʿAwwād (Beirut: Dār Rāʾid al-ʿArabī, 1986), 204; Hilary Kilpatrick, “Monasteries Through Muslim Eyes: The Diyārāt Books,” in Christians at the Heart of Islamic Rule: Church Life and Scholarship in ʿAbbasid Iraq, ed. David Thomas (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 26; Elizabeth Campbell, “A Heaven of Wine: Muslim-Christian Encounters at Monasteries in the Early Islamic Middle East” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2009), 48; Moshe Sharon, Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae, Volume Three: D–F (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 213–219.

within the context of late antique veneration of holy persons and places and the collection from them of material blessings. Both literary and material evidence provide a wealth of parallels to such activities among late antique communities, [[ NOT NECESSARILY mUSLIM]] who used these materials for a variety of beneficial purposes, including the sanctification of space. Late antique practitioners harnessed these materials’ power, contaminating new places with the blessing of the saintly persons and places from whence they came. The collection of materials blessed through their contact with holy persons, places, or things is a recurrent trope in saints’ vitae, pilgrimage itineraries, and other late antique texts. In these texts, an agent’s (or object’s) touch transmits holy power to materials like water, oil, or dirt, thereby creating sacred matter out of what had been profane material.40 Hagiographies record crowds gathering dust from the footprints and doorposts of living saints, or from their tombs after death;41 tearing off shreds of cloth and other materials that had come into contact with their (living or dead) bodies;42 and collecting a variety of other substances from these figures and their associated spaces, even blood and perfumes miraculously exuded by saintly corpses.43 Pilgrimage itineraries and collections of miracles associated with pilgrimage sites are likewise full of descriptions of visitors collecting stones, soils, liquids, and oils connected with sacred objects and spaces, themselves hallowed by their associations with events and personalities of biblical and post-biblical history

Pilgrims to saints’ shrines collected water, oil, and dust in special vessels distributed onsite, with the vessels themselves becoming venerated objects in their own right, thanks to their associations with these places and with the cherished materials they carried. [[HERE THE VESSEL IS THE BP, THAT CONTAINED FOR  2 YEARS THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE OF THE PROPHET PBUH]]

These materials were widely venerated and used for a variety of purposes. While healing was a common application, such materials were also spread or sprinkled upon spaces in order to provide blessing to locations.47 Pilgrims reportedly installed material blessings over their beds, on the thresholds of their homes, and on their flocks and fields, protecting such places through the sacred material’s presence there.

The placement of sacred material in a new location sometimes endowed that space with a blessedness in its own right, which thereby enabled it to provide new gifts of its own. For example, the seventh-century Coptic Panegyric on Apollo, Archimandrite of the Monastery of Isaac reports that “many healings came to pass” from the water of a cistern in the Monastery of Isaac, after water that Apollo had used to wash himself was poured into it.49 By coming into contact with Apollo’s used bathwater – a “blessing” through its physical contact with Apollo’s body – the cistern emerged as a site of holy power that provided healings and became a site of pilgrimage in its own right.50 The blessedness understood to reside within sacred relics, persons, and places could thus be transferred to new spaces and “imbue new locations with … saintly presence.”51 By “infecting” their locations with their own holiness, holy persons and objects were able not only to sanctify spaces but – in doing so – also to cleanse these spaces of demonic or unorthodox forces that might be residing within them due to their previous usage by pagans or heretical Christians.

Islamic tribe’s utilization of a contact relic from Prophet Muḥammad’s body – in this case, water infused with the Prophet’s touch – to transform a church into a mosque offers an early Islamic adaptation of late antique Christian narratives and ritual practices involving relics and sacred spaces.

the liquid clearly was understood as a conveyor of some kind of blessing and/ or power

The materiality of the holy water – the “goodness” (alternatively, “purity”) of which will “only increase” as ordinary water is added, creating more sacred fluid through contact with the Prophet’s ablution water – brings to mind the inexhaustible essence understood to reside in other late antique relics, which possessed a “[s]acred dynamis [that] was transferable seemingly without limit”67 and was understood to be “miraculously whole despite being constantly broken up into fragments.”68 The indivisible character of the Prophet’s ablution water accords with the sacredness understood to inhabit matter that had touched holy persons in the late antique world.

Acknowledgement of the water’s sacrality is seen also in the Banū Ḥanīfa’s treatment of the water vessel

 This zeal for contact with the Prophet’s water recalls the trope of Christians clamoring for access to such materials from their own saintly figures.........keeps this vessel that had touched the Prophet as a special memento, and perhaps as an object of power.

Like Christian martyrs’ relics, divided and translated to new spaces for the sanctification of new spaces, Muḥammad’s ablution water offers a transportable “extension of his authority” (or blessing) to a distant location for the establishment of a new Islamic religious space.70

This narrative about the Prophet Muḥammad’s ablution water sanctifying the church in al-Yamāma likely stands in dialogue with late antique narratives involving similar usages of holy persons’ relics: it offers an “Islamized” account of a relic’s role in the transformation and consecration of a new religious space, a sort of Islamic relic translatio.71 While the story draws on late antique literary topoi, it adapts these motifs using Islamic signifiers. For example, it is noteworthy that the sacred material used is water with which the Prophet had performed ablution. The usage of a saint’s bathwater as a source of blessing appears in Christian sources, as we saw above in the story of Archimandrite Apollo. However, the use of the remainders of the Prophet’s ṭahūr –water used to perform wuḍūʿ, the minor ablution performed before the performance of ṣalāt – adds a distinctly Islamic valence to this form of contact relic. in jaybr's case, it was dust.

The story of the Banū Ḥanīfa’s church offers an Islamic adaptation of late antique Christian topoi regarding holy persons, relics, and the transfer of their sacred touch to new materials and places. Many early Muslims were familiar with such ideas and practices, and both material and literary evidence suggests that early Muslims collected blessed materials from several Christian places and persons.

[[EVENT OF MAN THAT ASKED THE PROPHET SAW TO PRAY IN HIS HOUSE SO THAT BLESSINGS WOULD BE PLACED IN HIS HOUSE AND REMAIN THERE INDEFINITELY.]]

1] SO IF A STAY OF A FEW MINUTES WOULD INSTALL BLESSINGS IN THE MANS HOUSE, THEN A STAY OF 2 YEARS WOULD PRODUCE AND IMPART SIGNIFICANTLY MORE BLESSINGS AND...

2] IF THE MANS HOUSE HOUSE BECOMES EXTRAORDINARY AND SACRED BECAUSE OF THE VISITATION OF THE PROPHET SAW, AND

3]IF OTHER SITES SUCH AS WELLS AND MOSQUES ARE CONSIDERED SACRED AND HEAVILY BLESSED BECAUSE THE PROPHET SAW VISITED THOSE SITES, PERHAPS ONLY ONCE, THEN HOW MUCH SIGNIFICANTLY MORE SACRED IS THE BP....

4] AND IF THOSE INFERIOR SITES ARE RECOGNISED AS BLESSED, SACRED, AND VISITED AS PART OF ZIARA OF HAJJ AND UMRAH,  THEN, WHY IS THE BP BEING LEFT OUT...

5] IN TERMS OF LEVELS OF SACREDNESS, IF A VISITOR TO SA WANTS TO VISIT THE MOST SACRED SITES, THEN THE BP IS THE 3RD MOST SACRED SITE IN THE KINGDOM.

6] HISTORIC ACCOUNTS ACCEPTED BY ALL MUSLIMS, EVEN EWS, ACCEPT LOCATIONS WHERE THE PROPHET SAW STAYED OR VISITED WERE SPECIAL AND MUST BE VISITED TO HONOUR AND RESPECT THE PROPHET SAW, THESE INCLUDE THE CAVE, THE...., THE .... ETC. THE PROPHET SAW STAYED IN THE CAVE OD .. FOR OLY ?? DAYS I TOTAL, IN THE ...... FOR A TOTAL OF DAYS, THE MOSQQUE OF ..... VISITED ONLY FOR ?? DAYS, IN COMPARISON THE BP WAS LIVED I BY THE PROPHET SAW FOR 2 YEARS

THIS WAS FAMOUSLY RECOGNISED BY THE GREAT ARAB HISTORIAN IBN JAYBR WHO RUBBED HIS FACE......

https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/420362/_15700674_Medieval_Encounters_Fluid_Boundaries_Christian_Sacred_Space_and_Islamic_Relics_in_an_Early_ad_th.pdf?sequence=1

https://mazaratmisr.org/prophetic-%EF%B7%BA-relics/

A Journey in the Company of the Prophetic Relics

By Hani Dawah, Deputy Advisor to the Grand Mufti of Egypt

At the gate of the chamber which contains the honorable prophetic relics in Imam al-Hussain Mosque in Cairo, my heart beats accelerated pounding out of happiness as behind this door, the relics of the beloved chosen Prophet ﷺ are found. In a short time, I will be blessed by seeing his sword, parts of his shirt and his stick by which he pointed to the idols and they were destructed. Furthermore, I will see his [kohl] stick, [kohl] container and four hairs from his blessed head [peace and blessings be upon him].

I stepped into the room, filled with veneration; a strange feeling mixes happiness with eagerness…my senses are blessed with the blessings of the beloved Prophetﷺ…My eyes are searching around the room longing for the blessing of seeing Hisﷺ honorable relics.

