Hazrat Fatima Zehra RA in words of Allama Iqbal

 

Hazrat Fatima Zohra was the youngest and the most favourite of the daughters of the Holy Prophet of Islam. She was born of Hazrat Khadija. The Holy Prophet narrated that during the night of ‘Mairaj’, he had eaten a peculiar fruit from the “Tree of Eternity’ in the Paradise, and the essence of that fruit had generated in him a seed which had ultimately blossomed in the shape of Fatima.

One day Hazrat Fatima enquired of the Holy Prophet why was she called Fatima, and he explained that it was so because fire could not touch her soul. She was also called ‘Batool’.

Hazrat Fatima resembled the Holy Prophet in countenance, in elegance of speech, in dignity, and in general deportment. Whenever Hazrat Fatima would pay a visit to the Holy Prophet, he would kiss her on the forehead and make her sit down in his place. He used to say “Fatima is a part of me, and whosoever angers her angers me, and whosoever injures her injures me.”

It was customary, for the Holy Prophet that whenever he went on a journey the last person of whom he took leave was Fatima and when he returned the first person he visited was Fatima.

Hazrat Fatima was married to Hazrat Ali and Hasan and Hussain were her distinguished sons. She lived a very simple and austere life and attended to all domestic work in person. When she asked her father for a maid as a helping hand, he advised her to be patient and to do without a servant.

When the Holy Prophet died, the whole world became dark for Hazrat Fatima. She wept day and night, and did not survive her distinguished father by more than six months. She was hardly twenty four at the time of her death.

According to the testimony of the Holy Prophet, Hazrat Fatima was the best Muslim woman. Hazrat Fatima wrote on the death of the Holy Prophet a beauty elegy as she mourned:

 

“It is not wondrous that whoever,
Smells the fragrance of Muhammad’s SAW tomb.
Will never smell another perfume.
Destiny hurt me with a bereavement so sad and so dark.
That if it had fallen on the days.
They would have been turned into eternal nights.”

 

In his poem “The Mysteries of Selflessness”, Allama Iqbal has highlighted the greatness of Hazrat Fatima. He has held that she is the perfect pattern of Muslim womanhood.

According to Iqbal, Mary is hallowed in one respect only in as much as she was the mother of Jesus Christ. Hazrat Fatima was hallowed on three counts, firstly that she was the daughter of the Holy Prophet who came as a mercy to all humanity; secondly she was the consort of Hazrat Ali, the ‘Lion of God’, and thirdly she was the mother of Imam Hasan, and Imam Hussain the martyr of Karbala. In the words of Allama Iqbal:—

 

“She was the harvest of the well sown field
Of self surrender, to all mothers she
The perfect pattern, Fatima the chaste”. 

 

Iqbal has narrated a story about her. Once a person In need called at her house and asked for alms. There was nothing In the house to be given to the poor man. Her heart grieved at the distress of the person.

She took the cloak that she was wearing, sold it to a Jew and the proceeds were handed over to the person concerned.

She was so spiritually advanced that all creatures, including those constituted of light and fire obeyed her bidding. Yet she subordinated her will to the pleasure of her husband. Fortitude and meekness were her schooling. While her lips chanted the Holy Quran her hands worked at the mill for grinding the corn for domestic purposes. When she prayed she wept profusely, and so valuable were these tears that even Gabriel stooped to gather them which rained like dew upon the Throne of God.

Iqbal pays her tribute in the following words:

 

“God’s Law a fetter locks about my feet To guard secure the Prophet’s high behest. 
Else had I surely gone about her tomb And fallen prostate, worshipping her dust.”