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Continuing my Southern Arizona Adventure 2024 with a stop in Tubac, AZ. This is stage 3 of 9. This is a place I plan on revisiting.
Tubac has several of these Javelina sculptures around town. It was public art project. Each one is decorated differently
ChatGPT says:
Tubac, Arizona, is a charming town rich in history and culture. Founded in the 18th century, it began as a Spanish presidio and later became a hub for artists and artisans. Today, Tubac is known for its vibrant arts scene, featuring galleries, studios, and shops showcasing local artwork and crafts.
The Tubac Presidio State Historic Park offers a glimpse into the area's past, with preserved ruins and exhibits that highlight its significance in Arizona's history. Visitors can explore the beautiful desert landscape, enjoy outdoor activities, and participate in various festivals and events throughout the year.
The town's blend of history, art, and natural beauty makes it a unique destination for those looking to experience the spirit of the Southwest. Whether you're interested in exploring its historical sites or indulging in the local arts, Tubac offers something for everyone.
Haiku thoughts:
Old adobe walls stand,
Artists' dreams in sunlight bloom,
Tubac's heart beats on.
Southern Arizona Adventure 2024,
Munich.
More cake! This time with a lemon creme and chocolate filling. Unbelievably good.
I'm starting to feel slightly fatted.
I'm also starting to feel very loved by my colleagues.
Continuing my Southern Arizona Adventure 2024 with a visit to Bisbee Arizona. This is stage 6 of 9.
This is a modern copper sculpture outside of the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum. It struck me as a Rock Star raising both arms while his/her guitar hung slung by his/her waist. Bisbee has a strong commitment to art in public places. Reminds of a Robert Wick sculpture at Desert Botanical Garden. Especially since Robert Wick lives in Bisbee and features this on his Facebook
www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1414093842145115&set=pb....
You Haven’t Seen Bisbee Until You’ve Seen the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum
With a history deserving of National Landmark status, it’s only fitting that Bisbee’s past be captured and reflected in a museum like no other. The Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum takes you and your family back in time to the days of the Arizona Territory, telling the story of a copper-mining town’s role in the industrialization of America, a history of your grandparents’ generation. An Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum offers an interactive trip back in time for the whole family. The American Industrial revolution not fun to learn about? Think again! Why copper? Find out! The Museum offers the stories of how people reacted to family and social issues through the last 125 years and how their responses helped shape the city, the state, and the nation.
www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g31171-d214388-Revi...
This museum, one of the Smithsonian Institution's only rural branches, documents the history of Bisbee's mining days as well as the town's contribution to the country's industrialization. Located in the town's main plaza, Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum is a must-visit for anyone interested in mining and minerals. It features a remarkable mineral display as well as photographic exhibits, and you can also peruse riveting sections that illuminate the nuances of daily life in the copper mines.
www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g31171-d214388-Revi...
A small, but informative and interesting museum that is a local affiliate of the Smithsonian. Lots of information about Bisbee during its copper mining heyday. DON'T SKIP THE 2nd FLOOR! it's a beautiful mineralogical display of the variety of ores from the mines around Bisbee. - Jake S. Alexandria, VA.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisbee,_Arizona
Bisbee is a city[5] in and the county seat of Cochise County[6] in southeastern Arizona, United States. It is 92 miles (148 km) southeast of Tucson and 11 miles (18 km) north of the Mexican border.
Bisbee was founded as a copper, gold, and silver mining town in 1880, and named in honor of Judge DeWitt Bisbee, one of the financial backers of the adjacent Copper Queen Mine.
Today, the historic city of Bisbee is known as "Old Bisbee" and is home to a thriving downtown cultural scene. This area is noted for its architecture, including Victorian-style houses and an elegant Art Deco county courthouse. Because its plan was laid out to a pedestrian scale before the automobile, Old Bisbee is compact and walkable. The town's hilly terrain is exemplified by the old four-story high school; each floor has a ground-level entrance.
Natural vegetation around Bisbee has a semi-desert appearance with shrubby acacia, oak and the like, along with cacti, grass, ocotillo and yucca. The town itself is much more luxuriant with large trees such as native cypress, sycamore and cottonwood plus the introduced ailanthus and Old World cypresses, cedars and pines. Palms are capable of growing tall, but are not reliably hardy. At least one mature blue spruce may be seen.
Haiku thoughts:
Dusty streets wind tight,
Colors spill from old brick walls,
Echoes of the past.
Southern Arizona Adventure 2024
Cassie flies away, and then flies back... "Wait a minute, wait a minute... You... When you woke me up, your face was beaten down, like, crazy! Did... Did we discover a new power?" Jen asks... "I... I guess so?" Mysitc replies... "Well, anyways, who I was calling... Jennifer Dares, I would like to introduce you to...