They Cast No Shadow

It may occur to some of us that these honorable hairs do not belong to the Prophet [peace and blessings be upon him]. Through a simple examination we can confirm its attribution to the Prophetﷺ which I have tried myself. All what we have to do is to expose this hair to light and if it casts shadow, this means definitely that the hair does not belong to our beloved Prophetﷺ. Otherwise, if it was exposed to light and casts no shadow, this means that hair belongs to the Prophetﷺ. Because, as stated in al-Shama’il Wa al-Khasa’is al-Muhammadia and mentioned by many scholars that Ibn Abbas stated that our master the Prophetﷺ casts no shadow either in sunlight or moonlight. This is one of the characteristics of the Prophetﷺ that his shadow never appeared on the earth and that he was light. This is witnessed when the Prophetﷺ said: “And made me light” as included in Sahih Muslim.

In the reign of al-Sultan Abdul-Hamid when the claims of possessing the Prophetic hair increased, the Sultan met with a group of scholars including sheikh As’ad al-Shuqairi – the father of Ahmad al-Shuqairi – and asked them about the validity of attributing these hairs to the Prophetﷺ. Sheikh al-Shuqairi suggested doing this examination for the hair of the Prophetﷺ which proved that his hair casts no shadow. The hair which is exposed to light and casts no shadow, belongs to the Prophetﷺ but the one which casts shadow is made and fabricated by its owners. Based on this, the examination was performed and the owners of the hairs which belong to the Prophetﷺ received certificates of authenticity from al-Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid.

DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY , AUTHENTICATION OF SOME RELICS

https://mazaratmisr.org/prophetic-%EF%B7%BA-relics/



https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/295468/seeking-blessings-with-the-relics-of-the-prophet-sallallaahu-alayhi-wa-sallam

Seeking blessings with the relics of the Prophet, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam

Tabarruk  (Seeking Blessings)



Question:

Asalaamu alaykum, dear shaykh and brother in Islam. I have a question about the following hadith: Abdullaah, the freed slave of Asmaa' (the daughter of Abu Bakr), the maternal uncle of the son of 'Ata, reported:
"Asmaa' sent me to 'Abdullaah ibn 'Umar, saying, 'The news has reached me that you prohibit the use of three things: striped robes, saddle cloth made of red silk, and fasting in the holy month of Rajab.' 'Abdullah said to me, 'As for what you say about fasting in the month of Rajab, how about one who observes continuous fasting? And as for what you say about the striped garment, I heard Umar ibn Al-Khattaab say that he had heard from Allaah's Messenger (may peace be upon him), 'He who wears silk garment has no share for him (in the Hereafter),' and I am afraid it may not be that striped garment; and so far as the red saddle cloth is concerned, that is the saddle cloth of Abdullaah, and it is red.' I went back to Asmaa' and informed her. Thereupon, she said, 'Here is the cloak of Allaah's Messenger (may peace be upon him),' and she brought out to me that cloak made of Persian cloth with a hem of brocade and its sleeves bordered with brocade and said, 'This is Allaah's Messenger's cloak, it was with 'A'isha until she died, and when she died, I got possession of it. Allaah's Messenger, sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam, used to wear that, and we used it for the sick and sought cure thereby.'"
I am aware that this hadith proves that the prophet had some knowledge of the unseen of which Allaah, The Exalted, informed him. Some sects of Islam also claim that this hadith is also proof of the Prophet's intercession as his cloak was used to cure the sick as the hadith also states. How valid is this claim of theirs, and does this hadith also prove that the prophet, sallallaahu alayhi wa sallam, interceded in curing the sick? Please shed some light on this.

Answer:

The hadeeth that you mentioned is an authentic hadeeth that was narrated by Muslim, Ahmad and others. It clarifies that it is permissible to seek cure from the clothes worn by the Prophet  because of the blessings that they have. This corresponds to other authentic ahaadeeth regarding seeking blessings with the effects of the Prophet  such as his sweat and his hair. For more benefit, please refer to fataawa 25217 and 88236.

However, this is a way of seeking blessings and not a way of seeking intercession. The scholars do not have any difference of opinion on the permissibility of seeking this blessing, but this is peculiar to the Prophet  as his Companions did not seek blessings with the effects of any other person than him .

The Fiqh Encyclopedia reads:

“The scholars agreed on the permissibility of seeking blessings with the Prophet  and his relics, and the scholars of biography, virtues and Hadeeth reported a lot of information that shows that the Companions sought blessings in various forms from the Prophet  and his relics. Ibn Rajab said: 'Seeking blessings with the relics (of the Prophet ) is something that the Companions  used to do with the Prophet  but they did not do so with each other, and the Taabi’is (the generation that followed that of the Companions) did not do so with the Companions despite the great status of the latter. This is evidence that this cannot be done except with the Prophet  such as seeking blessings in the water that he used to perform wudhoo' (ablution) with, and with his other relics.”

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https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/25217/only-seek-blessings-from-the-prophet-sallallaahu-%E2%80%98alayhi-wa-sallam

Only seek blessings from the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam

Question:

A Muslim sister told me that the Companions used to seek blessings from the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. An example is that they used to pick up his spittle in their hands or elsewhere, I am not sure. Is this correct?

Answer:

Allaah the Almighty blesses whatever creatures, places and times he wants. He, the Exalted, placed blessing in the body of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and in the discharges which came out from him, like sweat and spittle. It is authentically reported that the Companions used to seek blessing from such things. This is not strange because Allaah The Almighty is capable of changing, purifying and removing harm from these things and making them a form of treatment and medicine. Here are some Hadeeths narrated in this regard:

1- On the authority of Abu Juhayfah  the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, performed his ablution and the remaining water was taken by people and they started applying it to their bodies (for blessing). Abu Moosa  stated that the Prophet  asked for a glass containing water and washed both his hands and face in it and then spat in it and asked Abu Moosa and Bilaal  to drink from the glass and pour some of its water on their faces and chests.

2- On the authority of Sahl ibn Sa‘d in the Battle of the Trench, the eyes of Ali  were aching. When the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, came to know about this, he applied saliva into his eyes and they recovered, as if there was nothing wrong with them. [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

3- On the authority of Jaabir ibn ‘Abdullaah  the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, was very hungry on the day of digging the trench. Jaabir  prepared a little food and invited the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, in turn invited all participants from the digging. He ordered Jaabir  not to prepare any food until he arrived. The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, came in front of the people and spat in the food and supplicated that Allaah The Almighty would bless it. Jaabir  swore by Allaah The Almighty that all the people, estimated at one thousand men, ate and a large quantity of food remained left over. [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

4- On the authority of Al-Miswar ibn Makhramah and Marwaan ibn Al-Hakam, they stated in the Hadeeth about the story of Al-Hudaybiyah that whenever the Messenger, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, spat, one of the Companions would take the spittle and would rub it on his face and skin, and if he performed ablution they would struggle to take the remaining water. [Al-Bukhari]

5- On the authority of Anas ibn Maalik  the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, slept at their house and sweated. Anas' mother brought a bottle and put the sweat of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, inside. When the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, woke up he asked her about this and she told him that they had put his sweat in the cologne and that his sweat had a better smell than it. [Muslim]

Seeking such blessings is restricted only to the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, however, and cannot be extended to other righteous people.

--

https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/277336/seeking-blessing-by-touching-the-prophets-pulpit

Assalamu alikumtouching the pulpit of the Prophet peace be upon him to seek blessings is allowed or not? what the scholars say in this matter

Firstly, it should be noted that the present-day pulpit in the Prophet's Masjid is not the one upon which the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, delivered his sermons during his lifetime. The original pulpit was destroyed in 654 AH when the Masjid was burned, as scholars mentioned. The Haafith Ibn Hajar  said: "The pulpit remained as three steps until Marwaan added six additional steps during the caliphate of Mu‘aawiyah …. Ibn An-Najjaar and others said that it remained as such with mild repairs until the Prophet's Masjid was burned in 654 AH; so the pulpit was burned as well." [Fat-h Al-Baari]

As for the Islamic ruling on seeking blessings (Tabarruk) through the pulpit of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, before it was burned, some scholars deemed it lawful to touch it for blessing while others deemed it disliked. Ibn Taymiyyah  said:

"Ahmad held that it is permissible to touch the place where he (the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) sat on the pulpit for the purpose of seeking blessing, following the example of Ibn ‘Umar. There are two opinions reported on the authority of Ahmad regarding touching the pulpit for blessings, the most famous one being that it is disliked; and this is also the opinion of the majority of scholars. Maalik and other scholars held that it is disliked to do such things, even if Ibn ‘Umar did it. This is because the senior Companions like Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, ‘Uthmaan, and others never did that. It was authentically reported that ‘Umar ibn Al-Khattaab  was traveling when he saw his companions going to a certain place to perform prayer successively. He inquired about it and people said, "It is a place where the Messenger of Allaah, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, had prayed." He said, "Are you trying to render the tracks of your Prophet places of worship; those who were before you were destroyed because of that. If prayer becomes due when someone is in that place, then let him pray there; otherwise, let him leave."

Ibn Taymiyyah  also said: "Scholars held different opinions regarding the permissibility of placing one's hand on the pulpit of the Messenger of Allaah, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, when it was there; Maalik and others disliked it because it is a religious innovation. It has been reported that when Maalik saw ‘Ataa’ doing that, he refused to learn at his hands …. On the other hand, Ahmad and other scholars permitted it because Ibn ‘Umar did so."

