Question:
Assalam-o-alaikum wa rehmatullah
May Allah Ta’ala bless you all shuyukh, specially Shaykh Gibril Haddad and all the eshaykh team .. Ameen JazakAllah khair! for clarifying regarding the sanad
Also can you please shed some light on this najdi explanation:
“The actual slogan, as recorded by Ibn Kathir in Al-Bidayah wan-Nihayah, Vol. 6 P.397, was ‘Ya Muhammadah! (O for Muhammad! )’, rather than ‘Ya Muhammad! (O Muhammad! )’; this is like the cry ‘Ya Islamah! (O for Islam!)’. The Ya here is for exclamation, not for prayer, as in the Prophet’s statement (SAWS), ‘Ya tuba lil-Sham! (O joy for Syria ! )’, and this is further confirmed by the suffix “ah“. The Companions understood Islam far too well to pray to the Prophet (SAWS)!”
I know it’s not a prayer but a Nida, but an explanation would be beneficial.
Salam
Answer:
Alaykum Salam,
I am not sure who is claiming that Ya is “for prayer,” as Muslims do not pray to the Prophet (upon him blessings and peace) but as for tawassul then it is as he himself taught in the authentic hadith of the blind man.
As for the translation given it shows misunderstanding of the meaning of the final ah in Ya Muhammadah. It goes without saying that (Ya+final ah) is a branch of nida‘ (summon, invocation, call, apostrophe) called nudba (elegy, lament) and the person thus called is the mandub, and the Ya can be replaced with Wa also, as in the cry of Abu Bakr (r) when he kissed the Prophet (upon him blessings and peace) after the latter’s demise, with the words “Ya/Wa Khalilah! Ya/Wa Nabiyyah! Ya/Wa Safiyyah” O my Beloved! O my Prophet! O my Only One! as authentically narrated.
If anything, whatever Ya conveys is only multiplied by the addition of a final ah to the callee’s name, whether Islam or a person, for dramatic purpose and it denotes extreme emotion as well as importance, as the callee has to be someone or something famous.
See on this Shaykh `Abd al-Ghani al-Daqr’s Mu`jam Qawa`id al-Lughat al-`Arabiyya, entry “nida‘,” section entitled “ahkam al-mandub.”
Hajj Gibril Haddad
