The Angels Before Sulayman, and the Adab of Condolence

Sulaymān (peace be upon him) lost his son, and was utterly distraught — gone, finished; and this was a prophet of Allah (swt). Allah (swt) wished to remind him of the reality, and so two angels appeared before him, arguing with one another, while Sulaymān (peace be upon him) looked on. The first said: I have a complaint against you. I sowed seed in my field, and the whole wheat crop came up — such a field, sown as tillage, with the golden heads of wheat appearing beautifully across it — and you came and damaged a section of it. This is not allowed; I want compensation.

The second answered: I work for the government. This man had sown his seed across the pathway, the road, the highway where people are meant to pass, so all I did was clear the way — there was a road there, and I simply cleared it; I did not touch the field itself.

Sulaymān (peace be upon him) then said to the first: you have no right to bring a complaint against him in this matter, because it is neither clever, nor intelligent, nor lawful to sow seed across a public highway. At this the angel turned to Sulaymān (peace be upon him) with a serious look and said: you should be ashamed of yourself. You cry, you show such extreme distress, over the death of your son — do you not know that death is the highway to the ākhirah? Do you imagine that this life goes on forever? Death is the highway to the ākhirah.

The proper adab, then, is to show sympathy, to share in the loss, and to say whatever is customary in saying so. Different peoples say it differently. The Lebanese say, aʿẓama Allāhu ajrakum, innā lillāhi wa innā ilayhi rājiʿūn, ṣabrun jamīl inshāʾAllāh. The Egyptians say al-baqāʾ lillāh. The Turks say başın sağ olsun. Whatever the particular words, the adab is to show respect and to share the loss, to visit and to counsel ṣabr, ṣabr, ṣabr, ṣabr.

Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him) says, in a ḥadīth, that if Allah (swt) takes a loved one — a child, a baby, a son — from a person, on the Day of Judgement that child will be asked to enter Jannah, sinless as he is, while the parent, if his account is so poor, may be told he is condemned for Jahannam. The child will ask, where is my mother, where is my father? The angels will say, go inside, go inside, forget your mother and father. But the child will keep crying, and will not stop, until Allah (swt), out of His infinite mercy, takes that sinful parent and brings the two of them together into Jannah. Those who have lost children before them, then, are in fact the most fortunate. Rasūlullāh (peace be upon him) says that if a person's child dies and he shows due ṣabr, Allah (swt) will reward him, on the Day of Judgement, with nothing less than Jannah — for three children, he said. Someone then asked: what about two, O Messenger of Allah? Two will do also, he said. What about one? One will also do.

From the human point of view, such losses can look tragic, difficult to bear; but seen from the wider, divine perspective of Allah's (swt) plan, they are a blessing in disguise. Everyone is being tested, and people are tested according to the level of their īmān. The prophets of Allah (swt) undergo the severest tests of all humanity, and it is they who show the greatest ṣabr; the awliyāʾ, the pious, the ṣiddīqīn, the shuhadāʾ, all go through this, each according to his own level.