Al-Adab Al-Mufrad - Episode 1

Okay, and the word (خُلُق - khuluq) it comes and it has connected words of the (خِلْقَة - khilqa). The (khilqa) is a natural state of a person. And the natural state of a person, that is what always comes through on the outside.

The Promise of Paradise for Good Character

And that's why when the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said that I am (زعيم - za'eem), I am the one who will guarantee a house in the highest part of Paradise:

"I am the guarantor of a house in the highest part of Paradise for one who makes his character beautiful." (Abu Dawud 4800)

For that person who is able to make his (خُلق - khuluq) (حسن - hasan), who is able to perfect his character, to perfect his behavior, to perfect his actions. And as I'm trying to say, the only real effective way that you're able to do that is to work on the internal. Because once you do the internal, the external just follows automatically after that. And that is something which we need to understand.

The Priority of Learning Adab

That's why they said, when you want to try and do adab, when you want to try and learn adab, you've got to try and internalize it and try and study it. And try to almost internalize it. And that's why Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak, radiallahu anhu, one of the greatest scholars of Islam, he said:

"Learn adab first and then start to seek knowledge. Learn adab first and then start to seek knowledge."

And that's because adab, according to the Muslims, is a key component. In fact, it is the key to learning and studying the deen.

The Chain of Islamic Development

How? For example, one of the salaf, he gave an example, Hassan al-Basri, radiallahu anhu, he said that, to assert tawheed, to put your iman in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, to be one of the believers and know that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is divine in His unity, to assert tawheed, requires faith.

And for the one who has no faith, then he cannot assert tawheed. The one who has no iman, he is not able to declare and affirm the divinity of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the unity of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And he said that, and this iman, how are you going to find iman? By following the sharia.

By following the sharia. Now if you can't follow the sharia, then you're not going to have faith. And how do you follow the sharia? But you need to know how to follow the sharia. You need to know the code of

conduct to study Islam. And that is called adab. So if you do not have adab, and therefore you are not able to follow and study the sharia, then you are not able to have iman, and therefore you're not able to have tawheed.

This is how the ulema of Islam were able to compartmentalize different parts of Islam and show their significance.

The Parable of the Five Fortresses

The salaf used to say that, think of adab like this. There's a land, and it has five fortresses, five castles, okay? And the first castle is made of gold, and the second one is made of silver, and the third one is made of iron, and the fourth one is made of firm baked brick, and the fifth one is made of like this other, and it's a weaker kind of brick.

And he said that, and they would say that, if the people who are defending this fifth castle, they concentrate and focus on the defense of this fifth and weakest fortress, then the enemies will never be able to get in, and they will never be able to affect the rest of the fortresses. But if the first one goes down, and it's the weakest one, the one that requires the most concentration, the most amount of focus, if the first one goes down, then once they're in, the second will go down, the third will go down, until all of them are destroyed and everything's all over and done with. And they said likewise, this is what Islam is.

This is what Iman is. They said the five fortresses are like, the first one is Yaqeen, in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, and the second is Ikhlas, in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, or with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And the third, out of these fortresses, is Ada ul-Faraid, meaning to fulfill the obligations.

And the fourth, is to fulfill the Sunan, to do the Sunnah, the recommended actions that have been recommended to us by the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم). And the fifth, the weakest one of these five, but hence the most important, because it's so weak, is to preserve the Adab. To preserve the Adab.

The Danger of Neglecting Adab

And so they said, that once you become slightly lazy, or slightly negligent, and you let the Shaytan in, and you stop preserving your Adab for just one second, and you let the Shaytan in, when he gets in, Adab is now gone, because you are the one who left it. Because it's preserving of the Adab that you have been taught. And then they start attacking the Sunnah, and your ability to perform the Sunnah, and then once that goes down, then your ability to perform the Fard, goes down, and then once that goes down, then you're struggling, you're desperate now, and then your sincerity starts to then, collapse. And then once your sincerity starts to collapse, you have nothing left of Deen left.

That's it, it's finished. And your Yaqeen, is the last and final capture for Shaytan. And that is how the Ulema understood the importance of Adab.