~Scarecrow
Two chicks were been feed by their mother, but I had to leave them alone because the mother was close by, but not returning to continue the task.
I enjoy the most nature photography, also city life, and love working with techniques like solarisation. Also, I feel that black and white, and sepia are very special too!
EXPLORE:
Also, I’m very proud to say that twenty eight of my photos made it to Explore, many are still on, Also, I’m very proud to say that twenty eight of my photos made it to Explore, many are still on, three of them at 25, 14 and 52, still! If you’d like to see them, please go to my Explore set.
If you’d like to see them, please go to my Explore set.
TO MY FRIENDS:
Flickr has giving me opportunity to meet a group of wonderful people. Thanks for making me feel so proud of what I do and love. You know who you are…
ABOUT GROUPS:
I would gladly submit my photos to the groups that would allow me to see their pages and be part of them. Please, don’t invite me to groups that will show my work once, and by invitation. I rather be part of a group that will allow me to choose my own material, and decide what to put and when. Remember, we are artists, and very temperamental ;)
MY THANKS:
Thanks for coming and for viewing my photos. I appreciate all comments, so leave one, if you want to.
Have great day, and enjoy the ride!
Martha.
Continued from: flickr.com/photos/42093313@N00/51683698952/in/dateposted-...
40. Refer all matters to Allah and His Messenger, then defer
يٰۤـاَيُّهَا الَّذِيۡنَ اٰمَنُوۡۤا اَطِيۡـعُوا اللّٰهَ وَاَطِيۡـعُوا الرَّسُوۡلَ وَاُولِى الۡاَمۡرِ مِنۡكُمۡ
فَاِنۡ تَنَازَعۡتُمۡ فِىۡ شَىۡءٍ فَرُدُّوۡهُ اِلَى اللّٰهِ وَالرَّسُوۡلِ اِنۡ كُنۡـتُمۡ تُؤۡمِنُوۡنَ بِاللّٰهِ وَالۡيَـوۡمِ الۡاٰخِرِ ؕ
ذٰ لِكَ خَيۡرٌ وَّاَحۡسَنُ تَاۡوِيۡلًا
O you who believed!
Obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those who have been entrusted with authority among you.
Then if you disagree in anything, refer it to Allah and the Messenger, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day.
That is the best for you and the best determination.
Surah An-Nisa, Verse 59
I had to study the verse in the Tafseer e Jilani. Only Ghaus Pak (ra) would explain what it really meant; obeying!
Ya Ayyuhalladina Amino: By bringing faith, being counted among the Momineen, your duty becomes that you obey Allah and you obey His Messenger (peace be upon him).
Atiu’ Allah: You obey Allah by acting upon His Commands and avoiding what He has forbidden.
Wa Atiu’ Rasool: And you obey the Rasool (peace be upon him), the one He chose Himself as His Khalifa, Vice-regent, for he is the one who guides you towards His One-ness.
Wa: And also obey…
Ulil Amri Minkum: the ones who decide matters and they are those who establish the Sha’ir ul Islam, the Signs of Islam, amongst you. These people are the ones who are leaders, those who have authority and who are judges, who struggle in the application of orders and finding a solution.
I asked Qari Sahib what it means to establish Sha’ir ul Islam – the Signs of Islam. He referred me to the next part of the verse;
Fa in Tanaaza’tum: So if there happens to be a dispute between you and the ulil amr, those who have authority over you…
Fi Shayin: in a matter of whether something is according to the Shari’a, Islamic Law, or not…
Fa rudduhu; return the matter to and turn yourself towards…
Ila: Allah’s Book…
Allah Wa: and the hadith
Ar-Rasool: and present the matter before both of them and find a solution from both of them…
In kuntu tu’mino billahi: if you believe in Allah, the One who gives the reward to His Servants for their deeds, be they good or bad…
Wal Yaumil Akhira: and you believe in the Last Day, which is the Day prepared for reward or punishment.
Dalika: This returning of the matter…
Khairun: is better for you than the injustice you will arrive at from your own reflection…
Wa ahsanu taweela: and will yield the best result for you, better than the result you arrive at on your own and will be more deserving of praise for the conclusion of the matter than your unfairness.
Sheikh Nurjan:
“As soon as you say, “ati`oollah, obey Allah,” it has a power and a secret. There are 500 ma’moorat, obligations, that Allah ordered us to fulfill, and 800 manhiyyaat, things which are forbidden, that we must leave. How can one count and follow 500 orders and leave 800 forbidden actions?
