Hadees 7 — Mercy in a Hundred Parts — ar-Raḥmah as a Single Thread through Kitāb al-Adab جَعَلَ اللَّهُ الرَّحْمَةَ مِائَةَ جُزْءٍ

1 · The ḥadīths of this lesson — Kitāb al-Adab #

• The book is Kitāb al-Adab of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī.
• The three Bukhārī ḥadīths come in the sequence the book has them: mercy in a hundred parts → the greatest sins → the child in the lap.

2 · The chain first — akhbaranā, ḥaddathanā, samiʿtu #

Before the first ḥadīth's meaning comes the wording of its isnād, and this is important: you should understand not only what a ḥadīth means but how it reached you, and whether its chain is sound.

These are not interchangeable decoration. Each one asserts that a particular narrator took the ḥadīth directly from the narrator before him. That a transmitter received it face to face from his predecessor is a sharṭ — a condition — of a sound chain.

The point in this ḥadīth: Abū Hurayrah does not say "the Prophet ﷺ said". He says samiʿtu — "I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saying it." That is a narrator placing himself in the room.

3 · Ḥadīth 1 — Allah made mercy a hundred parts #

From al-Zuhrī, who said: Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab informed me that Abū Hurayrah (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhu) said: I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say:

Jaʿala-llāhu-r-raḥmata miʾata juzʾ, fa-amsaka ʿindahu tisʿatan wa-tisʿīna juzʾan, wa-anzala fī l-arḍi juzʾan wāḥidan, fa-min dhālika l-juzʾi yatarāḥamu l-khalq, ḥattā tarfaʿa l-farasu ḥāfirahā ʿan waladihā khashyata an tuṣībahu.

"Allah made mercy a hundred parts. He kept ninety-nine parts with Himself and sent down one single part to the earth. It is from that one part that all creation shows mercy to one another — so much so that a mare lifts her hoof away from her foal, for fear of striking it."

4 · Raḥmah — what the one word covers #

Raḥmah is mercy, compassion, tenderness, love — and also grace, Allah's aruḷ. All of that sits inside the single word. Hold the width of it; the whole lesson hangs on this term.

5 · Ninety-nine kept back, one sent down #

6 · The mare and her foal #

The Prophet ﷺ gives one small illustration of what that single part looks like in the world: ḥattā tarfaʿa l-farasu ḥāfirahā ʿan waladihā khashyata an tuṣībahu — a mare lifts her hoof away from her own foal, for fear of hurting it.

Picture it. The mare is standing, the foal is beneath her, her hoof is about to come down where the little one is lying — and she lifts it away, because of the fear that something might happen to her young. She does not think it out. That reflex is the mercy, and it comes from that one part that was sent down. Every creature's tenderness towards its own — from the animals upwards — is drawn from the same single share.

7 · The inference the ḥadīth is for #

This is a hugely important ḥadīth, because of what it lets you infer.

Look at the sheer breadth of mercy in the world: a mother's mercy towards her child, a father's towards his child, and every creature showing tenderness to its own — animals, birds, beasts, everything alive, on land and in the sea, everywhere. All of that together is one part out of a hundred.

That is the point to hold on to: grasp this ḥadīth and you have grasped the scale of Allah's mercy.

8 · The supporting ḥadīth — mercy given downwards, mercy returned from above #

A second ḥadīth on the same theme:

Ar-rāḥimūna yarḥamuhumu-r-Raḥmān. Irḥamū man fī l-arḍi yarḥamkum man fī s-samāʾ.

"Those who show mercy — the Most Merciful shows mercy to them. Show mercy to those on the earth, and the One in the heaven will show mercy to you."

The lesson is the same one from the other direction: the mercy you give downwards is the mercy that comes back to you from above.

9 · The next chapter — killing a child from fear of poverty #

The next chapter of the book is about those who kill their child out of fear of poverty — qatl al-walad khashyata an yaṭʿama maʿahu.