The Rarity of People with Perfect Adab

In fact, if you look at the Salaf, you'll find that they would sit with a scholar, and they would say, for example, Abdullah ibn Mubarak said that, if someone comes to me and says to me, that there's a man who is coming, who knows the knowledge of Al-Awwalin Wal-Akhirin, the knowledge of all the first, and the knowledge of the last, he knows a huge amount. And I miss that meeting with him, I won't be too sad about it, I won't be too distressed. But if I found out that a man came, and that he had perfected Adab, and I missed that meeting, I'll be depressed, because I would not have had the opportunity to sit with someone so rare.

And that is what Abdullah ibn Mubarak, a scholar of the highest caliber of Islam, someone if you look at his statements, you're able to appreciate, why is it that Adab is so important. Adab being the key.

The Knowledge of Adab Surpasses Knowledge Itself

In fact, they said, they said that the Ilm of Adab is more than Ilm itself. The Ilm of Adab is more than Ilm itself. To know the understanding and the knowledge of how to behave, and with knowledge, with the seeking knowledge, that body of knowledge itself is more than knowledge itself. Something which sounds a bit confusing, but if you think about it, makes absolute perfect sense.

And Abdullah ibn Mubarak again, and he's a master in this field, he said, I sought knowledge, and I was able to gain some. I was able to take a little bit of it. But I tried, and I stayed for a long time to find Adab and to learn it, and I found that its people had passed away.

That was Abdullah ibn Mubarak, how many years ago? And he said then, that the people had passed away. There was no one to teach him Adab then. So you tell me, what are we going to do now? What are we going to do now when then Adab is finished? When the people of Adab are finished, and they're not there to teach those who need it and those who want to spread it?

The Importance of Character in Learning

And this is, hopefully, the significance of understanding this point is that we try to appreciate that before we want to go and study Hadith and study Islam and so on, Adab and the way that we should behave and the way that we should conduct ourselves with our people and our family and so on, it is so important for us as the first step.

Many of us want to study and learn, learn ilm and learn knowledge and learn everything and try to better ourselves. But what about if you're not able to take knowledge from someone? Ibrahim al-Nakha'i said that we would come to a person who was teaching, we would look at his manner, we would look at his prayer, and we would look at his general conduct. And if we were happy with that, then we'd sit and take knowledge from him.

He also said that we wouldn't care if this person knew everything from Hadith. If he was not good to his parents, we wouldn't take a single thing from him. If he was not someone who did birr to his parents, honored his parents, and showed kindness to them, we would not take anything from them.

Personal Experiences with Good Character

So, you know, if you look at it from a classical point of view, the statements are all there to give us all of the support that we need to make us think, yes, right, we need to learn adab and so on. But you can put that to the side for a minute and just put your own selves in the situation. How many of us here have been traveling, had the opportunity to go and meet different people, and had the unfortunate, maybe, experience of being in desperation, in need of help, and so on, and you've experienced the adab, the generosity, or the help, or the support of someone, often who you don't know, often that you just meet for the sake of whatever, and that person, you've never ever forgotten.

I can tell you that almost every time that I've left this country and some kind of problem has occurred, and someone has profoundly affected me with their behavior, and I don't know his name, and I don't know where I can find him again, ever, but what I do know is that I remember him in my dua, because I know that that person helped me in a way where it was not him giving me money, or taking something for me, or whatever, just maybe in a time of difficulty, a smile, or maybe in a time of stress, he was able to calm things down. He was able to display something which was good to me.

The Power of Good Character Even in Sleep

And that's why, that's why, it's a weak narration, a weak athar from Abu Ad-Darda, radiallahu anhu, he said that it's amazing how a person who has good character is forgiven while he sleeps, and Abu Ad-Darda, radiallahu anhu, said, how can a person be forgiven when he's asleep? How can a person be forgiven when he's asleep?

Now, if you just think of this question, and you think of yourself for the answer, I guarantee that if you were to think by yourself, you'll be able to think of the answer yourself as well, and this, subhanallah, is so true. This is one of those answers as we say, this hadith, although it's a narration, although it has some weakness, the tajrubah, the practical, personal experience that we've had, answers this question.

