Safina (ra): He Spoke To A Lion

If you asked him his name, he would use the nickname the Prophet ﷺ had given him: a ship. 

He served the Prophet ﷺ in his expeditions, spoke to a lion, and narrated a hadith about the Khulafa al-Rashidin (Rightly-Guided Caliphs) at a critical moment in the ummah’s history. 

Dr. Omar Suleiman also reflects on the importance of Muslims using good names and nicknames. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Alright, so now I come rahmatullahi wa barakatu. Welcome back to the first. It's been a long time in Hamdil Arab al Ameen. Who remembers the last biography that we covered? That's not good. It hasn't been five years, y'all. Who was the last person that we covered in the first? Come on. Julay Beed. Radiallahu ta'ala anhu. And who remembers before Julayb? Zahir. Radiallahu ta'ala anhu. There was a theme that we were going by as we were coming to the end of the last season of the firsts. Now, the first thing that I will say tonight is that Alhamdulillah, this is not the last of the firsts. Contrary to what our well-dressed Shaykh said, mashallah. This is not the last of the firsts. But what we're going to be doing, inshaAllah ta'ala, is replacing our Tuesday night with a series on the signs of the end, inshaAllah ta'ala, the signs of the day of judgment. Why? Because there are so many questions right now about whether or not we're there and what it means if we are there and how we're going to process that. And so the Tuesday nights will become now, inshaAllah Ta'ala, the signs of the hour, for about 20 weeks, inshaAllah ta'ala. The first, we will continue a little bit inconsistently, once a month or so, inshaAllah ta'ala, we'll get together and we'll cover some of the shorter bios, inshaAllah ta'ala, 15, 20 minutes each bidn al-ahi ta'ala, so that we can process some lessons and we're going to group those biographies by theme bidnil. And so there was a theme at the end of the last season that I actually wanted to start with then, and it builds off of the concept of Zahir and Juraybib and those people, may Allah be pleased with them, that were easily overlooked in the society of the Prophet. They didn't have high tribe, they didn't have a lot of wealth. There was all there were all sorts of constraints that would allow them to be visible in a jahili society, in a pre-Islamic society of ignorance, but the Prophet saw them and he valued them, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, in a way that sent a message to the rest of the ummah. So the next batch of biographies that we're going to do bidn allah are a very specific group amongst them, and they are not people that were freed slaves or uh people of no tribe or no distinction around the Prophet. They're actually the mawali of the Prophet himself. They're the freed slaves of the Prophet himself, the people that the Prophet freed himself, and the Prophet freed several people from captivity himself that then attached themselves to the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. So these are the mawali of the Prophet, the freed slaves of Muhammad. When you are reading through the books of hadith, you will come through in the chain of narrators, so and so, mawlah, the mawlah of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. The freed slave of the Prophet. Now, of the characteristics of these biographies, they're not like Bila radiallahu tal anhu, or khabab radiallahu anhu, or zayd ibn hadith radiallahu anhu. You have deep long biographies. A lot of these are very quiet individuals, and you have one or two narrations about them. But that one or two narrations gives you something so profound to work with and to think about, bidn al-so there are a lot of practical lessons that we derive from each of these beyond simply the excellence of the Messenger of Allah towards these people. Because clearly the Prophet was a man who treated the downtrodden with such excellence that they never wanted to leave his side. And you can think about like a society, not just with slavery, slavery was all over the world, right? Slavery is the rule of the world, right? But cruel and harsh conditions and you know the abuse and the way that a person could not wait for the person that technically owned them to die. And what you'll find consistently with these freed slaves who attached themselves to the Prophet is that they had the opposite reaction. That their greatest honor was being attached to the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and their greatest tragedy was the death of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. So these individuals, you can often capture a story or two, with the exception of one that we're going to cover tonight, Bidnillahi ta'ala, or we'll cover next, which will be Fawban al the Allah, who has a long biography. Otherwise, it's usually just a few snippets, a few snapshots, and I want us to focus on the underlying themes, Bidnillahi ta'ala. So the first person that we will cover is actually someone whose name came to my mind with the flotillas to Gaza, the ships sailing towards Gaza. And I remember subhanAllah with you know the biggest flotilla that was sent, or the delegation of flotillas that was sent last year. I really wanted to talk about this companion of the Prophet, but I ran out of time. Because there was something so symbolic about that, right? Seeing the ships going towards Gaza. