Nasb-and-the-Nawasib

whose first priority was leadership and honour. 1 Hence ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
would say:
ما زلنا نحن وبنو عمنا من بني هاشم مرة لنا ومرة علينا،‏ نلجأ إليهم ويلجؤؤن إلينا،‏ حتى طلعت شمس
الرسالة فأكسدت كل نافق،‏ وأخرست كل ناطق
We and our cousins of the Banū Hāshim remained such that at times
the odds would be in our favour and at times they would be against us.
They would resort to us and we would resort to them. Then rose the sun
of prophethood which made every hypocrite valueless and made every
speaker speechless. 2
When Islam came with its novel ideas and beliefs it brought about an astounding
revolution in the criteria of the people and their priorities; it purified the people
from the deep seated traits of Jāhiliyyah which overpowered their lives. This does
not mean that they completely vanished, rather some of its effects still lived on,
as in the following ḥadīth of Nabī H:
أربع في أمتي من أمر الجاهلية ل يتركونهن:‏ الفخر في الحساب،‏ والطعن في النساب والستسقاء
بالنجوم والنياحة
Four things in my Ummah are from the traits of Jāhiliyyah which they will
never leave: boasting over high pedigrees, impugning lineages, seeking
rain through the stars, and mourning. 3
Likewise when Abū Dhar I vilified a man and taunted him because of his
mother, Nabī H said to him, “You are a person in who there is still some
Jāhiliyyah.”
1 Banū Umayyah Bayn al-Suqūṭ wa al-Intiḥār p. 16.
2 Tārīkh Madīnah Dimashq 45/222; al-Bidāyah wa al-Nihāyah 9/203.
3 The narration of Abū Mālik al-Ashʿarī I which appears in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: chapter of funerals: subchapter
regarding the severity of mourning: ḥadīth no. 934.
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