10 · Ḥadīth 2 — Ibn Masʿūd: "which sin is the greatest?" #

The chapter's ḥadīth is from ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhu):

Qultu: yā Rasūlallāh, ayyu-dh-dhanbi aʿẓam? Qāla: an tajʿala lillāhi niddan wa-huwa khalaqak. Qultu: thumma ayyun? Qāla: an taqtula waladaka khashyata an yaṭʿama maʿak. Qultu: thumma ayyun? Qāla: an tuzāniya ḥalīlata jārik.

"I said: Messenger of Allah, which sin is the greatest? He said: That you set up a rival to Allah, when it is He who created you. I said: then which? He said: That you kill your child for fear that he will eat with you. I said: then which? He said: That you commit zinā with your neighbour's wife."

Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Adab.

Do not confuse this with two ḥadīths you met in Lessons 2 and 3.

The only item common to all three lists is associating a partner with Allah. Line them up in revision; do not merge them.

11 · The three, restated #

The exchange again, phrase by phrase:

These same three come together in a verse of Sūrat al-Furqān — not calling on any god besides Allah, not killing a soul, not committing zinā.

12 · Shirk — the sin that is not forgiven, and the way out #

Allah forgives every sin, but He does not forgive that a partner be associated with Him.

And yet mercy still has the last word. If a person who committed shirk accepts Islam, Allah forgives what came before. How? The answer is that same mercy: the one who comes into Islam has the shirk he committed forgiven. "Thousands of people do exactly this." That is how far His mercy reaches.

The caution comes immediately after: that concerns a person before Islam. What the ḥadīth itself is teaching is the ranking of the gravest sins for a Muslim — first shirk, second killing one's child from fear of poverty, third zinā with the neighbour's wife.

13 · What nidd means #

And it is not only statues. To love something the way Allah is to be loved — to give to something else the devotion that belongs to Him alone — is the same disease. He alone is worthy of worship; He brought you into existence from nothing, so He alone is to be taken as Rabb and as Ilāh.

14 · Killing a soul — and killing your own child #

• Qatl an-nafs al-muḥarramah — taking a life Allah has made inviolable — is a major sin in its own right.
• So consider what it is when the life taken is your own infant: the lowest and worst form of it.
• A second dimension: it is a betrayal of the community itself. Bearing children and raising them is what carries a society forward; killing them is the exact reversal of that.
• The motive named in the ḥadīth exposes the real disease. "He will share my provision; my income will not stretch; once this child arrives I will be in hardship." That thought is a bad opinion of Allah as ar-Razzāq, the Provider.

15 · Provision belongs to Allah #

Provision (rizq): the Qur'an says in more than one place that rizq is Allah's responsibility — He provides for you, and He provides for your children too.

The rest of the class's argument on rizq was not recorded.

The conclusion: killing out of fear of poverty is a wrong belief about Allah. A believer must hold, as a matter of conviction, that Allah is the one who gives provision, and must not entertain that corrupt thought about Him. We ourselves say it constantly: our provision is with Allah. Then no one should ever act out of fear of poverty.

16 · The third sin — zinā with the neighbour's wife #

Zinā is ḥarām and a major sin in itself. But the ḥadīth singles out the neighbour's wife, and the reason is the second crime folded inside the first:

Your neighbour trusts you. He leaves his house and his household in your keeping; if something happens he counts on you; the whole relationship is built on that confidence. To take his wife is therefore two sins at once — the zinā, and the treachery against the one who trusted you. It is zinā with the ugliness of betrayal added to it, and that is why it is placed among the very greatest sins.

