The Lesson Of Wisdom That Suleiman (pbuh) Learned From The Bird

Suleiman once heard a male bird saying to a female bird: "Why are you staying away from me? If I want I would take off the dome of Suleiman's castle with my beak and throw it in the sea." Suleiman smiled when he heard there conversation and called upon them. He said to the male bird: "Can you do it?" He said: "No O Messenger of Allah but one must ornament himself and look big for his wife. The lover is not blamed for what he says." Suleiman then said to the female bird: "Why you are staying away from him when he loves you?" She said: "O prophet of Allah, he doesn’t love me. He pretends that he loves me because he loves others also." The words of the female bird reached the heart of Suleiman. He wept a lot and stayed away from people for forty days pleading Allah to place love of Allah only in his heart and to make it void of loving anyone else.

 

It is narrated that he (pbuh) once heard a bird saying to his wife: "Come near me so that I mate with you and thus we would beget a child that would celebrate the remembrance of Allah. We had grown old." Suleiman was surprised by his words and so he said: "Such intention is better than my entire kingdom."

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Tafseer Al-Mizan Book 16/221