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala break its siege and may Allah Azza liberate its oppressed ones. Allah Amin. And by the way, side note, the delegation of flotillas continues. I actually spoke to the organizers a few days ago. They inshaAllah ta'ala plan to send another delegation of flotillas bidding day'a. May Allah Azwajal protect them and grant them success. Allah ma'amen. The reason why I wanted to talk about this Sahabi is because his name is Safina. Radiallahu anhu. Ship. His name is Safina. If you see the name Safina, Radiallahu Ta'ala anhu, in the books of narration, it's talking about this single companion, Safina, the son of who? We don't know. But his name is Safina Maula Rasulillahi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Safina, the freed slave of the Prophet. His kunya, because he does have children, is Abu Abdul Rahman. Abu Abdul Rahman. So he's the father of Abu Abu Abdul Rahman, Safina too. Abu Abdul Rahman, Radiallahu Talianhu. Wakatqila Abu Bukhtari. And it's said also Abu Bukhtari that that was the oldest son as well. And before he became Maula Rasulilla sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the free slave of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he was a slave of Um Salama radiallahu tal. Okay? A slave of Um Salama radiallahu tal. And we'll talk about the story of how he becomes then a free slave of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Lahu Sukba, he was a companion of the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And there are a few narrations that will be narrated from him. Now what is his actual name? His actual name. When someone's kunya is the name, I'm sorry, when someone's nickname is what they are narrated by, then the actual name is often disputed. And in his case, the name is either Rabah or Mehran or Ruman or Qais. There are four different names that are narrated as possibly being his actual name, Rabah or Mehran, or Ruman, or Kais. Four names that might have been his name, but Safina is the actual name that he goes by for the one incident that exists between him and the Prophet that we have that is documented. So how does this man come into the life of the Prophet? We go back to Um Salama, who the Prophet would marry in a very profound gesture after the loss of her husband Abu Salama, when she thought that no one was better than Abu Salama. Abu Salama being one of the core first companions of the Prophet, one of the people of the two hijras, one of the martyrs, veterans of Badr, someone with a high status. And Umm Salamahu Ta'ala anha says, I never thought that I could possibly be married to a man better than Abu Salama. And so she refused the proposals of every single person. So she says, Who is better than Abu Salama? When he passed away, who is better than Abu Salama? She's talking about her own process. And then one of those who narrates from her is Safina. Right? So these are her thoughts, and she's thinking to herself, who could be better than Abu Salama? Then she says, the proposal of the Prophet came to me after the famous dua that the Prophet taught her to say, Allah, O Allah, compensate me with my tragedy and give me better than what you took away from me. We talked about this in detail in the biography of Umm Salama radiallahu ta'ala anha. And then she saw the Prophet coming to marry her. Now, when the Prophet proposed to her, this is the one man that it was indisputable, was better than Abu Salama. Like she could say, my husband was better than Abu Bakr and Almar. No one would be mad at her if she said my husband was better than even those companions of the Prophet. But the Prophet himself, he is the best of the best, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And so when this happened, what did she do? And this is where Safina comes into the picture. Um Salama radiallahu ta'ala anha freed Safina. She freed Safina radiallahu tal anhu. She said, But I free you on one condition. Not in a in in a contract or in a in a sense of bondage or slavery, but that you serve the Prophet for as long as you live. That you be in the khidmah of the Prophet as long as you live. So he becomes Safeen atu mawla