17 · Ḥadīth 3 — the child in the Prophet's ﷺ lap #

The thread of raḥmah returns: the next ḥadīth carries it further. What follows in the book is the chapter on a child being placed in one's lap — wa-ṣ-ṣabiyyu fī ḥijrihi. The ḥadīth is from ʿĀʾishah (raḍiyallāhu ʿanhā):

Kāna n-nabiyyu ﷺ yuʾtā bi-ṣ-ṣibyāni fa-yubarriku ʿalayhim wa-yuḥannikuhum, fa-utiya bi-ṣabiyyin fa-bāla ʿalayhi, fa-daʿā bi-māʾin fa-atbaʿahu bawlahu wa-lam yaghsilhu.

"Children used to be brought to the Prophet ﷺ, and he would invoke blessing on them and perform taḥnīk for them. A small child was brought to him and urinated on him; so he called for water and poured it over the urine, and did not wash it."

Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Adab.

18 · The two things in it — taḥnīk, and the water #

The lesson: look at the Messenger's ﷺ mercy towards small children. He held them, he played with them, he was gentle with them — and that is the pattern.

The fiqh point the ḥadīth carries. Because he poured water over the spot rather than washing the garment — and from other ḥadīths that state it more clearly — comes the ruling that:

19 · Mercy as the method of daʿwah #

The ḥadīth becomes a lesson about mercy as a way of calling people to Islam. Look at the daʿwah work in Africa: poor children, children nobody is looking after, in genuinely hard conditions.

The competition: Christian missionaries are conspicuously good at exactly this — their preachers go into hardship, pick the children up, carry them, hold them, comfort them, rock them. Whether the affection is sincere or staged cannot be known from the outside; what is certain is that it works for their preaching.

Dr ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sumait #

• He was a doctor, trained in America, holding a highly specialised qualification.
• He came across a news report about mass conversion to Christianity in an African country — and it would not leave him alone.
• He could have lived comfortably where he was. He left it and went there.
• Being a doctor he went into that field and moved among the families, picking up children, showing them affection — and he did it in the genuinely poor villages, not the easy places.
• He founded an organisation — Jamʿiyyat al-ʿAwn al-Mubāshir, "Direct Aid" — and did social work there for many years, in the course of which great numbers of people entered Islam.

The question someone put to him: you had every comfort — a doctor, a specialist, in a country with everything. Why go to Africa and live in hardship? His answer: when a non-Muslim brother raises his finger and says ashhadu anna Muḥammadan rasūlullāh, the joy of that moment is not matched by wealth, by influence, or by any comfort. And it was not one or two — it was people in their thousands.

20 · Fa-bimā raḥmatin mina-llāhi linta lahum #

The engine of all of it is raḥmah. The Prophet ﷺ himself was sent as a mercy, and the Qur'an puts the point directly:

Fa-bimā raḥmatin mina-llāhi linta lahum — "So it was by a mercy from Allah that you were lenient with them." (Sūrat Āl ʿImrān)

So: show affection, show mercy, help people, attend to them as human beings, relieve their hardship. That is what wins hearts. A problem arises for someone, you stand with them in it — and after that they will listen.

The modern language for part of this: people now talk about emotional intelligence, and this is exactly what it is. When you go to a house, pick the child up. It has become a recognised skill; in the Sunnah it was simply adab.

21 · Mercy to animals #

Mercy is owed to every living thing — and here Islam's record is one people can be shown.

Two ḥadīths, by their content:

• The person who gave water to a thirsty dog and was admitted to Paradise for it.
• The woman who tied up a cat, gave it neither food nor water until it died, and entered the Fire for it.

Against that stands what is seen in the present: cattle tied up and transported without food or water, animals killed in front of one another, and slaughter done without the ease the Sharīʿah requires. These are the things that cause a real shock in society when they come to light, and they are part of why Western animal-welfare movements gained the standing they have. A society that shows no mercy to animals is a changed society — and Islam had the point first, in the ḥadīth of the dog and the ḥadīth of the cat.

The practical application:

Doing otherwise harms the image of Islam — and Muslims are seen doing it.

22 · Closing #

"The subject of raḥmah is, for us, extremely important and extremely necessary."