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https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/15830/permissible-and-impermissible-ways-to-seek-blessings

Question:

What are the permissible and the impermissible ways of seeking blessings?

Answer:

Seeking the blessings of something means hoping that good things will happen through proximity to that thing and through touching it. The only permissible ways to do this are through what is mentioned in the texts of the Sharee‘ah, since it is not a matter that is subject to Ijtihaad (personal derivation of rulings). The Sharee‘ah texts permit seeking the blessings of the following:

Entities: the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam , the water of Zamzam and the Black Stone.

Times: The month of Ramadan, the Night of Al-Qadr (decree) and the first ten days of the month of Thu'l-Hijjah.

Places: Makkah, Madeenah and Bayt Al-Maqdis (Jerusalem).

Acts: Prayer, fasting and Zakah (obligatory charity).

It is impermissible to seek blessings when they are sought from someone or something that is not mentioned in the Sharee‘ah texts, such as the following:

Entities: scholars and Awliyaa’ (allies of Allaah)

Times: the Night of Al-’Israa’ (the prophetic ascent to the heavens) and the Night of Al-Mawlid (night of the birth of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam)

Places: graves

Acts: religious innovations

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https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/348475/story-about-khaalid-ibn-al-waleed-seeking-blessing-in-prophets-hairs

Story about Khaalid ibn Al-Waleed seeking blessing in Prophet's hairs

Question:

Assalaam alaykum. I heard a story saying that Khaalid ibn Al-Waleed put hairs of prophet Muhammad, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam, under his helmet to obtain blessings; is that true?

Answer:

We have not come across the chain of narration of the story of Khaalid ibn Al-Waleed, may Allah be pleased with him, keeping hairs from the hair of the Prophet ; Ibn Katheer mentioned it in Al-Bidaayah wan-Nihaayah without mentioning any chain of narrators for it, but he introduced it with a wording that indicates that it is weak: “It was narrated that Khaalid's helmet fell off during the Battle of Al-Yarmook. He asked the people to help him find it, and he was every insistent on finding it. The people blamed him for this, so he said, ‘It has some of the hair from the forehead of the Prophet  and every time I went into the battle with it, Allah gave me victory.’”

However, there are authentic ahaadeeth which prove that the Companions used to seek blessing from the effects of the Prophet  like his hair and the water that he used to perform ablution, and those show that this is permissible.

Anas, may Allah be pleased with him, narrated the story of the Prophet  shaving his hair on the day of 'Eed-ul-Adhha (day of sacrifice) and said, “He called for the barber and, pointing towards the right side of his head, said, ‘(Start from) here,’ and he then distributed his hair among those who were near him. He then pointed to the barber (to shave) the left side, and he shaved it, and he gave (this hair) to Umm Sulaym (may Allah be pleased with her).” [Muslim and Ahmad]

Another narration reads, “He started with the right half (of his head), and he distributed it among the people, giving each one or two hairs. And then (he asked the barber) to shave the left side ... then he (the Prophet) said, ‘Here is Abu Talhah,’ and he gave it [all the remaining hair] to Abu Talhah.”

Besides, Abu Juhayfah, may Allah be pleased with him, narrated, “The Prophet  came to us at midday and water was brought for his ablution. After he had performed ablution, the people took the remaining water and wiped their bodies with it (as a blessing…”

There are other ahaadeeth that indicate that the Companions sought blessings from the effects of the Prophet . However, this seeking of blessing is peculiar to the Prophet .

The fatwa of the Standing Committee reads:

“Seeking blessing from righteous living people is an innovation, because the Companions did not do so among themselves, neither with the Four Rightly-Guided Caliphs, nor with other Companions, because it is a means to commit Shirk (polytheism), so it was an obligation to leave this matter. It may even amount to major Shirk if one believes that the righteous person can benefit or harm by himself, that he disposes of the affairs of the universe, and so forth. As regards what the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, did with the Prophet  such as seeking blessings in the water that he used to perform ablution, and with his hair, then this was from his  characteristics, because Allah put blessings in his body, his hair, and his sweat, but this does not apply to anyone else…”

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https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/350020/story-of-khaalid-seeking-blessing-in-prophets-hair

Story of Khaalid seeking blessing in Prophet's hair

My question is in regards to the hadeeth that is narrated about Khalid ibn Al-Waleed, who kept a hair of the prophet Muhammad, sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, in his hat, and that at one time he had lost his hat and started to worry, until he found it. The story goes as follows:
It was narrated that the great military leader among the Companions, Khalid ibn Al-Walid, took some of the hairs of the Prophet, sallallahu 'alayhi wa sallam, while the latter was shaving his head. He would kiss those locks and press them against his eyes out of reverence and love. He placed those hairs in the front of his cap, which he wore to every one of his battles thereafter, and later remarked, “I put them in the front of my cap, and I did not face any direction [in battle], except that victory would be granted for me there,” and in another narration, “I did not attend any battle except that I was given victory by means of them [ie. the blessed hairs].” [Ibn Kathir, Al-Bidayah wa An-Nihayah] Once, when his cap fell onto the battlefield in the thick of a great battle, he cried, “My cap! My cap!” and went after it at all costs. One of his kinsmen snatched it up from amidst the melee and returned it. When he was later chided for putting himself and his men at risk of losing their lives for a simple cap, Khalid, may Allaah be pleased with him, responded that it was not the cap he wanted, but that it contained the blessed hairs.
What is the authenticity of this hadeeth, is it authentic (Saheeh) or weak (Da‘eef), or is it fabricated?

Answer:

We have not come across the chain of narrators of this story. Ibn Katheer  cited it in his book Al-Bidaayah wa An-Nihaayah without mentioning its chain of narrators, and he reported it in a manner that indicates that it is weak, as he said, “It was narrated that Khaalid ibn Al-Waleed's helmet once fell off (his head) during the Battle of Yarmook, so he urged the people to help him find it, and he was later blamed for this, so he said: ‘It has some of the hair from the front part of the head of the Prophet  and every time I went to battle with it, Allah gave me victory.’”

The only person who reported this story was Muhammad ibn ‘Umar Al-Waaqidi, and the scholars considered him a very weak narrator, to the extent that Imaam Ahmad and others considered him a liar. Al-Waaqidi reported it in his book Futooh Ash-Shaam, as he said:

“The helmet of Khaalid ibn Al-Waleed fell off his head, so he shouted, ‘My helmet! May Allah have mercy upon you (people)!’ A man from his people who was from the Banu Makhzoom tribe picked it up and handed it to him, so Khaalid took it and wore it. Then afterwards it was said to him, ‘You were in such a condition in battle, and you insisted on finding your helmet!’ Khaalid said, ‘When the Prophet  shaved his head in the Farewell Hajj, I took some of his hairs, and he asked me, 'What are you going to do with those, O Khaalid?' I replied, 'I will seek blessings from them, O Messenger of Allah, and I will seek their help in fighting my enemies,' so the Prophet  said to me, 'You will be victorious as long as they are with you,' so I kept them in the front of my helmet. I never confronted an enemy except that they were defeated with the blessings of the Messenger of Allah .’ Then he fastened them with a red band… ”

Seeking blessing from the traces of the Prophet  is permissible, and it is proven in many hadeeth that the Companions sought blessings from his traces.

For instance, Abu Juhayfah, may Allah be pleased with him, narrated: “The Prophet  came to us at noon, and water for ablution was brought to him. After he had performed ablution, the remaining water was taken by the people and they started wiping it over their bodies. The Prophet  then offered two Rak‘ahs (units of prayer) for the Thuhr prayer and then two Rak‘ahs for the ‘Asr prayer (as he was traveling).”

Abu Moosa said, “The Prophet  asked for a container with water, so he washed his hands and face and then spat in it and said to them (Abu Moosa and Bilaal), ‘Drink from it, and splash water from it on your faces and your necks.’” [Al-Bukhaari]

Sahl ibn Sa‘d, may Allah be pleased with him, narrated that he heard the Prophet  on the day of (the battle of) Khaybar say, “I will give the flag to a person at whose hands Allah will grant victory.” So the Companions got up, wishing eagerly to see to whom the flag would be given, and every one of them wished to be given the flag. But the Prophet asked for ‘Ali. Someone informed him that he was suffering from eye-trouble. So he ordered them to bring ‘Ali in front of him. Then the Prophet  spat in his eyes, and his eyes were cured immediately, as if he had never had any eye-trouble.” [Al-Bukhaari and Muslim]

Jaabir, may Allah be pleased with him, narrated:

“When the Trench was dug, I saw the Prophet  in the state of severe hunger. So I returned to my wife and said, ‘Have you got anything (to eat)?’ [And they had very little food]… Then the Prophet  raised his voice and said, ‘O people of the Trench! Jaabir has prepared a meal, so let us go.’ The Prophet  said to me, ‘Do not put down your meat pot (from the fireplace) or bake your dough till I come.’ So I went (to my house), and Allah's Messenger  too, came, proceeding before the people. Then I brought the dough out to him, and he spat in it and invoked for Allah's blessings in it. Then he went towards our meat-pot and spat in it and invoked for Allah's Blessings in it. Then he said (to my wife), ‘Call a lady-baker to bake along with you, and keep on taking out scoops from your pot, and do not put it down from its fireplace.’ They were one thousand men (who took their meals), and I swear by Allah, they all ate until they left the food and went away, and our pot was still bubbling (full of meat) as if it had not decreased, and our dough was still being baked as if nothing had been taken from it.” [Al-Bukhaari and Muslim]