rasulillahi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the freed slave of the Prophet. He's not a slave, he's not under bondage, but he is indebted and he serves the Prophet to the best of his ability. And so he becomes amongst those that is often with the Prophet. So what does Safeen a radiallahu alayhi become in the life of the Prophet? Or where does he most find himself in the khidma of the Prophet during his journeys, during his safar, when the Prophet would travel, Safeen a radiallahu ta'ala anhu would travel with the Prophet. Again, his name is not actually Safina. So where did he get that name from? And what is the story of it? He actually narrates it himself. So if you asked him who he was, he would say, My name is Safina. He says that Kunna ma'anabi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, that one day we were with the Prophet on a journey. And he says that while we were traveling, I was carrying as much as I could on behalf of the Prophet and his companions. So I was demonstrating a higher capacity, right? He wanted to be the most productive member of the caravan. And so he says, so people would give me their swords, and then after someone would give me their sword, another person would give me their armor, and another person would give me their sword, another person would give me their armor until I started to carry a huge bunch. And you can imagine, you know, how the Prophet looked at people like that that wanted to do a larger share than what was expected of them. And you know, we have the whole incident of Umar ibn Yasr radiallahu ta'ala anhumah, who is carrying two bricks, right? That became the whole basis of our campaign of carrying a brick. So the Prophet looks at him while he's carrying this huge load on the journey, and the Prophet says, Ma' Anta illa safina. It's as if wallahi you're a ship. Right? You're a ship, you're a safina. So he took on that identity. I'm a safina. I am a ship. From the day that the Prophet called him that, and so he used to introduce himself and he used to say that I that the Prophet praised me and said, You are but a safina, you are but a ship. And so my name is Safina. I am a ship. And subhanAllah, in that, like if you just took the tangent on that, the ulama, when they comment on this, they comment on it from a few different things. Obviously, what a tanabazu bin al-qab, people used to put bad nicknames on people and they used to call them by the ugliest of things, they used to call them by like a deformity, or they used to call them by something or ayyab, some sort of flaw that they had. The Prophet used to not only change people's bad names to good names if their name had a bad meaning, he would actually nickname people with good nicknames. And that became their identity for the rest of their lives, and it became something precious that they held on to, like the Prophet gave me a good nickname. And so the opposite of walatana bazubil al-qab when Allah Azar says don't call people by derogatory names, instead call them by beautiful names. So it shows you the sunnah of the Prophet in that regard. To not just change bad names to good names, but to call people only by the best of nicknames. The second thing is how when you give someone a good nickname, then that can become an identity shift for that person. This becomes now the identity that Safina is going to place on himself, strength and capacity for the rest of his life. And so the ulama speak about this from the perspective of parenting, a terbiyya, right? Like, first of all, the sunnah of how you name your child in the first place. Naming your child is important. I've spoken about this many, many, many times. And may Allah help us, right? Like the names of the sahaba are disappearing in the naming schemes. Good names are disappearing in the naming schemes. We've we've lived to see a time where, like, I'll never forget, like when we named our daughter Khadijah, Issum Khadim. That's an old name. I was like, what in the world does an old name mean? Right? Khadija is an old name, right? As if there's something wrong with it. That you name them either by a person or a quality that you want them to be. You want them to live up to a quality, and so you name them either by a person or a quality you want them to be. As Im Al Qayim Rahimallah says, the name is a niyyah. It's an intention. I want my child to be this. The second thing is when a person calls out to their children, when they reprimand them, the Prophet warned us from using a bad nickname. Because that bad nickname can become a dua. So you call your child a whatever it is, and that actually becomes like a means of cursing them, right? And putting them down, not only embedded in their psychology, but they start to live into that, like my parents call me