He is a spiritual Physician

The compiler of this text (Wird al-Latif) is the great Imam, Shaykh 'Abdallah ibn 'Alawi al-Haddad, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as well as the well-known and loved clan of Ba 'Alawi of Hadramawt, Yemen. Our Prophet, peace be upon him, said, "Toward the end of time, take to the people of Sham (Greater Syria) and if not them, then to the people of Yemen." Today it is acknowledged that the last two great bastions of traditional Islam on the Peninsula of Arab Felix are Yemen and Sham. While there are great scholars left in the Indian Subcontinent and in the Western Lands of Islam, such as Chinqit (Sub-Saharan Africa) and Mali, the majority of traditional scholars lie buried in the earth, and their books remain grossly neglected.

This text is small but powerful in that it draws its words from the pure sunna (words, deeds, and actions) of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, who remembered Allah in all of his states. The Qur'an, in turn, praises those who remember Allah: Remember Me, I will remember you, (2:152) Those who neither buying or selling divert them from the remembrance of Allah‡Allah shall reward them for the best of what they did, and increase them in reward from His bounty, (24:37-38) and The believers are those, who when Allah is mentioned, their hearts tremble?hey will have degrees with their Lord, and forgiveness and generous provision. (8:2-4) There is not a page in the entire Qur'an that does not have some reminder for us; indeed the entire Qur'an is a reminder.

This text is a wird, which is commonly translated as "litany". Wird literally means "a place of water", and this meaning is telling. A watering place is visited regularly, not out of mere fondness but out of necessity. The spiritual aspirant should approach this wird with the same intense thirst and regularity as he would his watering place. As water satisfies the body's physical demands, so too does the wird bring the soul to a state of contentment and, eventually, delight. The Qur'an is itself a wird, a portion of which should be recited by Muslims daily.

This edition is distinguished by the fact its translator, Dr. Mosfata al-Badawi, spent a large part of his adult life in the company and under the guidance of Shaykh Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, who was a direct descendant of the compiler of this wird and also himself a master of the inner and outer sciences of Islam. While this is a general wird that can be used without the supervision of a spiritual physician, I personally had the blessing from taking this wird from Shaykh Ahmad al-Haddad, may Allah be pleased with him, during his blessed life of scholarship and spiritual guidance. In one blessed gathering held by the Shaykh may Allah be pleased with him, he told me that now is the age of hawsat. I did not know the meaning of this word and asked him what it meant. He replied, "Mental instability as a result of leaving the remembrance of Allah."

This wird is a healing and prophetic medicine from a doctor of the hearts, Imam 'Abdallah al-Haddad, who learned his craft from true scholars of knowledge and deeds, until he himself became a master. According to an authentic hadith, "Scholars are the inheritors of the Prophets", and an inheritor, as any Islamic jurist knows, is able to use the inheritance according to his own discretion. Thus, the scholars of this Islamic community are the inheritors of the last of Allah's Prophets, the paragon of His creation, our master Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Imam al-Haddad was such an inheritor and has presented this text, blessed by virtue of being composed entirely of Divine and Prophetic revelation, and arranged as none but a master physician could be trusted to arrange. What is left for us is only to take the medicine.

It is as the poet said: We heal ourselves with Your remembrance, and should we forget we are in relapse.

By: Shaykh Hamza Yusuf.

Source: Imam 'Abdallah ibn 'Alawi al-Haddad, The Prophetic Invocations, translated by Dr. Mostafa al-Badawi, part of the "Foreword", p. x-xii, The Starlatch Press, US, 1421/2000

The Prophetic Invocations can be obtained from the Starlatch Press