The Noble Guardians of the Lessons of Shaykh Salih al-Ja’fari
(as related by Shaykh Dr. Fathi Hijazi)
“One time, someone said “Sidna Shaykh, I saw my Lord in a dream”. The Shaykh said to him “Ya Salam! Are you better than the Prophet Musa? (Peace be upon him)”, he [continued and] said to him “If you saw a light in your dream, perhaps it is the light of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.”
So the man began to debate and the shaykh was being very patient with him. The shaykh would never give people a sign that he was tired of someone or bored. As long as the man is speaking, the shaykh is replying normally.
There was a policeman called Abd al-Alim, who was always there [in the Azhar], looking after the majlis [as security], who had his weapon with him. The Shaykh would always say to him “O Abd al-Alim, sit, don’t just stand there, sit normally during the lessons”.
So when the man kept talking over the shaykh, saying “me, me, me!” and made himself out to be a wali of Allah, the Shaykh said “This is our knowledge and we have no knowledge other than that”. So Abdul Alim sensed that the Shaykh was saying ‘this is enough’.
So Abd al-Alim, who was listening, got up and said “O man! You have incurred a great loss, for you have wasted the lesson” and he spoke with him really harshly. So Shaykh Salih told him off and said to Abd al-Alim in the local dialect, “Why are you cursing him, O Abd al-Alim? Don’t you know that this lesson is the lesson of the grandfather of al-Hasan and al-Husayn ﷺ.
Then the Shaykh became silent.
During his silence, I [Shaykh Fathi] was sitting close to him, right next to his chair. It was after Dhuhr during the month of Ramadan. Next to me was one of our brothers, who was studying in the Faculty of Usul al-Din and he was wearing military clothes, because he had reached the age of mandatory military service, so he was a student and a military man. He was sitting next to me.
When the shaykh went silent, everyone went silent. And we suddenly felt this breeze that passed over us that smelled of intense perfume. [Shaykh Fathi Hijazi said] “I smelled it but I didn’t say anything”. The man sitting next to me said “Allah! What’s this! People putting on perfume in the month of Ramadan?”. I told him “Be quiet!”.
After around three minutes, the smell changed, and things went back to normal and the air was normal without any perfume.
Then the Shaykh said “O Abd al-Alim, I started [delivering] these lessons thirty-two years ago and some students and scholars came to me and began to oppose some of my positions in ‘ilm. So I said to myself, either I’ll stop this lesson or I’ll change it to a different location, a place far away from the Azhar, because of what some of the people of knowledge said to me which is not befitting of this place.
When I had decided to do this, I saw in my dream my grandfather al-Hasan and my grandfather al-Husayn dressed as military men with weapons, and they said to me ‘O Salih! Teach your lesson and we will protect you! Even if you are in an isolated [and remote] place!’ [Shaykh Fathi adds:] An isolated place like a mountain.
So the Shaykh said, after that, whenever I sat to teach, no one came to say anything [negative] to me nor did anyone oppose me. So the Shaykh’s lesson was safe by the tawfiq of Allah.”
