Her eldest son, Hasan (a.
Her eldest son, Hasan (a.s) was then only eight. These are
the personalities whose characters illuminated the path of Islam by
lamps, which cannot be extinguished till the Day of Judgment so that
following their footprints Muslims may always be safe from waywardness. There was a large piece of arable land in the area of Khyber, called
Fadak. On conclusion of the Battle of Khyber, in which Muslims came out
victorious, the Jews signed an agreement of peace with the Holy Prophet
(s.a.w.s.) according to which the most fertile part of that land was
gifted to the Prophet who used to distribute its produce between Bani
Hashim and other needy people of Medina. When the following verse was
And give to the near of kin his due…
The Holy Prophet (s.a.w.s.) gave Fadak to Fatima Zahra (a.s)[2] and lady
Zahra (a.s) continued, as was being done by her beloved father, to spend
its income on herself and on the poor and needy people of Bani Hashim
After the demise of the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.s.), when in Saqifah Bani
Saidah, the Emigrants and Helpers (who had only worldly benefit in their
view) conspired to take the leadership of the Islamic state and ignored
the Wilayat (guardianship and authority) of Maula Ali (a.s) the first to
be adopted as caliph was the son of Abu Qahafah. Among the oppressions
committed in his time was the confiscation of the farms of Fadak from
Abu Bakr based his action on a fake tradition saying: The Prophet said:
We messengers of God do not leave anything in inheritance; whatever we
leave is charity, which is the right of Muslims. The government
dismissed the men engaged by Fatima (a.s) for maintenance of Fadak and
The Prophet’s daughter produced her husband, Ali (a.s) and her sons,
Hasan and Husain (a.s) as witnesses and claimed that Fadak was her
exclusive property allotted to her by the Prophet himself during his
lifetime and therefore no one had any right to confiscate it. But Abu Bakr who had grasped power in the same wrong manner, when he saw
that the masses were silent, he took
[1] Surah Bani Israel 17:26 [2] See
its undue benefit and dismissed the claim of Zahra (a.s) and the
witnesses of Ali, Hasan and Husain (a.s) on the pretext of the aforesaid
concocted tradition. Those world-worshippers whose morale was down and
also knew very well that this tradition was false did not support
Zahra’s claim. They had not yet forgotten what they had to face for
opposing the Prophet in his days.
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