What's the answer? The reality is that this person showed good adab to someone else, and his brother Muslim, as Abu Ad-Darda, I quote, said, his brother Muslim goes to sleep and woke up in the middle of the night, and he prayed his tahajjud, and he made dua to Allah azza wa jal, and he asked for his brother to be forgiven, and Allah granted that forgiveness. And that, subhanallah, is something which is not lost upon us. It's not.

The Sweetness of Making Dua for Those with Good Character

And upon me, it's not lost, because I know that when I get that opportunity to really, you know when you're in that situation where you are, it's a sweetness of iman, where you're in a specific time and place, and you just know that this is the moment you want to make dua for someone, and you can feel the power of dua, and you really know that you are desperate, and you want to make dua for someone that you really care about. The people that come to mind are those that have affected you most. And often, it's by something very, very small.

That's the power of adab. That's the importance of adab. And that's why the scholars were able to understand and appreciate the importance.

Personal Learning from Teachers' Adab

And I, myself, yani, as a student, I can tell you easily that the greatest thing that I learned from all the different teachers that I've sat with was their adab. Because from knowledge, I've gained very, very little. But from being able to know what to do and what to not do, and what upsets them and what doesn't upset them, and what to say and what not to say, and how to deal with this, it was all just clear in the way that they were able to convey that.

And that, for me, is more valuable than anything else I can ever imagine. I would not swap that for any knowledge in the world. Because I know how difficult it is to get that. I know that this kind of, yani, gift is not achieved except by spending hours and days and travelling and meeting people that this world is running out of. And that's the reality that we are faced with.

Introduction to Imam Al-Bukhari

That we have to now, yani, think about and say to ourselves, right, how are we going to change the situation? What we propose to do is by using the book Al-Adab Al-Mufrad by Imam Al-Bukhari.

We hope to, yani, insha'Allah with Tawfiq, enter this journey and start this journey with Hamd and, yani, try and discover why and how did Imam Al-Bukhari set out this book to be for us an example an example for us to solve this problem. Who is Imam Al-Bukhari? Radiallahu anhu yani, if you want to put it in a very single yani, a single sentence then he was Ameer Al-Mu'mineen. He was Ameer Al-Mu'mineen in the defense of the prophetic narration. The leader of the believers.

He is our saviour when it comes to the defense of the second source of Islamic law and that is the Sunnah of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم)

The Blessed Generations

From the hadith of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) when he said:

"The best of mankind is my generation, then those who come after them, then those who come after them." (Bukhari 2652, Muslim 2533)

Now, Ibn Hajar radiallahu anhu said that the second generation this third generation ends by Ijma' of the hadith scholars at 220 Hijri i.e. that those people who came before 220 Hijri their statement is to be accepted in the issues of narration and so on and so on they are those people that have come under the specific blessing of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم as being the best of generations.

Imam Al-Bukhari's Unique Position

What's most amazing about Imam Al-Bukhari radiallahu anhu who was born in the year 194 of the Hijri on the 13th night of Shawwal on Juma'a after Salatul Juma'a and had to be when you think about who he actually turned out to be it doesn't make you surprised that that's the case he was born he was able to get his younger years the first half of his life in the very very last part of the three generations and then he was able then to use the second part of his life to move out of the three generations almost like into the unknown because the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم has given that guarantee for the first three generations and then after that then you know Allah knows what's going to happen then that's the rest of us now on the way down and it really is very much the case the way down because we have to understand it's much clearer now when we're studying Adab that back in the day we were up there in terms of being advanced and technologically ahead and morally ahead and ethically ahead and ever since then it's just been one absolute crash downwards and so the slide starts very specifically after the third generation yet it's almost as if that Imam Al-Bukhari was our saviour in that he was able to grab what he could from the Barakah and the blessing of the last part of the third generation the blessed generation (خَيْرُ الْقُرُونِ - Khairul Qurun) and then give us something for us then to hold on to and indeed he did that because he radiallahu anhu will be in the du'as of the entire nation of Islam the entire nation of Al-Muslimeen throughout time until the final day because there is not a single person Muslim and this is by the Barakah of Allah that has not been affected by his efforts and his hard work that has not benefited through his efforts and we are to be eternally grateful for that.

