True Repentance

[NaSra]

In The Name Of Allaah...


Thalaba Ibn AbdulRahman was a young man at the age of 16. He always ran


errands for the prophet pbuh. One day while walking though the city of


Medina, he passed by a house with an open door. Out of curiosity he took a


glance inside. In this glance, he saw a light curtain being blown away from


a bathroom entrance were a woman was bathing. He immediately lowered his


gaze. With an extreme feeling of guilt and hypocrisy his mind ran.


Thinking to himself, “How could I be of the companions, one that is close to


the prophet pbuh, one who runs his errands and be so horrible as to


disrespect peoples privacy?”..


He feared that Allah would reveal to the prophet pbuh evidence of his


hypocrisy. His guilt denied him to ever show his face to the prophet pbuh.


So he ran away.


Days went by and the prophet kept asking the other companions if they had


seen Thalaba. No one had seen him. With the prophet’s worry about Thalaba he


sent a few of the companions to look for him everywhere, among them were


Umar Ibn Al Khattab and Salman Al Farsi. They looked everywhere in Medina,


and on the out skirts of Madina, until they came about a set of mountains


between Mecca and Medina where some nomads where herding sheep.


The companions asked the nomads if they had seen a young man with Thalaba’s


characteristics. They told the companions about a weeping boy. He had been


here for 40 days. He came down from the mountains once a day weeping and


drank the milk they would offer him. Then he went back up the mountains


weeping, crying, always asking for Allah for forgiveness, and saying words


of repentance.


So the companions waited until he came down and watched him. He had lost weight. His countenance reflected sorrow as he drank the milk that was mixed with his tears. The companions insisted that they take him back to the


prophet pbuh but he refused and asked them if Allah had revealed verses


saying he was a hypocrite. They told him that they had no knowledge of any


such verses. He was taken back to Medina where the prophet pbuh went to see


him. He asked again if Allah had put him among the hypocrites or revealed


that he was. The prophet pbuh assured him that there were no such verses.


He laid out Thalaba’s tired, weak body and placed Thalaba’s head on his lap.


The prophet pbuh comforted him until he told the prophet pbuh I feel as


though ants are walking between my flesh and bones. The prophet told him it


was death and his time had come.


He witnessed while Thalaba’s head was on his lap, Thalaba proclaim “There is


no god worthy of worship other than Allah, and that Mohamed pbuh is the


messenger of Allah.” The prophet pbuh washed Thalaba and carried him to the


grave. It is narrated that on their way to bury Thalaba, the prophet pbuh


walked on his tippy toes as though he were in a crowd. When Umar asked about


this, the prophet pbuh explained that he was being crowded with the angels.