بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
وَلَمَن صَبَرَ وَغَفَرَ إِنَّ ذَلِكَ لَمِنْ عَزْمِ الْأُمُورِ
Wa laman sabara wa ghafara inna zaalika lamin ‘azmil umoor
Ash-Shura (The Consultation) - 42:43 But withal, if one is patient in adversity and forgives - this, behold, is indeed something to set one’s heart upon!
Patience in the face of insults (and even praise)
The Prophet ﷺ lived like any ordinary person, devoid of privileges usually associated with leaders. He ﷺ once borrowed some money from a Jewish man called Zayd ibn Sa‘nah, in a report narrated in his name. "Prophet Muhammadﷺ was attending the funeral of a man from the Ansar. Some other companions were with him. After the funeral prayer he sat down close to a wall, and I came towards him, grabbed him by the edges of his cloak, looked at him in a harsh way and said, ‘O Muhammad! Will you not pay me back my loan? I have not known the family of Abdul-Mutallib to delay in repaying debts!’ although it was still a few days before the deadline was due to lapse. 'Umarؓ, unable to tolerate this, angrily berated me! ‘ O enemy of God, do you talk to the Messenger of God and behave towards him in this manner?! By the One who sent him with the truth, had it not been for the fear of not entering the Heavenly Gardens, I would have beheaded you with my sword!’
The Prophetﷺ, however, kept smiling and said to 'Umarؓ: 'This man is entitled to better treatment from you. You ought to have advised me to repay the loan promptly and advised him to be more courteous in demanding repayment.' Then, turning to me the Prophetﷺ said, smiling: “There are still three days to go before the promise has to be fulfilled.” He ﷺ then requested 'Umarؓ to get some dates so that the loan could be repaid, and to give me an extra twenty measures for the rebuke and for scaring me. 'Umarؓ went with me and repaid the debt. Upon receiving the extra dates, I asked him why and he replied, ‘The Messenger of Godﷺ ordered me to give it to you because I might have scared you.’ I realised then that 'Umarؓ had no idea who I was and so I said, 'I am Zaid ibn Sanah, the Rabbi'. 'Umarؓ was rather surprised and asked me why I behaved in such a way. I explained that I had seen many signs of prophethood in Muhammadﷺ but had yet to see two, and my objective was to test the final two signs. The signs were that patience would take precedence over anger, and that harsh treatment was repaid with kindness. Having seen those signs, I accepted himﷺ as a true prophet, and thus accepted Islam." This report is related in Ibn Hibban’s collection (no. 288). Its wording is presented here as a retelling, rather than a verbatim translation.
The story of Lalla Ded and the cloth merchant
Lalla Ded is a Kashmiri mystic revered by Muslims and Hindus alike, much like another mystic Kabir. Traditions about her cross religious boundaries, and she has had a profound influence on Kashmiri Sufism. In the legends, she is described in her later years as walking unclad, saying that she did not need to cover herself in front of children (meaning everyone around). Legend has it that the only time she covered herself ( jumping into a blazing tandoor), was when Mir Sayyid Ali Hamdani came to Kashmir, and the reason she gave was that it was the first time a "man" had come in the neighbourhood. The teaching story that I want to share is about someone who regarded her highly and wanted to follow her around to learn from her. They had hardly gone a short distance during her routine promenade when some kids started yelling at her, shouting curses, and throwing stones at her. The new disciple was enraged, and Lalla Ded had to hold him back. She then took him to a cloth merchant and asked for a measure of cloth. In those days cloth was sold by weight, as it is still done in some parts of the world. She then told the disciple to put it around his neck, equal parts dangling to the right and to the left. And every time someone would insult her, she asked him to put a knot on the left side. After knotting a few times, they came across some people who revered her, and even prostrated to her, so she told the disciple to tie a knot on the right side every time someone praised or revered her. So saying, they carried on with their journey. The disciple was perhaps expecting a miracle of sorts and imagining all sorts of things. Yet, at the end of the day, the story does not even mention which side had more knots, the left or the right. Rather, she took the cloth back to the merchant and asked him to weigh it again. Lo and behold, the weight was the same as it was in the morning. Therein lay the lesson of the saint. No matter how much someone curses you or praises you, it should not affect you in a way that changes who you are. Your net worth should remain the same.
Source Note
The Zayd ibn Sa‘nah report appears in Ibn Hibban, no. 288, with parallel recensions collected here. Those recensions differ in the wording of the demand for repayment: the negative wording retained above is present in the Ibn Hibban text. Al-Mizzi describes the report as hasan and well-known; this post has not independently assessed its chains. The Lalla Ded accounts are presented as legends and teaching stories, rather than established biography.
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