In His Name, the Most High
سَلامٌ عَلَى آلِ يس
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا دَاعِيَ اللَّهِ وَرَبَّانِيَّ آيَاتِهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا بَابَ اللَّهِ وَدَيَّانَ دِينِهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا خَلِيفَةَ اللَّهِ وَنَاصِرَ حَقِّهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا حُجَّةَ اللَّهِ وَدَلِيلَ إِرَادَتِهِ
السَّلامُ عَلَيْكَ يَا تَالِيَ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ وَتَرْجُمَانَهُ
Peace be upon the House of Yā-Sīn.
Peace be upon you, O caller of God, O one made divinely learned in His signs.
Peace be upon you, O gate of God, O judge of His religion.
Peace be upon you, O vicegerent of God, O helper of His truth.
Peace be upon you, O proof of God, O evidence of what He wills.
Peace be upon you, O reciter of the Book of God — and its interpreter.
— Excerpt from Ziyārat Āl-e Yāsīn
The Voice of the Awaited One
This maqtal is spoken, as every maqtal of various is spoken, in the voice of the Awaited Imam — the Mahdi, the son of Hasan, may our souls be his ransom and may God hasten his return — looking back across the veils of his long absence.
And he is not negligent of attending to us, and he is not forgetful of remembering him, therefore we too should not forget him.
Voiced in the series’ Mahdi-Maqtal-Voice — an imagining of the Awaited Imam’s voice, rendered in clear English by the means of our age, belonging to no living man.
The Maqtal — “To Review His Covenant”
I. A Charge
I was not there — but I remember.
I remember two brothers in Medina — my uncle al-Hasan, and my forefather al-Husayn — and the elder of them dying.
And the one who was dying said to the one who would have to carry him that he was leaving him a charge, and asked him to keep it.
II. Three Places
It was not a great deal that he asked.
When he died, his brother was to make him ready.
Then he was to carry him to their grandfather, the Messenger of God, so that my uncle could renew a covenant with him.
Then he was to turn him towards their mother.
And then he was to bring him back, and bury him at al-Baqi’.Three places.
His grandfather.
His mother.
And the ground.Listen to what is not in it.
He did not ask to be buried beside the Messenger of God.
He asked to be brought near him — for as long as it takes to renew a covenant — and then to be carried away.And he told his brother that something would befall him, and from whom.
He knew.
III. Into the Mosque
So when he died, they did what he had asked.
They laid him on his bier.
They carried him first to the place where the Messenger of God used to pray over the dead, and my forefather al-Husayn prayed over him there.Then they lifted him again, and brought him into his grandfather’s mosque, and stopped with him at his grandfather’s grave.
And somebody went to a certain woman, and told her that they had brought al-Hasan to bury him with the Messenger of God.
That was not what he had asked.
But it was what she was told.She came out in haste.
And she stood, and told them to take him away from her house — that nothing would be buried in it, and that the privacy of the Messenger of God would not be violated.
IV. At the Grave
My forefather al-Husayn answered her.
He told her what his brother had asked for.
Not a grave.
A nearness.
To be brought close to his grandfather, and to renew a covenant with him.And he told her that his brother knew God, and His Messenger, and the meaning of His Book, far too well ever to violate his grandfather’s privacy.
And that if it had been lawful between them and God to bury him there, she would have known it — because it would have been done.
And even then, she told them to take him away.
Hold that.
You have spent the whole of tonight on it.The grandson of the Messenger of God was ordered away from the grave of the Messenger of God — for the sake of the privacy of the Messenger of God.
He had asked for a moment at his grandfather’s side, at the end of a life spent keeping faith with him.
And even that was disputed, over his bier, at his grandfather’s grave.Think of my forefather that day.
He was the one who had been given the charge.
He was the one who had to answer, at the grave.
And he was the one who had to lift his brother’s bier, and carry it away from their grandfather’s side.He took him to their mother, as he had asked.
And then he carried him out, and laid him in the ground at al-Baqi’.
He is there still.
V. Every Morning
A bier can be sent away from a grave.
A covenant cannot.
A covenant is not kept in a grave, and it is not lost with one.
My uncle did not need a grave to keep his.
He kept it every day of his life.
He only wanted, at the end, to be near the one he had kept it with.Some of you renew a covenant with me every morning, for as long as you live.
Nobody carries you anywhere to do it.
Nobody can turn you back from it.So renew yours in the morning.
And when you do, remember him — who was carried to his grandfather to do the same, and was sent away from his side.
I was not there — but I remember.
And I am not gone.
May our Lord hasten my return.
Pray ardently for my return.
Sources Cited
al-Kulayni, al-Kafi, Volume 1, hadiths 1 and 3 of their chapter — both from Imam al-Baqir, through Muhammad ibn Muslim: Imam al-Hasan’s will to his brother — to be made ready, carried to the Messenger of God to renew a covenant with him, turned to his mother, and buried at al-Baqi’; the bier at the Prophet’s place of prayer over the dead, and Imam al-Husayn’s prayer; the mosque and the halt at the grave; the word carried to her, and her refusal; Imam al-Husayn’s answer — my brother commanded me to bring him near his grandfather, so that he might renew a covenant with him — and the burial at al-Baqi’. Hadith 3 names his mother: Sayyedah Fatimah.
Shaykh Abbas al-Qummi, Mafatih al-Jinan, the Supplication of the Covenant (Du’a al-’Ahd) — the covenant, the pledge and the allegiance renewed on the morning of each day.