Imam Al-Bukhari's Background and Family

And Imam Al-Bukhari radiallahu anhu came as you know he was born in what's known as modern day Uzbekistan and subhanallah when you think about where he is born and the state of the country of Uzbekistan today it makes one cry how desperate Uzbekistan as a country is in need of someone like Imam Al-Bukhari to come and save them from their oppression and from the political nightmare that the Muslims are suffering from over there and it's just amazing about where Uzbekistan was and who it created for us and its sons and its daughters the ulama of Islam they were their turath their legacy in Islamic history is unrivaled in the scholars they produced for us not only is Imam Al-Bukhari their greatest son but the father of Imam Al-Bukhari radiallahu anhu he himself was not only muhaddith zahid he was someone who narrated from the great great great members of the salaf as narrated by Imam Al-Bukhari

himself narrated from Hamad bin Zaid and he narrated from Malik radiallahu anhu the family of Imam Al- Bukhari itself was a scholarly family a family of zuhd a family of taqwa a family of righteousness and it was perfect for Imam Al-Bukhari to come into and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala blessed his father Imam Al- Bukhari's father with wealth and even though he passed away and Imam Al-Bukhari was very young he was able to leave enough wealth for Imam Al-Bukhari to be able to support himself and his studies and to produce and to develop his own self into the greatest single character in hadith that we know today this was done by the barakah of his father and the hard work of his mother how can someone forget his mother radiallahu anhu who took it upon herself to bring up this child who is nothing short of a mountain a mountain what Islam owes this woman I don't think no one can ever make enough dua for her no one can give her enough gratitude on our behalf that she was able to produce for us such a master such a defender such an imam the imam of Ahlul Sunnah wal Jamaah Imam Abu Abdullah Al- Bukhari radiallahu anhu.

Imam Al-Bukhari's Early Brilliance

Some brief information about Imam Al-Bukhari and it's important for us because we are able to then see by looking at his life what is so clearly missing in our life in terms of barakah and opportunity Imam Al- Bukhari was not not even 10 years old before he started to memorize and learn hadith and the science of hadith and he was one of those very he was of the very very first people who was able to categorize the science of rijal ilm al-rijal wa jarh wa ta'deel the ability to be able to weigh up narrators of hadith and to study their lives their scholars their teachers their students their family where they lived what they taught and so on it was almost Imam Al-Bukhari almost made himself as if he was part of their family part of that time he knew them inside out so at 10 years old Imam Al-Bukhari through his memory was able to correct his teachers in narration when he would sit in a circle and they would give an incorrect narration or they would give an incorrect chain of narrators of a particular hadith Imam Al-Bukhari would tell them actually this is incorrect and it should be on the authority of so and so and the authority of so and so it was a miracle which was waiting to develop and Allah was able to put the barakah and the desire to study hadith into him and then he travelled over the next 30 years travelling studying hadith looking into the detailed sciences of the narrators giving him the tawfiq to produce the one single greatest piece of work that Islamic nation has produced by itself it is the second most authentic book in Islam after the book of Allah after the book of Allah comes the book of a man not the book of a prophet not the book of a messenger but the book of a man Allah gave him such tawfiq and ability and blessing to produce a masterpiece in which he only collected those narrations about the prophet that were able to pass his exacting standards of authenticity a set of standards that made the other standards of authenticity seem low almost in comparison to his and this is what he has taken the honour for and the right for.