In the story of Al-Hudaybiyah, Al-Miswar ibn Makhramah and Marwaan ibn Al-Hakam narrated:

“…‘Urwah then started looking at the Companions of the Prophet  and said, ‘By Allah, whenever Allah's Messenger  spat, the spittle would fall in the hand of one of them (i.e. the Prophet's Companions), who would rub it on his face and skin; if he ordered them, they would carry out his orders immediately; if he performed ablution, they would struggle to take the remaining water; and when they spoke to him, they would lower their voices and would not look at his face constantly, out of respect. ‘Urwah returned to his people and said, ‘O people! By Allah, I have been in the presence of kings and Caesar, Khosrau, and An-Najaashi (Negus, King of Abyssinia), yet I have never seen any of them respected by his courtiers as much as Muhammad is respected by his Companions…” [Al-Bukhaari]

Anas ibn Maalik, may Allah be pleased with him, narrated, “The Prophet  once came to our house and took a nap, and he was sweating (in his sleep). My mother brought a little bottle and began to collect the sweat in it. The Prophet  woke up and said, ‘O Umm Sulaym, what is this that you are doing?’ Thereupon, she said, ‘This is your sweat, which we mix in our perfume, and it becomes the most fragrant perfume.’” [Muslim]

Seeking blessing with these traces is peculiar to the Prophet  and it is not permissible to seek blessings in the person or traces of any righteous people other than him.

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First of all, you should know that this story is not called a hadeeth but it is called an Athar (a report). The difference between a hadeeth and an Athar is that the hadeeth is the saying or action or tacit approval or manner that is attributed to the Prophet  whereas an Athar is more general; it may refer to what is attributed to the Prophet  and it may also refer to the actions or sayings that are attributed to the Companions and the Taabi‘een (generation that followed the companions).

The story of Khaalid with those hairs is not a hadeeth from the Prophet ; rather, it is an Athar.

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https://sacredfootsteps.com/2017/05/06/topkapis-forbidden-holy-chamber/

One of my main intentions, actually probably my only intention, when visiting the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, was to make my way to the Pavilion of the holy Mantle. For those who do not know, this pavilion houses some of the most precious and blessed belongings of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, most notably the Mantle itself. These relics arrived in Istanbul more than 500 years ago under the patronage of sultan Selim I, the father of sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, after his conquest of Egypt in in 1517 . He then had them placed in Topkapi Palace and assigned forty memorisers of the Quran to read over them 24 hours a day, a tradition which has continued for centuries and still remains.

This chamber was guarded as adamantly as the sultan himself. The key to the chest, which housed the Mantle, was kept by the sultan and was only opened on the 15th of Ramadan each year. There are historical accounts, that show just how auspicious an occasion this was. On this day, members of the family and entourage of the sultan, wore their finest garbs and musk, and made their way to the pavilion to simply kiss the Mantle through a piece of thin fabric that was placed on top of it. Their reverence for all things connected to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, really lifts the spirits! Even the dust that would gather on the relics was collected and stored, mixed with incense, and placed where the bodies of deceased sultans would be washed.

As I pressed my cheek against the adjoining window and glanced inside to see what lay ahead, there before my very eyes, in all their glory, stood the golden chests containing the blessed mantle and flag standard of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. This door led straight to the most sacred of relics; I was speechless.

It was a simple domed room with Ottoman lanterns and the names of the Companions and family of Prophet ﷺ at the base of the dome. The chests were surrounded by a golden enclosure, ornamented with passages from Dala’il al-Khayrat, and on the walls that surrounded this enclosure, were blue panels with inscription from Qasida al-Burdah. How befitting it is that the Ottoman’s used centuries old poems in praise of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ to surround their most sacred of rooms.

More information on above page

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https://www.theislamicmonthly.com/relics-in-islam/

2005

In his history, al-Tabari preserves an unusual report given on the authority of ‘Abd al-A’la ibn Maymun’s father, concerning the dying wishes of the first Umayyad Caliph Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan. When he became sick with the illness from which he died, Mu’awiya said:

The Apostle of God clomed me with a shirt (qamis) and I put it away. He pared his nails one day and I took die parings and placed them in a bottle. When I die, clothe me in that shirt, cut up and grind the parings, and scatter them on my eyes and mourn so that perhaps God might be merciful to me on account of me baraka of mese things.1

This report is also recorded in the pilgrimage guide of Ibn al-Hawrani, and a similar account is mentioned by Nasim al-Riyad in his commentary on the Shifa’ of Qadi ‘Iyyad who states that Mu’awiya had the hair and fingernails put into his mouth and nose.2

The transportation and distribution of hairs by the Companions is also known from records of burial, especially at sites of martyrdom and , conquest. According to Ibn al-Hawrani and alHarawi, Khalid ibn al-Walid was buried in Horns with a hair of the Prophet Muhammad which he wore pinned to his hat during his conquest of Damascus. Abu Zam’a al-Balawi, reported to have been one of the companions present when the Prophet distributed his hair, is buried in Qayrawan with the hairs he is said to have kept in his hat on the raid of the city under Mu’awiya ibn Hudayj. In another account cited by al-Dabbagh, al-Balawi is said to have had three hairs buried with him, one placed on his tongue and one on each of his eyes.3 Today the shrine is called the “Zawiya of Sidi Sahib” and is located just outside the city walls of Qayrawan. Other well-known figures are also reported to have been buried with hairs of the Prophet. Abu Sha’ra, for example, is buried in al-Zillaj in a spot marked with a dome. Ibn Hajar reports that the tomb of Ali ibn Muhammad al-Khalati (d.708) contained a hair of the Prophet Muhammad, and Anas ibn Malik is said to have requested that he be buried with a hair under his tongue. The Ikhshidid vizier Ja’far ibn Khinzaba had three hairs of the Prophet placed in his mouth when he was buried in Medina, and Nur al-Din willed that the hairs of the Prophet be placed on his eyes when he was buried in the madrasa he built in Damascus.4

SANDAL OF THE PROPHET

Related to these footprints is the preserved shoe or “sandal” of the Prophet, called the na’l al-nabi in most sources. Numerous literary descriptions of the sandal are known including accounts from Dhahabi, Qutb al-Din al-Halabi, and Ibn Hajar in his commentary on Bukhari. As the other relics of the Prophet, his sandals and their distribution are traced back to his earliest followers. One of the sandals originated with Umm Rulthum the daughter of Abu Bakr, and another was preserved in the Masjid al-Khalil.

Other reports demonstrate that the practice of venerating the sandal was known in North Africa and the Maghrib. In his history of Egypt, al-Nuwayri records that a sandal of the Prophet Muhammad was in the possession of Ahmad ibn ‘Uthman who was a descendant of the Companion Sulayman Abu al-Hadid. Ahmad ibn ‘Uthman asked that the sandal be placed on his eyes when he was buried.

This dispersal of the Sunna led to the necessity of traveling among the amsar in search of prophetic knowledge. The ömsarbecame repositories for the knowledge of the Prophet, and scholars were required to journey, often great distances and over periods of many years within the far-flung area encompassed by the Dar alHijra. Ibn Abi Hatim and other scholars, such as Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi, show that the authority of the Shari’a was based on its physical link to the practice of the PropheL This travel also entailed the establishment of solid chains of transmission which affirmed the authority of those who could trace their knowledge back to the Prophet himself. As such, the hadith reports transmitted and collected by early scholars constituted the textual remains, or a class of textual relics, of the Prophet Muhammad. Other non-textual, physical relics like the hair, fingernails, footprints, and clothing functioned like these textual relics in that they were a tangible connection between the time of the Prophet and contemporary beliefs and practices.

RELICS AS SYMBOLS

The symbolic character of such relics is illustrated by a fatwa from the Maliki scholar Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Wansharisi. In response to a question about the permissibility of visiting a shrine which houses a sandal of the Prophet (na’l karamd), al-Wansharisi states that there is no sensible reason to venerate a shoe. If this relic (athar) is considered great and sacred, it is not because it has any particular form nor any particular smell, but because a person considers it great on account of his [the Prophet’s] sacred character, from its connection to his noble house.10 After this, al-Wansharisi goes on to cite a number of hadith reports concerning the veneration of objects. Permission for people to wear, touch, and wipe the shoe relic is based upon this veneration focusing the mind of the visitor on the Prophet Muhammad and the sacred places where he walked. It is about bringing to mind the temporal and physical distance separating the visitor and the Prophet at the time and place when he was wearing the shoe, gone now from the person doing the veneration.