this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this. And even when it comes to friends with each other or siblings with one another, right? This isn't just parents or a teacher to a student. On the other hand, to name the good quality of a person and then to help them craft an identity around that quality. You're smart, you're intelligent, you're strong. Mashallah, you're so empathetic. Mashallah, you care about people. MasAllah, you never backbite. You're this person, you're that person, to give them a quality to live up to. So Safina, Radiallahu Ta'ala anhu, took this one interaction that he has with the Prophet that's documented, and he crafts an entire identity from that, Radiallahu Ta'ala anhu, and this is the only narration we have between him and the Prophet. Now let's move beyond that just a little bit, inshaAllah ta'ala, about what his life looked like, and then we'll move on bidnillahi ta'ala. After the death of the Prophet, he resided in a place called uh Batun Naqla, which was a valley between Mecca and Attaf. And so he kind of avoided the political scene. He wasn't someone that was very involved in these types of things. And he his contract with Umm Salamahu ta'a anhu was that you're free, you serve the Prophet as long as he lives, alayhi salatu islam. Once the Prophet died, he no longer was bound by anything. So he went and he lived a quiet life, but one of the most famous narrations of Al-Karamat, Karamat are the miracles of the righteous people, comes from Safin. So to make the distinction between two types of miracles that we have, you have a mu'jiza. A mu'jizah is a miracle of a prophet. And a mu'jiza poses a challenge as well. So it's not just a sign of piety, it poses a challenge as well. Right? So the Quran is the greatest mu'jiza. The miracle of parting the sea of Musa alayhi salam, the miracle of raising the dead of Isa alayhi salam. All of these are mu'jizaat. Ka'amat Al-Auliya. A karamah is a miracle that a righteous person has. It's not used as a challenge to a people, it's not used to introduce any type of Burhan, any type of proof. It is merely a gift that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives to a righteous person in a very difficult circumstance as a result of their taqwa or their tawaqkul. Their piety or their reliance in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And the uh the the ayah, wayrazukum in haytullah yahthasib, Allah praised these two qualities. Whoever has taqwa, piety, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will make for them a way out and will provide for them from places they never expected. And whoever demonstrates their tawaqr, their trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, then Allah will be enough for them. So what is his famous miracle, karamah, that is narrated? Safina was on a safina. All right, Safina was on a safina. So you remember the story, inshaAllah. I'm I'm I'm actually being serious. He was on a safina. He was on one of the uh expeditions on the water, and it's generally mentioned in Nahujahadah that he fought and he strove in jihad fi Sabirillah, but which battles, any particular moment, not necessarily, except for this moment that he was one day on uh a ship, and that ship lost its way, it basically broke down, and he ended up on an island, and while they were on that island, a lion came. Okay, now when this lion approached, what do you do if you're on a boat and the boat breaks down and you end up on an island and a lion approaches you? This is what you learn in the verse. Probably run, right? Try to calm it down, try to feed it something else, maybe feed it someone else. Right. But this is actually one of the most famous karamat that's narrated from the sahaba of the Prophet because it was so vivid. Safina radiallahu tal anhu, as the lion starts to approach, he says to the lion, Ayyuhal Asad, Ana Safina to Mawla Rasulillahi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam O lion, I am Safina, the freed slave of the Prophet. And subhanAllah, when he says that, the lion stops in his tracks and he says, Fudulla ni al-tariq, guide us across this path. And the lion humbles itself and becomes a guide for the companions of the safina as a result of that, the companions of the ship. This is actually one of the most famous karamat that's narrated about the Sahaba because imagine the sight and the scene and the tawakul and the I know who I am, and a safina to mawla rasulillahi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. I am the free slave of the Prophet. He didn't say I am the son of so and so or I am Akramul Arab or whatever. No, none of that nonsense. I am the freed slave of the Prophet. And there are two things that come out of this beyond just the obvious taqwa and tawakkur, the piety of the