The Duʿa of Wali Abbasق, Saint of Rajab

Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem

[⁠Quoted and reproduced by a mureed who was present at this Suhbah by Mawlana Shaykh Nazimق]

As-Salaamu Alaykum,

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde wrote, in his play A Woman of No Importance, that, “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Adil al-Haqqaniق taught us that in the time of the Prophet ﷺ, there lived a notorious criminal. He used to frequent the streets after dark. If he found someone alone at night, he robbed him; sometimes he beat him, or killed him, and then returned home.

They were unable to catch that highwayman. The Prophet ﷺ used to curse that highwayman in his time, saying he would never pray for him or bury him in the graveyard of the Muslims. But no one knew who he was.

One of the Attributes of Allah ﷻ is as-Sattar, the One Who veils the faults and mistakes of others. Just as He veiled the sin of the man in Bani Israil that caused Allah ﷻ to withhold rain for forty days, so too did He veil the identity of the highwayman from the Prophet ﷺ.

After many years, the highwayman passed away. Because the Prophet ﷺ used to curse him, his identity became known. The children dragged his body through the streets of Madinah and threw him into a dry well.

As soon as they had thrown him into the well, Allah ﷻ informed the Prophet ﷺ that one of His awliya had passed away.

The Prophet ﷺ was instructed to retrieve the body, wash him, and perform the janazah prayer for the corpse. The Prophet ﷺ was astonished. All his life, he had cursed that person. Now that he had passed away, Allah ﷻ told him that he was a wali.

No one has a say in the Judgement of Allah ﷻ, not even the Prophet ﷺ. If Allah ﷻ so willed that a criminal be a wali, no one can question Him.

Shaykh Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Niyas al-Kawlakhiق taught us that it would be preferable to think that someone is a saint and he turns out to be the worst sinner, rather than to think that someone is a sinner and he turns out to be the greatest saint.

The people of tasawwuf try to look at everyone with the eye of love. To control the nafs, we must look at everyone as being better than us. We do not know if Allah ﷻ is going to raise that person’s maqam. One glance from the Divine, and all qualities are inherent.

The Mercy of Allah ﷻ is so great that we are forbidden to look at what people are doing on the outside. It is the most difficult thing. It is the recognition that we all have a Master to judge us. The cure is to look at ourselves.

To do so, we behave with adab towards Allah ﷻ and creation. It is not our place to correct anyone else. It is only our place to correct ourselves. The adab is to correct the self and leave everyone else to their Master. This is the true understanding of Sufism.

When we change ourselves, we have already changed the world.

The Prophet ﷺ immediately called Sayyidina Abu Bakr Abdullah ibn Uthman as-Siddiqر to help him fulfil this Divine Command. Sayyidina Abu Bakrر himself was astounded. But the Prophet ﷺ said, “Allah ﷻ has informed me today that that person was a wali.”

The Prophet ﷺ went into the well, took that person’s body out with his own hands, and with his Sahabahر carried him to his house. He cleaned him, washed him, wrapped him in a shroud, prayed for him, and then took him from the mosque to al-Baqi cemetery, a distance of fifteen minutes’ walk.

It took the Prophet ﷺ more than two hours to move from the mosque to the cemetery. All the Sahabahر were astonished at the way the Prophet ﷺ walked. Taking the deceased to his grave, he was walking on tiptoes, very carefully and very slowly.

“Ya RasulAllah,” they later asked him, “why were you walking on tiptoes?”

He replied, “Allah had ordered all awliya from East to West, all the angels from the seven heavens, and all the spiritual beings to be present and follow the coffin of that wali. There were so many of them filling the way that I could not find a place to put my feet. Never in my life was I as surprised as I was today.”

After they buried him, the Prophet ﷺ did not speak with anyone but quickly returned to his house trembling and shivering. He sat with Sayyidina Abu Bakrر, asking himself what that wali had done, a robber all his life, to merit such a high degree of honour from Allah. The Prophet ﷺ waited for Jibril (AS) to come and inform them of the matter. When Jibril (AS) came, the Prophet ﷺ discovered that he knew nothing as well.

The Prophet ﷺ immediately went, with Sayyidina Abu Bakrر, to the house of the departed wali to ask his child what her father had done in his life.

She told him, “Ya RasulAllah, I am ashamed before you. What am I going to tell you? He was a killer, a thief. I never saw him do anything good. He robbed and stole day and night, except for one month during the year.“

“When that month came, he would say, ‘This is the month of Allah,’ because he heard you say, ‘Rajab is the month of Allah, Shaban is the month of the Prophet, and Ramadan is the month of the community.’ So he said, ‘I do not care for the month of the Prophet or the month of the community, only for the month of my Lord.’ So he sat in his room and performed seclusion during this month every single year.”

The Prophet ﷺ asked her, “What kind of seclusion did he do?”

She told him, “Ya RasulAllah, one day he was out in the street looking for someone to rob. He found an old man. He beat him until he was unconscious and robbed him. He found a small piece of folded paper in his pocket. He opened it and found a du’a inside.”

“He liked that du’a very much. Every year, when the month of Rajab, the month of Allah, came around, my father used to sit and read that du’a day and night, weeping and reading, except when he wanted to eat or perform ablution. After the month was over, he would get up and say, ‘The month of Allah is finished. Now for my pleasure,’ and go back to robbing and stealing for eleven more months.”

Shaykh Nazimق said that this supplication purifies us from our sins and leaves us as pure as a newborn child. When the Prophet ﷺ asked the daughter to bring him the paper, he kissed it and rubbed it over his body.

We are advised not to forget this supplication, but to practise it during the coming month. Keep reciting it and Allah ﷻ will give us as He wills, according to our intention.

Allah ﷻ told the Prophet ﷺ, “O My beloved Prophet, that person came and repented to Me in the most precious month of the year. For that reason, because he sacrificed at least one month of the year for Me, I have forgiven him for all his mistakes and I have changed all his sins into virtuous deeds. As he had many sins, now he has many rewards.”

Because of one du’a, Allah ﷻ made him a wali, a person who never worshipped Allah ﷻ as he should have. The Sahabahر did not know him. He was not known in any of the majalis, or even in the Salah al-Jamaah. But we have a Merciful and Loving Lord. Do we think for a moment that such a Lord does not know us, or is negligent of our needs?

This is the du’a of Wali Abbasق, to be read three times daily in Rajab.

Wassalam.

PDF available here.

An Arabic-English version here.

To learn more about the month of Rajab Shahrullah, please click here.

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