The relics of the Prophet are ordinary items the dispersal and collection of which, in the absence of the Prophet himself, seem to be a reflection of the demarcation of territory and authority. Hair, footprints, and other artifacts of the Prophet are used in the foundation of buildings, such as mosques and madrasas, which are physical manifestations of the territorial distribution of Islam and of the preserved chain of transmission from the Prophet. These buildings are designated for the transmission of the example of the PropheL just as the acquisition of hadith was necessitated by the dispersal of the Prophet’s knowledge. The amsar were founded upon the example of the Prophet and became civilizational centers as repositories for the dispersed remains of the Prophet. Footprints and other artifacts marked the tombs of special individuals and classes which had authority in the Daral-Hijra, such as sultans, jurists, saints, and martyrs. As such, the Prophet Muhammad’s relics served to mark and signify the territorial boundaries of civilization and the law of the revelation.

https://www.ahlus-sunna.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=112

45 Hadiths explained that verify people seeking blessings from the Prophet saw or his belongings.

https://www.ahlus-sunna.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=112

https://islam.ru/en/content/story/tabarruk-relics

Several hadiths about blessings

Tabarruk means blessed. In special terms, it means to obtain blessing from the pious.  We, the Ahl as-Sunna, say that tabarruk is proved from the Qur'an and Sunna and thus is permissible;

Proof from the Qur'an



Allah Most High says in the Qur'an:

"And their Prophet said to them: 'The sign of his kingship is that there would come to you an ark in which there is tranquility of hearts from your Lord, and there is something left of the relics of the respectable Musa and the respectable Harun, the angels raising it would bring. No doubt, in it there is a great sign for you if you believe"

[Sura al-Baqara, verse 248]

Hafiz Ibn Kathir and Qadi Shawkani write:

"In the box there was Musa's and Harun's clothes, Musa's stick, and pieces of the Old Testament and some things of the previous Prophets, which had touched their bodies. When Banu Isra'il went to war they took that box with them and they used to win"

[Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir; Qadi Shawkani, Tafsir Fath al-Qadir]

From the above, it has been proved that it is permissible to keep the possessions of the pious for blessings.

Hafiz Ibn Taymiyya states:

"Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal was asked,'Is it permitted to do masa [wipe one's hands] over the mimbar of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) or to touch the mimbar for blessing?' He replied, 'Yes it is permitted.''Abdullah ibn 'Umar, Sa'id ibn al-Musayyid, Yahya ibn Sa'id, and other great scholars of Madinah used to do masa of the mimbar"

[Iqtida as-Sirat al-Mustaqim, page 203]

Hafiz Ibn Kathir writes:

"When Hafiz Ibn Taymiyya passed away some people came and gathered around him and sat close to his body to obtain blessing from him. Also a group of women came and they drank from the water that was left over after bathing him to get blessing from it as tabarruk. The left over leaves of a tree which were also used in bathing him were distributed among themselves for the purpose of tabarruk. Whatever touched his body, such as his handkerchief or scarf which he wore round his neck, was sold for a large amount of money, to someone to keep as tabarruk. People used to come day and night to his grave, and some people use to even spend the night there'"

[Ta'rikh Ibn Kathir, chapter on 'Death of Ibn Taymiya']

https://islam.ru/en/content/story/tabarruk-relics

Allama Jalaluddin Suyuti (alaihir rahmah) says that on the basis of kissing the Hajar-e-Aswad, some spiritual Scholars have deduced the permissibity of kissing the graves of the Awliya Allah and other saintly personages. (Tausheekh)

Kissing the Holy Kaaba, the Holy Quran and the pages of the Ahadith is not only permissible (Ja iz) but also as a source of blessings especially in times of distress and need f or assistance in battles in the way of Allah. The Holy Qur an proves this. At one place i n Surah Baqarah, verse 248, it is said: "And their Prophet said to the Children of Bani Isra il that the Token (Symbol or Sign) of the kingdom of Talut is that there shall come unto you the Ark (Taboot) wherein is peace of reasurance from your Lord Allah, and a remnant (relic) which the House of Musa and the House of Haroon have left behind, carried by the Angels. In this there is Sign for those who believe".

The word "Taboot" (Ark) is meant the wooden box made of the Sesame wood containing the pictures of the Messengers of Allah (not drawn by human hands, but Divine semblances together with the drawings of the their holy houses). The famous Staff (Asaa) of Sayyiduna Musa (alaihis salaam), his clothes, sandals (Nalain), the Staff (Asaa) of Sayyiduna Haroon (alaihis salaam) and his turban (Amamah). It is said that when ever the Bani Isra il were engaged in battles against their enemies they used to carry these relics along with them up to the battlefield and keeping them in front of them they prayed for success and victory in the battle as a source of Divine Help.

This clearly establishes that receiving blessings from the relics is the Sunnat of the Messengers of Allah. (Khazin, Ruhul Bayan, Madarik, Jalalain)

In Surah Yusuf we learn that when Sayyiduna Yaqub (alaihis salaam) sent Sayyiduna Yusuf (alaihis salaam) along with his brothers, he rolled the shirt of Sayyiduna Ibrahim (alaihis salaam) as an amulet and and kept it under the clothes of Sayyiduna Yusuf (alaihis salaam) as a token of blessing and safety from any danger. (Tafsir-e-Khazin, Madarik, Ruhul Bayan, Tafsir-e-Kabeer)#

The blessings of the Zam Zam is so due to the fact that it had sprung up by the tramping of the holy feet of the infant Sayyiduna Ismail (alaihis salaam) who was then feeling thirsty.

The dignity and veneratiion of the Maqam-e-Ibrahim within the four walls of the Khana-e-Kaaba is because of Sayyiduna Ibrahim (alaihis salaam). The Holy Quran commands us to make our place of worship where Ibrahim stood for prayer. (Surah Baqarah: 125)

The Holy City of Makka was given the honour and dignity as being the dwelling place of the Holy Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) to such a high degree of honour and Almighty Allah swore by its dignity as mentioned in the opening verse of the Surah Balad.

This clearly establishes that receiving blessings from the relics is the Sunnat of the Messengers of Allah. (Khazin, Ruhul Bayan, Madarik, Jalalain)

A number of hadiths and reports cited......................

From these Ahadith it can be gathered that to use the things of the pious is the Sunnat of the Companions. These things carry blessings because of their having been in use of the pious who were the chosen servants of Allah.

Sayyiduna Imam Maalik (alaihir rahmah) lived all his life in Madina Shareef. With the exception of the time of illness, he never answered the call of nature inside the boundaries of Madina. Sayyiduna Shah Abdul Aziz Muhaddith-e-Dehlwi (alaihir rahmah) states: "Imam Maalik (alaihir rahmah) used to be very conscious concerning the (respect and honour) of Madina Munawwarah. It is said that in his entire life, he never sat in the boundaries of Madina Munawwarah to answer the call of nature. He used to go outside the boundaries of Madina, except during illness and in great need." (Bustaanul Muhaditheen)

Imam Maalik (alaihir rahmah) used to sit in Madina on his mount and say, "I am ashamed before Allah that I am trodding the hooves of a horse on this ground where the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) is resting." (Shifa Shareef)

Allama Qaazi Ayaaz (alaihir rahmah) states: "One type of the respect of the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) is this that any place or thing that is associated to the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) that place where the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) kept his blessed feet, Makkah Mu'azzama, Madina Munawwarah, the blessed house of the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam), that place where the Prophet (salall laahu alaihi wasallam) used to visit often, and that object which was touched by the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) or that thing which is recognised throught the Prophet (salall laahu alaihi wasallam) all such things should be respected." (Shifa Shareef)

The Ulema and the A imma have requested that the Naalain Shareef (Sandals) of the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) to be printed on paper and in books. They have commanded that it be kissed, rubbed over the eyes and kept on the head. It can be used as mediation, cure for illness and has great blessings.

Khaatimul Muffasireen, Allama Ismaeel Haqqi (alaihir rahmah), states the following in commentary of this verse concerning the Khirqah (religious dress of mendicant): "Faqeer says that this Khirqah wearing is the way of the Mashaaikh-e-Kiraam (radi Allahu anhuma). These personalities wear the Khirqah for the gaining of blessings. These people do this due to Ilhaam (Divine Message) from Allah. No one has the right to object to this as it will be improper and..............

Imam Maalik (alaihir rahmah) used to sit in Madina on his mount and say, "I am ashamed before Allah that I am trodding the hooves of a horse on this ground where the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) is resting." (Shifa Shareef)

Allama Qaazi Ayaaz (alaihir rahmah) states: "One type of the respect of the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) is this that any place or thing that is associated to the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) that place where the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) kept his blessed feet, Makkah Mu'azzama, Madina Munawwarah, the blessed house of the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam), that place where the Prophet (salall laahu alaihi wasallam) used to visit often, and that object which was touched by the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) or that thing which is recognised throught the Prophet (salall laahu alaihi wasallam) all such things should be respected." (Shifa Shareef)

The Ulema and the A imma have requested that the Naalain Shareef (Sandals) of the Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) to be printed on paper and in books. They have commanded that it be kissed, rubbed over the eyes and kept on the head. It can be used as mediation, cure for illness and has great blessings.

Khaatimul Muffasireen, Allama Ismaeel Haqqi (alaihir rahmah), states the following in commentary of this verse concerning the Khirqah (religious dress of mendicant): "Faqeer says that this Khirqah wearing is the way of the Mashaaikh-e-Kiraam (radi Allahu anhuma). These personalities wear the Khirqah for the gaining of blessings. These people do this due to Ilhaam (Divine Message) from Allah. No one has the right to object to this as it will be improper and

Some people say that the pictures of the Nalain Mubarak (Sandals) of the Holy Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) are doubtful, that these pictures are made of the local ink and paper. Το kiss this picture is not permissible. The picture of the Nalain Mubarak is the photocopy of the holy Sandals, which were used by the Holy Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam) in his life. It bears the description and the related story connected with it. We pay respect to the Holy Quran which is printed on paper with the ink or colour used in its printing. Both the paper and the ink are locally manufactured and these were not brought from the Heaven. But we give due reverence to it believing it as the print of the Holy Quran and no other book. The respect paid to the printed Quran is in fact the respect paid to the Holy Quran, which was revealed to the Holy Prophet (sallal laahu alaihi wasallam).

