Observations on the Mussulmauns of India: Descriptive of Their Manners, Customs, Habits and Religious Opinions Made During a Twelve Years' Residence in Their Immediate SocietyMeer Hasan Ali, Mrs.
Islamic
Observations on the Mussulmauns of India: Descriptive of Their Manners, Customs, Habits and Religious Opinions Made During a Twelve Years' Residence in Their Immediate Society
Meer Hasan Ali, Mrs.
India -- Social life and customs; Muslims -- India
My promised postscript is a translation from the Persian, extracted from
'The Hyaatool Kaaloob'. The author is detailing the manner of living
habitual to Mahumud and his family, and gives the following anecdotes
'hudeeth' [19] (to be relied on), which occurred at the season of Rumzaun;
the writer says:--
'It is well known that they (Mahumud's family) were poor in worldly wealth;
that they set no other value on temporal riches (which occasionally passed
through their hands) but as loans from the great Giver of all good, to be
by them distributed amongst the poor, and this was done faithfully; they
kept not in their hands the gifts due to the necessitous. The members of
Mahumud's family invariably lived on the most simple diet, even when they
could have commanded luxuries.
'At one season of Rumzaun,--it was in the lifetime of Mahumud,--Fatima,
her husband Ali, and their two sons, Hasan and Hosein, had fasted two days
and nights, not having, at that period, the means of procuring the
smallest quantity of food to break their fast with. Habitually and from,
principle, they disguised from the world or their friends all such
temporal trials as it seemed good in the wisdom of Divine Providence to
place in their chequered path; preferring under any circumstances of need,
to fix their sole trust in the mercy and goodness of God for relief,
rather than by seeking aid from their fellow-creatures lessening their
dependence on Him.
'On the evening above mentioned, Mahumud went to the cottage of Fatima,
and said, "Daughter, I am come to open my fast with thee."--"In the name
of the most merciful God, be it so," was the reply of Fatima; yet secretly
she sorrowed, that the poverty of her house must now be exposed to her
beloved father.
'Fatima spread the dustha-khawn[20] (a large square of calico) on the
floor of the room near her father, placed empty plates before him, then
retired to her station for prayers; spreading her mat in the direction of
Kaabah, she prostrated herself to the earth before God in the humblest
attitude, imploring His merciful aid, in this her moment of trial.
Fatima's fervent prayer was scarcely finished, when a savoury smell of
food attracted her attention; raising her head from the earth, her anxious
eye was greeted with the view of a large bowl or basin filled with
sulleed[21] (the Arabian food of that period). Fatima again bowed down her
head, and poured out in humble strains that gratitude to God with which
her heart overflowed. Then rising from her devotions, she took up the
savoury food and hurried with it to her father's presence, and summoned
her husband and the children to partake of this joyous meal, without even
hinting her thoughts that it was the gift of Heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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