If you repeat that word alone, “ati`ullah, ati`ullah, ati`ullah,” reminding yourself with it, then Allah Subhan Ta’ala will completely dress you as if you have fulfilled all 500 obligations and left the 800 forbiddens. Allahu Akbar! Then you continue with, “ati`ur-Rasool, obey the Prophet,” and with Allah’s order, Prophet (peace be upon him) will dress you with all his Sunnah, voluntary actions, and in the meaning of Khaatam ar-Rasool, “Seal of Prophets,” as if you have obeyed him from beginning to end!
As Grandshaykh and Mawlana Shaykh Nazim said, with every letter of the Holy Qur’an, even if it is repeated hundreds or thousands of times, Allah opens 24,000 oceans of knowledge to His Auliya (the Ulul Amr), which they keep hidden. They give to their followers little by little, as if from a dropper. They give a little bit to the hearts of their listeners and continue to upload that until one day Allah will give permission to fully open it to the hearts of their disciples.
The goal is to reach Allah’s Pleasure and enter into the Divinely Presence and it enters within us. It is to make the house and heart of the believer the House of Allah so that His Light and His Grace can emanate from such a heart. That is why in the Quran Allah describes the Ka’ba as ‘wash your heart, clean your heart, circumambulate your heart, which is My House, the Ka’ba.’ That’s why we call Auliya Allah, the Friends of God, Qiblas (directions) and Ka’ba. Their hearts are like the Ka’ba which direct people towards the Divinely Presence. And they are a Qibla in that they give a direction and focus in life.
Allah knows we are weak and if we were given a thousand lives, we won’t be able to achieve that without this system Allah has put in place. People may have beliefs and love but to enter into that Divinely Light, Allah has a system to reach the Haqaiq, the Realities of ‘La ilaha Illallah.’
So then Allah says ‘ati’ur Rasool’ He is telling us ‘I know you can’t follow Me because that’s the Station of the Messengers. So follow the way and the love of your Beloved Messenger (peace be upon him) who is beloved by Allah and most praised within all of Creation, Sayadna Muhammadan Rasool Ullah (peace be upon him).
So then comes the third piece, Ulil Amr, because the Auliya Allah begin to describe that if our goal was to make our house a Ka’ba, the only one who can bring the law and discipline of Allah, the deen (religion) of Allah, the Message of Allah is Muhammadun Rasool Ullah (peace be upon him). The spiritual paths are the schools of guidance.
For in the Quran Allah says, ‘there is no guidance except if Allah guides’ and that has many degrees of guidance; something basic, something middle, something high and something very high. There are darajaats, spiritual ranks, of guidance and realities of guidance. The highest rank is Maqam Al Mahmood, the highest heaven is Jannat al Firdaus. These are all in fact existent within the reality and the heart of Sayaddna Muhammad (peace be upon him).
So the Auliya Allah, their whole teachings are about only him, Muhammad Ar Rasool Allah (peace be upon him). Through that the heart can be perfected. Allah says in the Quran that the Prophet (peace be upon him) is a guidance. He brings the message, he purifies the believers. He brings lights and blessings into the hearts of the believers. So how does Allah say that? He says if you want to reach Me, following the Prophet (peace be upon him) and I will love you. My Divine Love will emanate from your heart. ”
قُلْ إِن كُنتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ اللَّهَ فَاتَّبِعُونِي يُحْبِبْكُمُ اللَّهُ
وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ ۗ وَاللَّهُ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ
Say (O Prophet (peace be upon you)), "If you love God, follow me and God will love you and forgive you your sins for God is Much-Forgiving, a Dispenser of Grace."
Surah Al e Imran, Verse 31
You can live a thousand years and a thousand lifetimes and you cannot achieve this without this system. Because Allah is saying come to Me through him. So the perfect line of Tauheed – La ilaha illallah Muhammad ar Rasoolallah – Allah is saying if you want to reach my La ilaha illallah, (Tauheed, My One-ness), come to me through Muhammad ar Rasoolallah. You cannot just say La ilaha illallah. Without Muhammad ar Rasoolallah, you are outside the belief system.”
Hazrat Khawaja Moinuddin Chisti Ajmeri (ra) said the same in a different way:
If the one who does not believe utters (the words) La Ilaha Illallah, There is no God but God, for a 100 years , he will never attain faith. But if once he says, Muhammad Ar-Rasool Allah, Muhammad (peace be upon him) is His Messenger, he removes from himself a 100 years of apostasy.
“So the Ulil Amr are dressed and blessed by Allah to open a door on this Earth and the door must have a tongue in which it teaches, trains and guides, everything based on Muhammad Ar Rasoolallah (peace be upon him).