man and his trust in Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. One of them is that Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was honored not just by the people, but honored subhanAllah even by the animals and honored even by the trees, alayhi salatu wasallam, and honored by the creation of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So his saying that I am mawla Rasulillahi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam put the lion in its place. As if Allah caused the recognition of that lion from the moment that this man served the Prophet, therefore I will serve him. That's why he said, Dullani alatariq. So instead you become a guide, instead of being a predator towards me, I command you to become a guide because I serve the Prophet. And so the lion became a servant to him as a result of his service to the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. And of course, the next point that we take from that is what we learn of the difference between a mu'jiza and a karamah. Which prophet used to command the animals? Sudaiman alayhi salaam. So the ulama mentioned that whatever was given to one of the awliyah, one of the sahaba or the righteous ones, was something that the prophets before them did. And so their miracles are extensions of that miracle. Of course, Sudaiman didn't command one lion. Sudaiman commanded armies of animals, right? Allah Azza gives you an extension of that one miracle. And so this becomes His uh His um miracle that is in the books of Karamat. And subhanAllah he even says, by the way, that the sound, the way that the lion responded, or the way that the lion nodded, he said, Fadwaran to annahu, as if he was giving me salam. Right? It's as if the lion was giving me salam as he then moved me to the next place. So this is Safina, Radiallahu Ta'ala anhu. He lived until the year 70 uh after Hijrah. So he lived a very long life. Uh there are 14 ahadith that are narrated or preserved for him. And his narrations uh are narrated by his sons, Umar and Abdul Rahman. He was also uh encountered by and narrated from by Imam Hassan Abbasir Ta'ala and some of the others of the Tabi'in. One of the consequential narrations about him when it comes to Al-Fitan, when it comes to the trials and the tribulations, because he did live to see the fitna, but he didn't used to participate in the political arena, but he lived to see the fitna. And subhanAllah, this quiet actor in the sense of being present in the life of the Prophet remembers or mentions the narration of the Prophet as a way of quelling some of the fitun that were taking place, the trials and the tribulations that were taking place. And so it's in Kitabul Fitana and Rasulullah, Ba'ab ma Ja'afil Khalifa of fil-khilafa. And it's narrated from Saeed ibn Jumhan, radiallahu ta'ala. He says, Haddathani Safina, Safina said to me uh that the Prophet said, Al-Hhilafa tufi ummati thalaatun, that the khilafa in my ummah will last for 30 years and then it will turn into kingdom. It will turn into kingdom, then Safina said, Emsik. He said, Hold on to khilafatabi, wa khilafa to ummar, wa khilafa terithman, fum maqalali emsik, khilafa ta' ali. He said, if you count the years that that existed under these khulafa, thalatina sana, then we found it to be 30 years. He said that I said to Safina, in the Beni Umeya Yazirmuna and al-Hilafa tafihim. Beni Umeya claims that the khilafah is amongst them. He said, Rather, they have uh told the truth, Belhum Muluk, rather they are kings. They have now fallen into the era of kingship. And so some of their ulama mentioned subhanAllah, like the quiet companion who was hearing and listening in, and he weighs in at a consequential moment in the time of the Ummah as they're trying to figure out how they should act with the fitan that are unfolding. And though he had nothing, you know, of a large scholarship to offer to the ummah, this consequential truth was preserved in this very quiet man, Radiallahu Ta'ala anhu, who Allah Azwajal blessed with an amazing miracle and also a tradition of how to nickname, a tradition of how to nickname Radiallahu Ta'ala anhu. So he lived long enough to see what the Prophet had predicted and prophesized in that regard. And all we know of him is what the Prophet described him as. And the question that we take from that, by the way, is like if the Prophet saw you, what would he nickname you? What would the Prophet have nicknamed you? Because if you start to work through that methodology, then you start to realize that Allah Azza and the angels, perhaps they have another name for you. Perhaps you have a nickname in the name in the heavens, and they call you by something. What is the one good quality that the Prophet would have nicknamed you? And Allah and the angels would nickname you.