After examining all the narrations and quotations, it is clear that in every era the respect of the Tabarukaat was in progress. The Sahaba-e-Kiraam, Akaabireen, A'imma-e-Mujtahideen, Awliyah,..... always respected and honoured the tabrukaat.



Again, it is reported that the Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) used to go to Jannatul-Baqi in order to greet those who were buried there saying: "Peace be upon you, 0 abode of the faithful! God willing, we should soon join you. O Allah! Forgive the fellows of al-Baqi". Thus visiting the graves is the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) Permission for visiting the graves of Muslims was given by the Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) and the hadiths are too well-known.

It is significant to note that the Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) used to visit the grave of his beloved mother, Bibi Amana about whose spiritual rank a separate article is required. The Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) said: "My mother saw, when she gave birth to me, a light that illuminated the palaces of Bosra." (Ibn Sa'd, Ahmad, Bazzar, Tabarani, Abu Nu'aym, and ibn Asakir) On visiting her grave at Abwa, the Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) used to weep much so that those who had accompanied him (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) there also wept (Sahih Muslim). In this Book of Hadiths, it is also reported that the Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) taught Aisha the manners of visiting graves and the way of greeting the dead.

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looking at my sacred Fount [al-Kauthar] now, and no doubt, I have been given the keys of the treasures of the world. By Allah, I am not afraid that you will worship others along with Allah, but I am afraid that you will envy and fight one another for worldly fortunes." (Bukhari, Vol.2, 428) In Shu'ab al-Imaan, Bayhaqi has narrated that the Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) used to visit the graveyard of the martyrs of Uhud annually.

In the same book Bayhaqi has also recorded a hadith that says: The Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) has said: "Whoever visits the graves of his parents or the grave of one of them on every Friday, he will be forgiven and his name will be written among the pious ones." The Holy Quran only prohibits the visiting of the graves of the Munafiqeen (Hypocrites): "And do not even pray for any one of them who dies, nor stand at his grave; (for) verily they disbelieved in Allah and His Messenger and they died in state of perverse wickedness" (Quran: 9:84). From this, the Ulema of the four madhabs have unanimously deduced the contrary position that standing at the graves of muslims is permissible.

According to the noted Arabian scholar from Makkah, Muhammad ibn Alawi al-Maliki-Makki (May Allah grant him Jannatul Firdaus):

Respecting and loving the signs or symbols of Allah is definitely loving Allah. Respecting and loving those whom Allah loves definitely means loving Allah.

Respecting and loving Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) and his relatives or near and dear ones is, again, loving Allah and his Messenger (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam): Say: "No reward do I ask of you for this except the love of those near of kin." According to many commentators of the Holy Qur'an, Ibn Abbas narrated: When the above verse (42:23) was revealed, the companions asked: "0' the Messenger of Allah! Who are those near kin whose love Allah has made obligatory for us?" Upon that the Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) said: "Ali, Fatimah, and their two sons, repeating this sentence thrice. Sayyid Muhyuddin Ibn Al-Arabi too is of the same view, and adds the children of Hasnain to the interpetation. Maulana Maudoodi differs saying that when the verse was revealed in Makkah, Hazrat Ali and Fatimah were not married and no children were born to them then. According to some interpretation the same meaning is extended to the entire tribe of Quraish: Narrated Tawus: Ibn 'Abbas recited the Quranic Verse: 'Except to be kind to me for my kin-ship to you" (42.23) Said bin Jubair said, "(The Verse implies) the kinship of Muhammad." Ibn 'Abbas said, "There was not a single house (i.e. sub-tribe) of Quraish but had a kinship to the Prophet and so the above Verse was revealed in this connection, and its interpretation is: '0 Quraish! You should keep good relation between me (i.e. Muhammad) and you." Ibn Kathir point out in his Tafseer the conversation between Imam Zayn al Abidin (who had been captured after Karbala) and a man in Syria that this Ayat referred to them who were the Ahle Bayt. This is held by other scholars too, including al-Tabarani and many others. In short, loving the Ahle-Bayt who are the descendents of the Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam), too, ic ohlinatory for the Muslime according to the ullema.

THE EWS DON'T GIVE THE PROPHET'S SAW'S FAMILY THE PROMINENCE THEY SHOULD, ESPECIALLY IN SA AND MECCA WHICH ARE SUPPOSED TO SET THE EXAMPLE FOR THE ENTIRE MUSLIM WORLD.... INSTEAD THEY ELEVATE WAHHABS FAMILY AS THE PREMIER FAMILY IN THE HEART OF ISLAM,

But then do we really care for the symbols of Allah? The house where the Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) received the word of God is gone and nobody cares. Islamic history and civilization has been sought to be buried by those who were supposed to protect them. According to past reports over 300 historic sites of Islamic importance have been lost forever in the Province of Hejaz. By 2006

alone, more than 90 per cent of historic masjids, tombs and mausoleums and other artefacts were razed, so that some voices from the Hejaz, have begun to question the wisdom of the eradication of the country's historic wealth. Included in the destruction are: the al-Ma'la graveyard where there were the graves of Khadija®, Abdul Muttalib and Abu Talib, the wife, the grandfather and the uncle of Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) respectively; razing of the graveyard of Jannatul Baqi and the graveyard of Uhud martyrs, including the grave of Hamza ibn 'Abd al Mutallib), Prophet Muhammad's (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) uncle; Badar is a heap of rubbles; the grave of the son of Imam Ja'far Saadiq; the grave of Hazrat Abdallah the father of Holy Prophet ((Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) was also dug up in January 1978 at Madinah but the body was found fresh and perfumed and so the Muslims buried it at at Jannatul Baqi (Daily Nawa-e-Waqt of 21st January 1978); desecration of the grave of Hazrat Aamina, the mother of Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam); the site of Ghazwa-e-Khandaq has been reduced to a road; demolition of the famous seven Masjids of Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Ali, Salman Farsi, Fatimah the daughter of Mohammed (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam), al Qiblatayn, al Fath, and other Masjids including that of Saad ibne Maaz; the dar al-arqam the first school where Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) taught; the historical house where the Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) Hazrat Khadijra® lived for 28 years including the 13 years of revelations, and historical house of Umme Haanee whence the Miraj began, both of which were destroyed to make way for toilets and washrooms; house of Abu Dharr Ghiffari across the Masjidun Nabvi is no more; the well in the courtyard of Masjid al-Quba as well as the date-palm garden are no longer there; near the Haram Shareef, the place of the miracle of     

was found icon allu per ulicu cu alu SU LIC MUS ע כווובricu IL OL OL Jamiatul DayI

(Daily Nawa-e-Waqt of 21st January 1978); desecration of the grave of Hazrat Aamina, the mother of Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam); the site of Ghazwa-e-Khandaq has been reduced to a road; demolition of the famous seven Masjids of Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Ali, Salman Farsi, Fatimah the daughter of Mohammed (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam), al Qiblatayn, al Fath, and other Masjids including that of Saad ibne Maaz the dar al-arqam the first school where Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) taught; the historical house where the Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) Hazrat Khadijra lived for 28 years including the 13 years of revelations, and historical house of Umme Haanee whence the Miraj began, both of which were destroyed to make way for toilets and washrooms; house of Abu Dharr Ghiffari across the Masjidun Nabvi is no more; the well in the courtyard of Masjid al-Quba as well as the date-palm garden are no longer there; near the Haram Shareef, the place of the miracle of splitting of the moon and the historical al-Hilal Masjid were demolished and a royal palace constructed; historical Masjid Muhammadar Rasool (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) at Taif was set on fire in which the furniture and many copies of Holy Quran were burnt; the pulpits of the four Madhabs in the Haram Shareef were destroyed and the righteous banned from teaching while those who shouted right in Masjidun Nabvi that father and mother of the Prophet (s) are in hellfire, and charged the Muslims with Shirk, apostasy, calling them deviants and innovators, were promoted. Destructions have been exported elsewhere too as far as Bosnia, Chechanya, Pakistan, India and other places. For example, in 2006 с.е., there was desecration of the grave of Hashim ibn 'Abd Manaf, Prophet Muhammad's grandfather, in the Palestinian city of Gaza.

Allah says in the Holy Qur'an: "But none rejects Our Signs, except only the perfidious, ungrateful (wretch)." (31:32)

Strange, isn't it? That Allah should teach us a lesson in drawing our attention to His symbols and making us observe certain rites for preserving the significance of those symbols in honour of his beloved servants for posterity while some of his creature should destroy the Islamic symbols, heritage, architecture, to humiliate our noble ancestors who are the pride of Islam under the semblance of "Shirk" thus giving rise to a sense of rootlessnes, alienation and humiliation to the majority Muslim Ummah. Now, everywhere we turn there we find what not to do. The list of 'bidah' and 'shirk' keeps on growing longers and what we should do keeps on growing lesser. But there is no check on the rampant commercialization of the areas of Islamic sites where large hotels, giant skyscrapers, huge parking lots, banking facilies and needless concrete jungles are invading the sanctity of the two holiest cities of Islam.

