IS HASSAN ALSO AMONG THE PROPHETS?

Narrated `Aisha:

Hassan bin Thabit asked the permission of Allah’s Messenger to lampoon the pagans (in verse). Allah’s Apostle said, “What about my fore-fathers (ancestry)?’ Hassan said (to the Prophet) “I will take you out of them as a hair is taken out of dough.”

Narrated Hisham bin `Urwa that his father said, “I called Hassan with bad names in front of `Aisha.” She said, “Don’t call him with bad names because he used to defend Allah’s Messenger (against the pagans).” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 73, Number 171 https://sunnah.com/bukhari:6150)

Narrated Abu Salama bin ‘Abdur-Rahman bin ‘Auf:

that he heard Hassan bin Thabit Al-Ansari asking the witness of Abu Huraira, saying, “O Abu Huraira! I beseech you by Allah (to tell me). Did you hear Allah’s Apostle saying ‘O Hassan! Reply on behalf of Allah’s Apostle. O Allah! Support him (Hassan) with the Holy Spirit!’?” Abu Huraira said, “Yes.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 73, Number 173 https://sunnah.com/bukhari:6152; see also Volume 1, Book 8, Number 444 and Volume 4, Book 54, Number 434; Sahih Muslim, Book 031, Number 6071 and 6073)

Narrated Al-Bara:

The Prophet said to Hassan, “Lampoon them (the pagans) in verse, and Gabriel is with you.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 73, Number 174 https://sunnah.com/bukhari:6153; see also Volume 4, Book 54, Number 435 and Volume 5, Book 59, Number 449; Sahih Muslim, Book 031, Number 6074)

‘A’isha reported that Allah’s Messenger said: Satirise against the (non-believing amongst the) Quraish, for (the satire) is more grievous to them than the hurt of an arrow.

So he (the Holy Prophet) sent (someone) to Ibn Rawiha and asked him to satirise against them, and he composed a satire, but it did not appeal to him (to the Holy Prophet). He then sent (someone) to Ka’b b. Malik (to do the same, but what he composed did not appeal to the Holy Prophet).

He then sent one to Hassan b. Thabit. As he got into his presence, Hassan said: Now you have called for this lion who strikes (the enemies) with his tail. He then brought out his tongue and began to move it and said: By Him Who has sent you with Truth, I shall tear them with my tongue as the leather is torn.

Thereupon Allah’s Messenger said: Don’t be hasty; (let) Abu Bakr who has the best know- ledge of the lineage of the Quraish draw a distinction for you in regard to my lineage, as my lineage is the same as theirs. Hassan then came to him (Abu Bakr) and after making inquiry (in regard to the lineage of the Holy Prophet) came back to him (the holy Prophet) and said: Allah’s Messenger, he (Abu Bakr) has drawn a distinction in your lineage (and that of the Quraish). By Him Who has sent you with Truth, I shall draw out from them (your name) as hair is drawn out from the flour.

‘A’isha said: I heard Allah’s Messenger as saying to Hassin: Verily Ruh-ul- Qudus would continue to help you so long as you put up a defence on behalf of Allah and His Messenger.

And she said: I heard Allah’s Messenger saying: Hassan satirised against them and gave satisfaction to the (Muslims) and disquieted (the non-Muslims). You satirised Muhammad, but I replied on his behalf, And there is reward with Allah for this.

You satirised Muhammad. virtuous, righteous, The Apostle of Allah, whose nature is truthfulness. So verily my father and his father and my honour Are a protection to the honour of Muhammad; May I lose my dear daughter, if you don’t see her, Wiping away the dust from the two sides of Kada’, They pull at the rein, going upward; On their shoulders are spears thirsting (for the blood of the enemy); our steeds are sweating-our women wipe them with their mantles.

If you had not interfered with us, we would have performed the ‘Umra, And (then) there was the Victory, and the darkness cleared away. Otherwise wait for the fighting on the day in which Allah will honour whom He pleases. And Allah said: I have sent a servant who says the Truth in which there is no ambiguity; And Allah said: I have prepared an army-they are the Ansar whose object is fighting (the enemy), There reaches every day from Ma’add abuse, or fighting or satire; Whoever satirises the Apostle from amongst you, or praises him and helps it is all the same, And Gabriel, the Apostle of Allah is among us, and the Holy Spirit who has no match. (Sahih Muslim, Book 031, Number 6081 https://www.searchtruth.com/book_display.php?book=031&translator=2&start=0&number=6053)

Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel – for he brings down the (revelation) to thy heart by God’s will, a confirmation of what went before, and guidance and glad tidings for those who believe, – S. 2:97 Y. Ali

Say, the Holy Spirit has brought the revelation from thy Lord in Truth, in order to strengthen those who believe, and as a Guide and Glad Tidings to Muslims. S. 16:102 Y. Ali

He sendeth down the angels with the Spirit of His command unto whom He will of His bondmen, (saying): Warn mankind that there is no God save Me, so keep your duty unto Me. S. 16:2 Pickthall

“… As to Muhammad, he also had a familiar identified as al-Rayy (or alternatively the benign al-Abyad, who was made by Muslim traditions to be associated with all prophets), who was said to have been pushed aside physically by Gabriel when he contrived to appear in Gabriel’s form, a story that may betoken the evolution of Muhammad’s conception of inspiration, discussed later. Muhammad’s panegyrist, Hassan b. Thabit, was himself inspired by a demon in the terrible form of a sil’at, who during his childhood prophesied that he would become a great poet, and Hassan himself asserted that the jinn do ‘weave’ poetry. Unsurprisingly, it was believed that, after his unsuccessful mission to win over al-Ta’if to his cause, Muhammad visited the cultic location of Nakhla, there to receive the conversion of seven jinn identified by name.” (Aziz Al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People [Cambridge University Press, 2014], p. 208; bold emphasis mine)

“… Later Muhammad would express this experience of the ineffable by saying that he had been visited by an angel, who had appeared beside him in the cave and given him orders to ‘Recite!’ Like some of the Hebrew prophets, who were deeply reluctant to utter the Word of God, Muhammad refused. ‘I am not a reciter!’ he insisted, thinking that the angel had mistaken him for one of the disreputable kahins, the soothsayers of Arabia. But the angel simply ‘whelmed me in his embrace until he had reached the limits of my endurance,’ and eventually Muhammad found himself speaking the very first words of the Qu’ran…”

Muhammad CAME TO HIMSELF IN A STATE OF TERROR AND REVULSION. The idea that he had, against his will, probably become a jinn-possessed kahin filled him with such despair, says historian Tabari, that he no longer wanted to go on living. Rushing from the cave, he began to climb to the summit of the mountain TO FLING HIMSELF TO HIS DEATH. But on the mountainside he had another vision of a being, which, later, he identified as Gabriel… Jeremiah had experienced God as an agonising pain that filled his every limb; LIKE MUHAMMAD IN THE EMBRACE OF THE ANGEL, he experienced the revelation as a sort of DIVINE RAPE… The various traditions give conflicting accounts of Muhammad’s original vision; some say that it consisted only of the vision in the cave; others mention only the vision of the angel on the horizon. But all emphasise Muhammad’s FEAR AND HORROR…”

CRAWLING ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES, THE WHOLE UPPER PART OF HIS BODY SHAKING CONVULSIVELY, Muhammad flung himself into her lap, ‘Cover me! Cover me! He cried, BEGGING HER TO SHIELD HIM FROM THIS TERRIFYING PRESENCE. Despite his contempt for the kahins, who always covered themselves with a cloak when delivering an oracle, Muhammad instinctively adopted the same posture. TREMBLING, he waited for the TERROR to abate, and Khadija held him in her arms, soothing him and trying to take his fear away. All the sources emphasise Muhammad’s profound dependence upon Khadija during his crisis.

Later he would have other visions on the mountainside and each time he would go straight to Khadija and beg her to cradle him and wrap him in his cloak. But Khadija was not just a consoling mother figure; she was also Muhammad’s spiritual adviser… When the fear receded on that first occasion, Muhammad asked her if he had become a kahin; it was the only form of inspiration that was familiar to him and despite its towering holiness it also seemed DISTURBINGLY similar to the experience of the jinn-possessed people of Arabia. Thus Hassan ibn Thabit, the poet of Yathrib who later became a Muslim, says when he received his poetic vocation, his jinni had appeared, THROWN HIM TO THE GROUND and forced the inspired words from his mouth.

Muhammad had little respect for the jinn, who could be capricious and make mistakes. If this is how al-Llah had rewarded him for his devotion, he did not want to live. Throughout his life, the Qu’ran shows how sensitive Muhammad was to any suggestion that he might simply be majnun, possessed by a jinni, and carefully distinguishes the verses from the Qu’ran from conventional Arabic poetry. (Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet [HarperSanFrancisco, 1992], 4. Revelation, pp. 83-85; bold and capital emphasis mine)