Question:
Assalamu Alaikum Warahmathullahi Wabarakathuhu,
I want to find out the details about the following hadeeth. Which is in Buhari Shareef Volume 9 book 84 and hadeeth no 68. I read in a website hadeeth collection it mentions as “Iraq” and I have heard this hadeeth earlier as “east” or “nadj”. Please verify.
Jazakallahu Hairan.
Answer:
Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmani ‘r-Raheem,
Allahumma salli `ala Sayyidina Muhammad,
wa `alaykum salam,
Wahabis are known to change hadith collections and edit hadith collections to suit thier own minhaj. And I have no doubt that the reference to Iraq as the Najd, is definitely Wahabi influenced. They claim:
“We find that this Hadith does not refer to the Najd (Riyadh) that is famously known in Saudi today, but rather it refers to Iraq”.
and
“The Najd for those people living in Medina is in the direction of the East would be Iraq.”
But clearly, a person with the least geographic knowledge can see on the map, if they believe in maps (roundness of the earth and it’s rotation etc.) that the Najd lays directly east of Medina, whereas Iraq lays north.
Abu Zubair heard Jabir b. ‘Abdullah (Allah be pleased with them) as saying as he was asked about (the place for entering upon the) state of Ihram: I heard (and I think he carried it directly to the Apostle of Allah ) him saying: For the people of Medina Dhu’l-Hulaifa is the place for entering upon the state of Ihram, and for (the people coming through the other way, i. e. Syria) it is Juhfa; for the people of Iraq it is Dbat al-’Irq; for the people of Najd it is Qarn (al-Manazil) and for the people of Yemen it is Yalamlam.
[Sahih Muslim: Book 007, Number 2666]
Therefore , there should be no doubt that in fact Najd and Iraq are two different places, and not one and the same, as the pseudo-Salafis would have you believe.
Al-Khattabi said: “Najd lies Eastward, and to those who are in Medina, their Najd is the desert of Iraq and its vicinities, which all lie east of the people of Medina.”
There lies the forbidden kingdom.
And Allah knows best.
Sallu `alayh
Ismaeel Dhul-Qarnayn
