By: Muhammad Al-Bashaq
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
How similar today is to yesterday.
How great is the resemblance between the condition of the Islamic world in the 5th century AH—when it fell before the Crusader wars—and the condition of the Ummah today: corruption of rulers, appeasement by scholars, betrayal by minorities, and ignorance among the masses.
It is enough for us to know that the calamities with which Allah tests His servants come as ongoing challenges that provoke human societies and their leaders toward greater awareness and achievement.
That was the situation, and no path seemed open to escape the catastrophe that had befallen the Ummah—until a glimmer of light appeared on the horizon. It was represented in the rise of a small state in Iraq and the Levant, led by men who understood the meaning of Islam and knew that victory and empowerment come only through jihad and the sacrifice of blood in the path of Allah.
It was the Zengid_State.
That state was founded by the just Sultan, Nur al-Din محمود ibn Imad al-Din Zengi, the founder of the Zengid dynasty, who engraved in history his famous words:
“By Allah, I will not seek shade beneath a سقف until I take revenge for myself and for Islam.”
Sultan Nur al-Din Zengi (may Allah have mercy on him) was among the greatest Muslim leaders who fought the Crusaders in the Levant and stood against the Fatimid state in Egypt. Historians described him as the most just and greatest of Muslim rulers after the Rightly Guided Caliphs and Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz.
When Nur al-Din attended battle, he would personally engage in combat and strive earnestly for martyrdom. No one in his time was seen upon a horse more courageous or steadfast than him.
One day, Qutb al-Din al-Naysaburi said to him: “By Allah, O our master Sultan, do not endanger yourself, for if you are killed, all who are with you will be killed, the lands will be taken, and the Muslims will be ruined.”
He replied: “Be silent, Qutb al-Dīn, for your words show (bad manners) with God. Who is Mahmūd? Who preserved the religion and the lands before me except the One besides whom there is no god? And who is Mahmūd?”
It is said that he wept, and those present also wept. May Allah have mercy on him.
When his forces met the Crusaders at Harim, who outnumbered them in strength and numbers, Nur al-Din withdrew beneath the hill of Harim, prostrated before his Lord, pressed his face into the ground, and supplicated:
“O Lord, these are Your servants and they are Your allies, and these are Your servants and they are Your enemies. So grant victory to Your allies over Your enemies. O Lord, grant victory to Your religion, and do not grant victory to Mahmoud. Who is Mahmoud, until he should be granted victory?”
In one of the battles between the Muslims and the Crusaders, the Muslim army was defeated, and the just king Nur al-Din Zengi stood firm with only a small group of mujahideen. At that moment, he prostrated to Allah and prayed:
“O Lord, I am the weak servant. You entrusted me with this authority and gave me this responsibility. I built up Your lands, advised Your servants, commanded them with what You commanded me, and forbade them from what You forbade me. I removed wrongdoing from among them and made manifest the banner of Your religion in their lands.
Now the Muslims have been defeated, and I am unable to repel these disbelievers, the enemies of Your religion and Your Prophet. I possess nothing but myself, and I have surrendered it to You in defense of Your religion and in support of Your Prophet.”
Allah, Glorified and Exalted, answered his supplication. The Crusader army halted and fled, thinking that the Muslims had set a trap for them.
Those who witnessed the event swore that they seized the reins of Nur al-Din’s horse by force to make him leave the battlefield, while he wanted to continue fighting alone with those who remained with him.
When the enemy realized that there had been no ambush or trick, they deeply regretted it.
May Allah have mercy on the just Imam Nur al-Din and bless the Muslims with leaders like him.
May Allah have mercy on the one who said:
“By Allah, I will not seek shade beneath a roof until I take revenge for myself and for Islam.”
So will Afghanistan be the new guardian of Islam, as the Zengid state once was?