The Miraculous Memory of Imam Al-Bukhari

Imam Bukhari his companions narrate just to give you some kind of idea he said used to go with us Imam Bukhari used to go with us to the scholars of Basra to listen to a hadith and all of us used to write a hadith down all of us except Imam Bukhari and after 16 days we thought about it and we condemned Imam Bukhari and we said you have wasted so many days work by just coming here sitting with these people not writing down a hadith so Imam Bukhari asked us to bring out our notes so we all brought out our notes then Imam Bukhari began to read the hadith by heart one by one against the notes of everyone else until he narrated to us more than 15,000 hadith in the end we started correcting our mistakes against his memory this is Imam Bukhari a man who was so committed to the science and the honor of the Prophet and the science of the prophetic narration that he said that he memorized over 300,000 hadith and he was able to not just know don't miss the point that the hadith is just the text itself he would know all of the chains of narration of all these hadith which is why out of this 300,000 hadith he would reject 100,000 as being too weak to go into his sahih and then the next 200,000 he would then start to categorize into other different levels of authenticity and so on and so on he was continually cutting away to produce the creme de la creme of a hadith that standard that gold standard and it had to be a gold standard that would achieve absolute acceptance in the ummah of Islam and that is the only way it could have been done has there or is there any single person in Islamic history that has achieved such acceptance and such confidence of the entire Muslim community than Imam Al Bukhari every single person of every single maslak and every single madhab of every single race they say Sayyidina Imam Bukhari Al Bukhari Sharif subhanallah it's something that we remember when we were children and we smiled about it and found it funny but now with some ilm and some understanding now when we say Bukhari Sharif we really understand that if everything was going to be Sharif it is Bukhari Sharif if there ever was going to be a book that deserved such a title then it is the book of Imam Bukhari and it is Imam Bukhari if there was ever a person who deserved the name if there was ever a person that should be referred to as Sayyidina it is Imam Al Bukhari.

The Challenge of Memory in Our Time

And you know I think what's really important for us to understand is that memory was the major asset that the scholars had using the Barakah of the time and memory is something that we are so poor at so poor in our ability to memorize and able to retain information and the reasons for that are clear in our society the distractions that we see and find in our society they are about the worst possible thing the worst possible conditions that we could have now to be able to move ahead and to memorize and to be able to preserve our tradition.

Lessons from Mauritania

And you know myself I was very fortunate enough to go to Mauritania to meet one of my teachers Sheikh Muhammad Salim and I remember sitting with him and you know at that time it was quite a few years ago I was sitting there and I was thinking right how is this how is this man saying all these things

how is he reciting line after line after line of the book that I am holding and it's not the Quran and it's not Hadith and it's not one of the major mutoon of fiqh the major text of fiqh but obscure poetry line after line after line as if it was ABC and I would just be amazed and everyone is amazed he is a shankiti and the shanakita as a race of people are renowned for this I mean Sheikh Muhammad Salim if you look at his nephew who is now coming to major prominence might become soon part of the kibar al ulama Muhammad Ibn Hassan Al Dudo who is in Saudi at the moment you look at and you sit with these people and you are dumbstruck we are because we can't conceive of the idea of how they are able to look at something and memorize it and they are able to maintain the purity of mind and heart to memorize and that's the major problem of course that our minds and our hearts are full of rubbish that's the reality and how are we going to fill our minds and hearts of that which benefits us and that which we need to use when it's already full of other stuff and that's what Muhammad Ibn Salim said to me he said and I said to him Sheikh how can I obviously I knew the standard kind of lines that our scholars say to us you've got to purify yourself you've got to clean your heart and so on and so on I said to Muhammad Ibn Salim I said how can I practically increase my memory and he said come and live with us in the desert under the stars and see what happens to your memory and that's the big difference that's the big difference in that kind of environment where there is no interference of the filth and the moral degradation of society and what it feeds us on a daily basis where the air is pure where the sand is pure where the land is pure where the earning is pure where everything is pure and halal then the barakah spreads and that is what we're missing in our lives today.