So be wary, when you enter a door and they talk a lot about Allah. Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, that is not the right door. That is not the right room. For all doors in the Universe, above it is only Muhammad Ar Rasoolallah (peace be upon him). So the Ulil Amr should be talking about him so you can try to reach him for he is who is above them. The one who doesn’t talk about him and cuts him out, only talking about Allah, that’s Hizb ul Shaitaan, the party of Iblis. He is the one who says, ‘I don’t accept any of these Adams, only Allah.
So that’s how the student should know; if I enter into a room on the Ulil Amr, their whole existence pivots, like moons, around one sun; the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The moon is guidance. It gives you your time, your coordinates, it nourishes you and raises you. Read the Farmer’s Almanac on what a moon is. The Shams ul Arifeen, the Sun of the Gnostics, is Muhammad Ar Rasoolullah (peace be upon him). It is his light upon them, upon the moons, that makes everything guided and beatific and ripened and sweet.”
Subhan Allah!
“The room we want to enter is the room that teaches all the realities of the beatific nature of Rasool Allah (peace be upon him) and his creation. Everything they say is about his reality and the realities of his essence – The Muhammadan Reality. So the door to that reality, how will you find it? By picking up a book? No! These people are the Ulil Amri minkum.’
Now understand the levels of Ulil Amr. A president is Ulil Amr. Allah has given him that authority. Even if he’s an oppressor, Allah gave him the authority. It doesn’t matter what they believe or not. There are duniya Ulil Amr, who have authority of the matters related to the world. Then there are people who give guidance within religions like the clergy.
But the Ulil Amr minkum that Allah is describing are of a different nature and reality. They understand the alif-meem-ra of the word Amr. They are dressed by the Alif which makes them have Izzatullah (Honour of Allah), they’re dressed with the realities of the Meem which is Izzat ur Rusool (the honour of the Messenger (peace be upon him)), the might and majestry and authority of his person and Izzat ul Mo’mineen (the honor of the believers). It is by virtue of these three realities that power is bestowed upon this Earth.
The Ulil Amr represent the Honour of Allah on this Earth, they represent the honour of the Rasool (peace be upon him) and they are the Auliya Allah. The authority granted to them does not require speech. It is not from this world but from the World of the Unseen. The Ulil Amr are a door upon this Earth. Our life is to find that door.
The Spiritual Masters who can teach that reality, speak to it, they are from that door. They’re from the Ulil Amr. As a result, the doors that are established on this Earth at all time, for all time, Allah will keep guidance on this Earth through them for the sake of the nation of Sayyadna Muhammad (peace be upon him). Some of them have been given blessings but not guidance.
Those who have been given guidance are inheritors of the 313 Messengers of Allah. They have been given a support from Allah through their ears, and their eyes, and their breath and their hands and their feet and their Lisaan as Sadeeq – a truthful tongue.
41. Who are the Faithful – The Momineen? The Truthful
وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ وَرُسُلِهِۦٓ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلصِّدِّيقُونَ ۖ
وَٱلشُّهَدَآءُ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ لَهُمْ أَجْرُهُمْ وَنُورُهُمْ ۖ
˹As for˺ those who believe in Allah and His messengers, it is they who are ˹truly˺ the people of truth. And the ones who witness, with their Lord, will have their reward and their light.
Surah Al-Hadeed, Verse 19
Tafseer e Jilani:
Alladina a’mano billahi wa rasooli hi: Those who are sincere (akhlasu) in their faith and then attested that sincerity by goodness in their deeds and their ehsaan, which is humility in the presence of Allah…
O’laika: these are the lucky ones who are accepted (by God).
Humuss siddeeqoon: They are the truthful one, who have reached the highest ranks of truth and have restricted themselves upon sincerity, steadfast and still in the Way of truthful certainty.
Wa Shuhuda: They are the ones who unveil, the ones who witness and the ones who are present…
I’nda Rabbihim: near their Lord, seeking further submergence in Him through their desire for a prolonging of that meeting.
Lahum: For them is in the next life…
Ajarhum wa nooruhum: is their reward and their light promised to them from Allah for they don’t want anything other than that.
Qari Sahib asked me, “Why are they getting two things, ajr and noor?”
As usual I was dumb because as usual I had no idea.
