Team Fajr: Hassan ibn Thabit RA w/ Mufti Umrain Khan | Lives of the Companions Ep.44 | 09/19

[clears throat] [coughs] The Sahaba that we're going to discuss today is Hassan bin Thabit, radiAllahu anhu. Hassan bin Thabit was a, uh, Madani Sahaba. He was from the tribe of, uh, Banu Najjar from Khazraj. Uh, and so he's from the Ansar Sahaba, and he has a relation to Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam on the side of the mother of Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. [coughs] The story of Hassan bin Thabit is mostly the story of his art. It's a story of Nabi Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam recognizing, recognizing a person's talents and, you know, using them for that purpose, and finding an opportunity to do khidmat of deen in whatever form it might be. Hassan bin Thabit is famously known for his poetry, and this starts at a very young age of his, from far before, you know, he accepts Islam. [coughs] Uh, he is in a family of, uh, of people, um-- And his poetry in particular 'cause... Okay. So there, there's a lot of, like, context that we have to talk about before we get into why his poetry was so influential. Poetry in the time of the Arabs is very much like what we would consider social media influencers, in that they had the ability to cancel a person, they had the ability to raise a person's status, they had the ability to gather votes for a person, they had the ability to change the course of the market. They had so much power and so much influence, really like the way the media is today, in that the media can decide what happens with society. The media can decide what people are exposed to. The media can decide how people are going to react, uh, and who is in favor and who is not in favor. The poets very much had that status. Uh, and if it's, it's not almost an exaggeration to say that Hassan bin Thabit, radiAllahu anhu, was almost like a celebrity, and that his poetry... Right? Because what would happen is if you have, like, very much like influencers today, you have someone who has a lot of followers, you have a, a certain individual who can create a lot of influence, you're going to get that influ- uh, that person, and obviously use them for your own motives, right? If you're a leader, if you're a king, and you know that you have people like that in society, you're gonna try to get their favor so that the people are happy with you, so that the people are, are pr- promoting you. Uh, and so Hassan bin Thabit would also be hired literally by royal courts, even outside the Arab lands. He would be hired to come [coughs] and to recite his poetry. And so for, for them from their time, they don't have media like we have it, obviously, right? They don't have, uh, picture, motion video, all that stuff. They don't have recordings. All they have is word of mouth, pretty much. They don't even have type yet. They're, they're not writing as much. Uh, they don't have pen and paper as much, right? If anything, it's they're writing on rocks and, and skins. So for them, it's word of mouth. And this particular form of, of art, of poetry, of language is very impactful. [coughs] And so Hassan bin Thabit, radiAllahu anhu, as from a young age he's doing this, and he actually starts off, um... So we mentioned he's from Banu, uh, Banu Naj- Najjar of the Khazraj