A Humbling Experience in the Mosque

And this was me being told in a practical sense I had my I was I had my humiliation done my basti done as they say by small children I remember when I was there and it was Friday and you've heard this before I was there and it was Friday and it was you know it was early morning it was not early it was actually late morning and we all went to the masjid for Jumaa okay and I thought I'd go an hour extra early it was day off of madrasa and so we had nothing to study and so I read Surat Al-Kahf and then days you know just started learning and reading Quran and I didn't know Surat Al-Kahf at all by heart so I walked in to the masjid as you do and I'm looking for the shelf for the Quran so I look around and it's a very simple masjid they're made of kind of mud brick and so on and I'm looking and I can't see any shelves I can't see any anything I couldn't see anything right so I thought okay so now I started going around the windows which were just like you know carved into the walls and I can't see nothing not a single mushaf anywhere and I was thinking I'm not going to ask someone because that's just silly right so I'm just going to keep on you know looking and I spent honestly 15 minutes going around looking behind the mimbar looking behind whatever are they hidden somewhere are people cleaning the areas whatever I couldn't find a single one and there was loads of people in the masjid and lots of children a lot of children so I thought okay I can't find them so I asked one of the children I said is there a mushaf here in Arabic I said to him is there a mushaf and he said what and I said mushaf Quran and he looks at me in this puzzled way you

know I don't know how to how to you know react this he looks at me in a really kind of puzzled way looking at me and I'm thinking what does this guy not understand about mushaf and Quran and so I said so I did the kind of the hand sign mushaf Quran then he goes Quran like that and I was thinking what do you think I've been saying and he goes he goes Quran he said mafeesh he goes there's none here I'm thinking what what do you mean there's none here and then another person who's seeing me you know obviously have this difficulty with this child whatever comes up to me and says brother we don't keep mushafs in the masjid we don't have mushafs we memorize it all I said Subhanallah I said who's the jack you know now you know I thought to myself Allah Akbar I thought so small I felt so pathetic actually in front of this child right and not just this child but all these children that here's me and there's this child and he's and he never had to worry about an issue of having to look in the Quran to learn things no rather he writes everything out and that's a system there of course they write everything out and they revise it and it's just such it's a different world and that is the biggest challenge which is facing us as a society Islamic education for our children we have to try and work out a solution that in this condition that we're living in and the conditions that we effectively are going to continue living in how are we going to be able to purify the environment the arena for our children to be able to benefit for our children to be able to take from some of the turaf al-islami and to actually make something of it this is the challenge that we have upon us and that was a big difference between us now and those nobala those noble and blessed people of our turaf of our turaf al-islami.

About Al-Adab Al-Mufrad

So imam al-bukhari radiallahu anhu if you want to know about the details of his life and his character it is found everywhere it is from the barakah of his maqam it is from the blessing of his maqam and it is from the blessing of his works that he and his actions and his reputation is available for wherever you want to see all over spread throughout the world and that is from the barakah of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and of his books that he wrote we have the sahih and he wrote books on history on aqeedah on fiqh on different differences in fiqh and this book here al-adab al-mufrad and for those people who want to know what al-adab al-mufrad actually is why why did imam al-bukhari call it al-adab al-mufrad there is some difference of opinion amongst the scholars but the most accepted reason is that al-adab al-mufrad makes the book distinct from his kitab al-adab because imam al-bukhari wrote the original kitab al-adab the 78th book of the jamia al-sahih his sahih collection and that is the original asr kitab al-adab and so therefore when the scholars are referring to imam al-bukhari they said imam al-bukhari said in al-adab so they just say al-adab and therefore he is referring to mutlaqan to the jamia al-sahih but then when they said that he said it in al-mufrad then they still mean that he narrated it in al-adab but it is in the mufrad version and the mufrad version is larger in size than the original kitab al-adab and in it not only does it have more ahadith but some of them are of the same authenticity as his standards in jamia al-sahih and others are of a lesser standard and others are even of a lesser standard and he even includes some weak narrations in his adab al-mufrad and he also narrates he also includes narrations from the sahaba and

narrations from the tabi'een which is implementing or giving us or identifying rather a principle and that is in the issues of virtue and the promotion of good actions amongst the community as the majority of the scholars held must come under a general principle which has already been established by other authentic evidences so therefore a weak hadith can never be used to establish something new in islam and the third condition is that we must never make the hadith or narrate the hadith in a definitive way or a definite way to make it clear as if this is authentically narrated from the prophet in order to protect ourselves from attributing something to the prophet which he did not say which is of course from the serious sins and that is the reason that the scholars in general used to push away from dependency upon using weak hadith and in fact used to concentrate on the authentic hadith so inshallah that is the methodology we will follow in our study of this blessed text.