Pursuit of material wealth and possessions and dedication to riches have become tantamount to devotion or 'Ibaadah'. Why not destruct this symbol of mammonism? Please spare us the humiliation of destruction of Islamic symbols!

It was during the Night Journey to Jerusalem that Holy Prophet (Salla Allahu Ta'ala Alayhi Wa Sallam) offered two rakah prayers at various places such as ....... then at Mount Sinai (Toor)  where Moses used to speak with Allah; then at Bethlehem whereJesus was born:... so why did he saw (s) offer those prayers? This signifies that the places associated with men of God ans pious personalities also have Islamic values for sure, and these cannot be destroyed on the pretext of "Shirk".

It was Umar who took part in the work of restoring Masjid Al-Aqsa, which had been in ruins, and he carried dirt in his own robe. when the site was cleansed........ he and the followers prayed near the rock from which the Prophet saw had ascended to heaven during the night of Miraj.

the symbols of Allah uplift the spirit, bear witness to the glory of Islam, and remind of Allah and his beloved servants.

https://questionsonislam.com/question/tabarruk-expecting-barakah-abundance-things-permissible

Is tabarruk, expecting barakah (abundance) from things permissible? Evidences from the Quran about tabarruk



Tabarruk means to want barakah (abundance). It means to attain barakah through something. We can explain it in a more detailed way as follows: To show respect to the things belonging to a person or to the place where he lived due to the love felt toward him is expressed with the word Tabarruk.

When we deal with the issue of tabarruk, we will concentrate on the blessed beard of the Prophet. For, in our country, the thing that is visited the most with the intention of tabarruk is the blessed beard of the Prophet. Unfortunately, those who visit the blessed beard of the Prophet are accused of polytheism (shirk) by some people. This Wahhabi mentality, which regards tabarruk as polytheism, rejects the respect shown to holy things and label those who show respect to them as polytheists (mushriks).

Inshaallah, we will definitely prove how wrong the Wahhabi mentality is.

EVINDENCES FROM THE QURAN ABOUT TABARRUK

FIRST EVIDENCE

Tabarruk of Sons of Israel with the Ark, the chapter of al-Baqara, verse 248

The first Quranic evidence that we will mention to show that tabarruk is permissible is the ark that is mentioned in verse 248 of the chapter of al-Baqara. First, let us summarize the incident narrated on page 39:

Sons of Israel went to their prophet and asked to send them a king. They promised that they would fight in the way of Allah with this prophet. Allah sent them a person called Talut as their king. However, Talut was poor; therefore, Sons of Israel did not want to accept him as the king. They said they deserved to be the king more than Talut. 

Thereupon, their prophet said to them:

  إِنَّ آيَةَ مُلْكِهِ A Sign of his authority is that أَن يَأْتِيَكُمُ التَّابُوتُ there shall come to you the Ark of the covenant فِيهِ سَكِينَةٌ مِن رَبِّكُمْ with (an assurance) therein of security from your Lord.

What is in that ark? Security (sakina) from your Lord.

Sakina: means material and spiritual abundance. That ark had such sakina. Sons of Israel attained Allah's mercy and barakah (abundance) with that ark.

According to what is stated in tafsirs of Fakhrurrazi, Abussuud, Hazin, Qurtubi and Alusi, when Sons of Israel went astray and disobeyed Allah Almighty, He inflicted the tribe of Amaliqa upon them. This tribe took the ark from them. Afterwards, Allah Almighty sent the ark to Sons of Israel through His angels as a sign of the kingdom of Talut. The phraseتَحْمِلُهُ الْمَلآئِكَةُ  carried by angelsmentioned in the verse shows that the ark was brought to them by angels who carried it. 

We refer the details of the story to tafsir books. What we need to know here is as follows:

There is an ark with which Sons of Israel makes tabarruk. As the Quran puts it, فِيهِ سَكِينَةٌ مِن رَبِّكُمْthere is security in it from your Lord. They attain sakina, that is, blessings and abundance, due to this ark. Afterwards, this ark is removed from them due to their sins; later, it is returned to Sons of Israel by being carried by angels as a sign of the kingdom of Talut. Let us analyze this ark, which is a means of barakah, in detail: 

An ark, that is a piece of wood, can bring about material and spiritual barakah and blessings with divine permission. Those who show respect to it can benefit from its barakah and blessings. And Allah wants Sons of Israel to show respect to it. When people cease to respect it, Allah removes it from them.

It is necessary to understand the following point: Barakah and blessings do not belong to the ark. They were placed in it by Allah. Every barakah, boon and grant come from the treasure of Allah. There is nobody except Him that can own grant. However, Allah does things based on reasons/causes in this world of wisdom. He places fruit on the branch of the tree. He sends milk through the udders of cows. He sends down water through clouds. He presents us with vegetables through the ground. Every boon comes to us through a reason. 

Real belief is not denying the reason but seeing Allah’s hand of mercy on it. The one who denies the reason is deprived of mercy. 

In the verse that we interpreted, the ark that is mentioned is only a means. The sakinah in the ark does not belong to it. The owner of it is only Allah. However, Allah made that ark a reason and a means for His barakah and blessings.   

Then, what is necessary to do here is not burning the ark on behalf of oneness but showing respect to that ark on behalf of Allah and knowing that the sakinah in it comes from Allah. This is both oneness and reasoning. Now, we will ask those who deny tabarruk some questions:

We ask those who deny tabarruk the following questions:

- Allah can place blessing and abundance in an ark, a piece of wood and make it a means of His mercy. Those who show respect to it attain Allah’s mercy. You read about it in the Quran. Does a piece of blessed hair from the beard of the Prophet not have as much value as a piece of wood in the eye of Allah?

- Those who show respect to an ark on behalf of Allah attain sakina; why should those who show respect to the blessing beard of the Prophet on behalf of Allah not have sakina?

- Showing respect to the ark is not regarded as polytheism (shirk); why should respect to the blessing beard of the Prophet (pbuh) be regarded as polytheism?

I think that you would have called those who showed respect to the ark polytheists if you had lived at that time and you would have burned the ark as soon as you had the opportunity. Your mind is not so good. Therefore, you call those who visit the blessed beard of the Prophet (pbuh) polytheists.

I am asking you: Why should Our Lord, who placed blessing and abundance in an ark, not place blessing and abundance in the hair taken from his beard and make it a means of His mercy?

We regard the blessed beard when we visit it as the ark in the verse. The beard is not the real owner of theblessing and abundance. Every blessing and abundance come from the treasure of Allah. However, Allah sends blessing to His slaves sometimes through a beard, sometimes through a tree, sheep and cloud in this material world and sometimes through a different reason.

Oneness does not mean to deny reasons/causes. Oneness means to see the creator of the causes/reasons, that is, Allah. This is the real oneness. You are so distant from the real oneness that you deny reasons on behalf of oneness and ignore reasoning. 

O those who regard visiting the blessed beard of the prophet as polytheism!Answer my questions now:

1. Would Allah have placed sakina in that ark if it were haram to show respect to things with the intention of tabarruk?

2. Would He have ordered them to show respect to the ark?

3. Would He have removed the ark from them as a punishment for their disrespect?

4. Would he have returned the ark to them after they had lost it as a sign of the kingdom of Talut?

It is possible to show respect even to an ark on condition that barakah is known to have come from Allah. In that case, it is possible to show respect to the blessed beard of the Prophet, which is much more valuable than the ark in the eye of Allah, on condition that barakah is known to have come from Allah. Since showing respect to the ark is not regarded as polytheism, showing respect to the blessed beard of the Prophet (pbuh) will never be regarded as polytheism.

SECOND EVIDENCE

Tabarruk of Hz. Yaqub with the shirt, the chapter of Yusuf, verse 93

The second Quranic verse that we will show for the permissibility of tabarruk is the incident narrated in verse 93 of the chapter of Yusuf. The summary of the incident is as follows:

Hz. Yaqub lost his eyesight due to the sorrow caused by being away from his son, Hz. Yusuf. Hz. Yusuf, who became the prime minister in Egypt, found his brothers and father years later and learned from them that his father became blind. Hz. Yusuf, said to his brothers:

 اِذْهَبُوا بِقَمِيصِي هَـذَا Go with this my shirt فَأَلْقُوهُ عَلَى وَجْهِ أَبِي  and cast it over the face of my father: يَأْتِ بَصِيرًا  he will come to see (clearly). 

Hz. Yusuf's brothers took the shirt and returned to their father. The Quran expresses this scene as follows:

  فَلَمَّا أَن جَاء الْبَشِيرُ  Then when the bearer of the good news came, أَلْقَاهُ عَلَى وَجْهِهِ  He cast (the shirt) over his face, فَارْتَدَّ بَصِيرًا and he forthwith regained clear sight.

As you can see clearly in the verse, Hz. Yaqub wiped Hz. Yusuf's shirt on his face and was healed.

Let us analyze the verses in a more detailed way and make those who deny tabarruk see some points clearly.

When Hz. Yusuf found out that his father was blind, he sent his shirt to him and asked him to wipe it on his face. In other words, Hz. Yusuf asked his father to use his shirt as a means of healing. This is the meaning of sending his shirt. Hz. Yaqub accepted it and wiped his face with the shirt with the intention of being healed.

