Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. The days are long, you're feeling lethargic, you're praying, you're fasting, but you might feel too tired to do anything else. I was wondering recently, you know, Ramadan's of the past, people were so devoted to worship, it was so physically strenuous. Was life a bit slower, where Muslims not doing as much outside of their worship? And I found, by looking at some historical chronicles, some surprising results. So, Al-Babri is a scholar who lived in the 3rd and 4th century Hijri. Great scholar, tremendous lawseer, found his own madhhab, but it became defunct. But one of his most famous works is this voluminous history. I did a search through a particular edition of the history and I found that compared to all the other months when he's listing events, Ramadan occurs the second most often. 257 times in the text, he makes mention of births, deaths, exiles, appointments, battles, major events happening in the month of Ramadan. Life did not slow in the month, according to this account. In fact, it may have even picked up pace. Now, Al-Babri wasn't concerned with truth the way modern historians are.
His mention of Ramadan might not have always been factual as we understand it, but it was meaningful for him and it was believable for him that something could happen in Ramadan like this. That life didn't necessarily slow down. We find when we look through history that many major events happened during the month of Ramadan, that people were active even beyond the time of the Prophet. We hear stories of expeditions, of recitations of the Quran in Ramadan during his life, but even beyond that. So we find that in the year 1099, after the first crusade, Sheikh Al-Harawi made his way from Sham to Baghdad. And he starts preaching during Ramadan about the troubles that Muslims are facing. And he starts raising awareness about the troubles that Muslims are facing and trying to gain support during Ramadan. To the point that he actually goes and eats in public, which shocks people. Why are you doing this? But he reminds them that beyond ritual action, we also have to be active and aware of our Muslim brothers and sisters. Now of course he was traveling, so him eating in public doesn't necessarily mean that he was doing something wrong, perhaps socially wrong, but he wasn't sinning by breaking fast or anything. The battle of Ain Jalut in the year 1260, major battle in history, when the Mongol onslaught was finally stopped by the Mamluks, when so many Muslim cities were saved, happened on the 25th of Ramadan. Ramadan, you know, in a hot climate, but people were defending Muslims and defending Islam during this month.
We see this from the lives of the friends of Allah Ta'ala, looking at stories, hagiographies of one in particular, Ibrahim ibn Adham, that worship in Ramadan didn't just entail praying or recitation of the Quran, it entailed living in an excellent manner. And endeavoring to gain one's livelihood, but with the intention of serving Allah Ta'ala. So he said that Ibrahim ibn Adham, when he was a young man, he went and he picked grain. And then he sold that grain and he used the money he got from that to give charity, to give alms to others. Muslims of the past were active during Ramadan. They were living a life that was worshipped holistically.
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