Sabeel’n-Najaat

Regarding this Selection

tarikh motifThis concise work, Sabeel’n-Najaat (the Way of Salvation) by one of Black Africa’s leading statesmen, military generals and scholars, Shaykh Abdullahi ibn Fuduye`, is believed to have been produced after 1827 when he retired from active rule of the Gwandu region of the Sokoto Caliphate.

This work reflected the kind of instructions Shaykh Abdullahi was engaged in during this period. The two original manuscripts I used to translate this work were no less than 10 folios and no more than 13 folios respectively. Thus, the work is relatively small. It is divided into two chapters followed by a small conclusion.

  • The first chapter is on repentance and its conditions.
  • The second chapter is on guarding the five limbs which Shaykh Abdullahi enumerates as: the eyes, the ears; the tongue; the heart and the stomach.
  • In his conclusion, ‘the professor’ simply reiterates a quote presumably taken from the conclusion of his brother, Shehu Uthman’s Ihya’s-Sunna wa Ikhmad’l-Bid`a, where he quotes from an Andalusian scholar, Abu’l-Abbas al-Abyaani.

This work is thus an epitomizing of the fundamentals of spiritual purification for the transformation of character (tasawwuf li’t-takhalluq) composed for the beginner in the spiritual path. In these last days and times when tribulation, injustice, hypocrisy and inequity have filled our planet, it is with pleasure mixed with a little irony that we at SIIASI present this very concise but dense work on the basic research of repentance and guarding ones limbs from everything other than that which pleases Allah.

Read Text

One thought on “Sabeel’n-Najaat

  1. Asalam Alaykum sidi, my son follows Quran and Sunnah mashallah but takes the approach of offering musafir salat for 19 days instead of 5 days like I was taught. His reasoning is a Hadith in Bukari can you help me in this matter explain why it’s 5 days? Jzk jibril abdullahi Sacramento, CA

Questions or comments for Shaykh Muhammad

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.