Now, we ask those who deny tabarruk the following question:

- Is there a physical relationship between a shirt and healing of eyes? There is definitely no physical relationship. That is, a shirt does not have the property to enable eyes to see. Then, why did Hz. Yusuf send this shirt? Why did he not just open his hands and pray for his father? Why did he use the shirt as a means and send it with the intention of tabarruk? Why did he want his father to use the shirt as a means?

If tabarruk is shirk, does Hz. Yusuf – God forbid – invite his father to shirk? What about Hz. Yaqub? He wipes his face with the shirt. That is, he uses the shirt as a means of healing. If it were not permissible to use things for tabarruk, Hz. Yaqub would probably have said, "I will not apply to anything for tabarruk in order to be healed. It is shirk. I will only pray." He should have said something like that. However, he did not speak like that; he used the shirt as a means of tabarruk. It means tabarruk is permissible.

Besides, tabarruk means to use an object as a means by expecting the result from Allah Almighty. It is like the following example: A person goes to see a doctor; his going to see a doctor is an actual prayer. He takes the medicine given by the doctor with the intention of healing; taking the medicine is also an actual prayer. That is, when he takes the medicine, he thinks as follows:

"O Lord! Healing comes only from You. You are the only Healer. I go to see the doctor and take the medicine because You order us to act in accordance with reasons/causes. I obeyed Your order by going to see the doctor and taking this medicine. I know that the doctor and the medicine cannot heal me. Healing comes from Your treasure."

A person who goes to see the doctor and takes the medicine believes and should believe like that; similarly, Hz. Yaqub believed like that and applied tabarruk by thinking as follows:

"O Lord! You are the one who closed my eyes and You are the one who will open them. Even if all of the doctors of the world came together, they could not open my eyes without Your permission. I use Hz. Yusuf's shirt as a means of healing and ask you to heal my eyes."

This is the intention of Hz. Yaqub. For, a person who applies tabarruk does not expect barakah from the object. He regards that object as a means for Allah's mercy. This is what the people who deny tabarruk does not understand. After these explanations, let us ask those who deny tabarruk some questions:

We ask those who deny tabarruk the following question: A shirt, a piece of fabric, becomes honorable by touching the body of Hz. Yusuf and becomes a means of barakah like making a blind person see again.

- Are the hairs from the blessed body of the Prophet (pbuh) not as valuable the shirt of Hz. Yusuf?

- Why should our Lord, who made a piece of fabric a means of healing for the sake of Hz. Yusuf's sincerity, not make the blessed beard of the Prophet a means of mercy and barakah for the sake of his prophethood?

- Why do you call visiting the blessed beard of the Prophet shirk by regarding the explanations above unreasonable?

We also want to ask the following question:

- If it is shirk to show respect to objects with the intention of tabarruk, why did Hz. Yusuf send his shirt to his father and asked his father to wipe his face with the shirt? Did Hz. Yusuf commit a deed – God forbid – that was shirk?

- Why did Hz. Yaqub wipe his face with the shirt? Why did Hz. Yaqub use the shirt as a means of healing?

- If taking refuge in things with the intention of tabarruk were shirk, would Hz. Yaqub have wiped his face with the shirt? Or, do you know belief and oneness better than Hz. Yusuf and Hz. Yaqub?

What is the difference between Hz. Yaqub's wiping his face with the shirt and our kissing the blessed beard of the Prophet? There is no difference between them. If using a shirt as a means of tabarruk is permissible, using the blessed beard of the Prophet should also be permissible. It is permissible to use the shirt as a means of tabarruk because Hz. Yusuf and Hz. Yaqub did so. It is not possible for two prophets to commit a deed that is shirk. Since using a shirt as a means of tabarruk is permissible, it should be permissible to visit the blessed beard of the Prophet too.

If you say it is not permissibleto visit the blessed beard of the Prophet, you have to say, "It is not permissible to wipe the face with the shirt." When you say so, you will have to attribute shirk to Hz. Yusuf and Hz. Yaqub. This will be a dilemma for you. What will you do? You will either accept that visitingthe blessed beard of the Prophet is permissible or you will have to accuse two prophets of Allah of shirk. You have no other choice. 

THIRD EVIDENCE

Sacred Valley, the chapter of Taha, verse 12

The third Quranic evidence that we will show for the permissibility of tabarruk isverse 12 of the chapter of Taha. In this verse, our Lord addresses Hz. Musa as follows:

  فَاخْلَعْ نَعْلَيْكَ Put off thy shoes: thou art in the sacred valley Tuwa.

Those who deny tabarruk say, Things cannot be sacred; to show respect to things is shirk. That is what they say. What does the Quran say about Tuwa? It says Tuwa is a sacred valley.

What is demanded from Hz. Musa in that valley? He is demanded to take off his shoes, that is, to step on the valley barefoot and to show respect to it. That is what the Quran says though you say that things cannot be sacred and it is shirk to show respect to things. 

Dear brothers! Believe that those who deny tabarruk have no connection with the Quran at all. Be sure that if the verse “Put off thy shoes: thou art in the sacred valley Tuwa” were a hadith instead of a verse, they would denied it at once and said, "This hadith is fabricated." The verse clearly states that Tuwa is a sacred valley and that it was not permissible to step on it with shoes.

The verse says so but this Wahhabi mentality does not view verses. If they did, we would not see the terrible state of Arafat when we went there. Let us connect this issue with visiting the blessed beard of the Prophet.

We ask those who deny tabarruk the following question:

You read in a verse that a piece of land can be sacred. Allah forbids stepping on it with shoes; you read in the verse that respect is demanded for it. Can you say, “Tuwa is a valley; that one is also a valley in my village. There is no difference between them.” You can never say so.

Yes both of them are valleys; both of them consist of soil. However, Allah calls one of them sacred and forbids stepping on it with shoes; He has not given this honor to the other one. Then, you have to show respect to it; let alone dirtying it, you must not step on it with your shoes. 

- Since a piece of land can be sacred with divine permission and it is discriminated from other pieces of land thanks to it, why should the blessed beard of the Prophet not be sacred and why should it not be discriminated from other beards?

- Is the blessed beard of the Prophet (pbuh) not as valuable as a piece of land in the eye of Allah?

- Is it unreasonable for our Lord, who describes Tuwa as sacred, to render the beard of the Prophet (pbuh) sacred and to demand respect for it? Why do you have difficulty in understanding it?

May Allah give you reason and common sense! May he protect the ummah of Muhammad from your evil! 

THREE REASONS

1ST ARGUMENT

DUST

M. TAYAMIA SAYS THAT THE SOIL IS MORE SACRED THAN THE KAABA....... THE KAABA IS THE MOST SACRED OBJECT IN THE WORLD..... SO IF THE SOIL THAT TOUCHED THE PROPHET'S BODY IN THE GRAVE IS SO SACRED....IS NOT THE DUST ALSO SACRED, AND IF WANT TO GO INTO FURTHER DETAIL: Yes, human sweat can seep into porous stone surfaces like walls and floors, especially if the stone is exposed to high humidity or if the sweat is concentrated in a specific area. Sweat, being a fluid, will be absorbed by the porous structure of the stone, and the rate of absorption can be influenced by the stone's porosity, the humidity of the surrounding environment, and the presence of other substances like dirt or salt deposits on the surface. THEREFORE, SINCE COMPANIONS WD COLLECT SWEAT BECAUSE IT HAS BARAKAT

2ND ARGUMENT

AS A PLACE VISITED BY THE PROPHET SAW

IF OTHER PLACES WHERE THE PROPHET SAW VISITED, OR PRAYED AT ARE CONSIDERED SACRED AND DESERVING OF ZIARA CAVES, MOSQUES, THEN WHAT OF THE PLACE WHERE HE LIVED FOR 2 YEARS

3RD ARGUMENT

OBJECTS TOUCHED BY THE PROPHET SAW

OBJECTS TOUCHED BY THE PROPHET SAW ARE SACRED. THE BP WAS LIVED IN BY THE PROPHET SAW... HE WALKED ALLO VER THE PLOT OF CURRENT THE BP AND TOUCHED THE FLOORS AND WALLS.... MANY OF PARTS OF THE FLOORS AND WALLS OF THE ORIGINAL HOUSE ARE BURIED UNDER THE LIBRARY... THAT BARAKAT DOES NOT LEAVE THAT PLACE, IT IS STILL RESIDING THERE, IT IS LIMITLESS, NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE ENTER OT AND OBTAIN AN AMOUNT OF BARAKAT, IT NEVER RUNS OUT..... EVEN WITH A NEW STRUCTURE ON TOP OF THE BP,  PLOT THE BARAKAT PASSES TO, AND EXISTS IN,  THE LIBRARY BUILDING.

IF AS THE QURAN SAYS, A RELATIVELY SMALL THING  THAT HAS TOUCHED THE BODY, SUCH  A PROPHET'S AS SHIRT, [PROPHET YUSUF] HAS BARAKAT, THE STAFF OF PROPHET AS MOSES HAS BARAKAT,

THE COMPANIONS SAY THAT ANY ITEM TOUCHED BY THE PROPHET SAW - HIS CLOTHING, SHOES,  

AND THE PLACE WHERE A PROPHET WAS BORN HAS BARAKAT (PROPHET JESUS AS BIRTHPLACE IN BETHLEHEM)

https://questionsonislam.com/question/tabarruk-expecting-barakah-abundance-things-permissible

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