The Ajr, reward, is for their deeds and the noor is for their ikhlaas, sincerity. Then there’s a second layering to it; the reward, ajr, is for the faith in Allah, imaan. The noor is for following the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). See the reference:
يَٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَءَامِنُوا۟ بِرَسُولِهِۦ
يُؤْتِكُمْ كِفْلَيْنِ مِن رَّحْمَتِهِۦ
وَيَجْعَل لَّكُمْ نُورًۭا تَمْشُونَ بِهِۦ
وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ۚ
وَٱللَّهُ غَفُورٌۭ رَّحِيمٌۭ
O you who believe! Be mindful of Allah and believe in His Messenger;
He will give you double portion of His Mercy
and He will make for you a light,
you will walk with it,
and He will forgive you.
And Allah (is) Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
Surah Al-Hadeed, Verse 28
42. The Healing of the Heart
يَٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ قَدْ جَآءَتْكُم مَّوْعِظَةٌۭ مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ وَشِفَآءٌۭ لِّمَا فِى ٱلصُّدُورِ وَهُدًۭى وَرَحْمَةٌۭ لِّلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
O Mankind! Verily has come to you an instruction from your Lord,
and a healing for what is in your breasts,
and guidance
and mercy
for the believers.
Surah Yunus, Verse 57
Tafseer e Jilani:
Ya Ayyun naas: O Mankind, those who have forgotten their original purpose and their true abode…
Qad Ja’atkum: indeed has come to you (a Prophet (peace be upon him) and The Book, 5/15) to awaken you and warn you…
Muazzatun: as an admonishment and to remind you…
Mir Rabbikum wa shifa ullima fi sudoor: from your Lord. And heal you from your anger and grudges that have taken firm residence in your hearts.
Wa hudan: And they will guide you to those who are in the know (about Allah) and bring you before Him.
Wa rahmatun: and they are the mercy in abundance which encompasses everything…
Lil Momineen: for those who are virtuous and conscious of Allah.
43. Allah’s Bounty; the Prophet (peace be upon him) and the Quran
قُلْ بِفَضْلِ ٱللَّهِ وَبِرَحْمَتِهِۦ فَبِذَلِكَ فَلْيَفْرَحُوا۟ هُوَ خَيْرٌۭ مِّمَّا يَجْمَعُونَ
Say O Prophet (peace be upon him), "In (this) is the Bounty of Allah and His Mercy so in that let them rejoice."
It is far better than what they accumulate.
Surah Yunus, Verse 10
Tafseer e Jilani:
Qul: O Messenger (peace be upon him) who completes the Message, say to the one who follows you reminding them and guiding them,
Bi fadlillah hi: with Allah’s Bounty and His Best Acceptance and with His endowing of Honour and His Presence…
Wa bi rahmatihi: and by His Mercy, which is expansive for everyone and which is for all His Reflections in the Universe, “They should try to attain the blessings (of them both, the person of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and the Quran) and unveil them.
Fa bi dalika: By the delight they will receive from them both, they will attain presence before Allah.
Fal yafrahu: So let them rejoice, instead of being of those who do not experience this happiness and do not experience this joy because they prioritize the few moments of their physical, yet perishable desires.
Huwa: Your spiritual joy and happiness…
Khairun Mimma Yajma’oon: is far better than the lusts of your nafs, your base self, and what it demands from your being, if you are of the sincere and those who possess certainty.
44. What is Steadfastness?
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ قَالُوا۟ رَبُّنَا ٱللَّهُ ثُمَّ ٱسْتَقَمُوا۟
Indeed, those who say, "Our Lord, (is) Allah," then stand firm.
Surah Fussilat, Verse 30
Tafseer e Jilani:
Innalladina : The ones who believe in One-ness…
Qalu: they say in happiness and in difficulty, in secrecy and openly…
Rabbuna Allah: Our Lord is Allah, The One who is One, by Himself, Alone, beyond need who is lam yalid wa lam yulad…
Summastaqamu: the ones who then have to prove what they have claimed. And they acknowledge, realize and confess that (claim) through their deeds as well and their states and their intentions in their daily, ordinary actions.
45. All happiness and pain comes from Allah
مَآ أَصَابَ مِن مُّصِيبَةٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ ۗ
وَمَن يُؤْمِنۢ بِٱللَّهِ يَهْدِ قَلْبَهُۥ ۚ
وَٱللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَىْءٍ عَلِيمٌ
No calamity befalls anyone except by Allah’s Will.
And whoever has faith in Allah, He will rightly guide their hearts.
And Allah has ˹perfect˺ knowledge of all things.
Surah At-Taghabun, Verse 11
Tafseer e Jilani:
Then He said Subhan Ta’ala, to make us steadfast and firm footed for the ones who possess ma’rifat and iqaan, certainty, on the station of entrusting and reliance.
Ma asaba: That which comes upon one and what it entails…
Min museebati: i.e. whether it is an incidence of happiness that reaches you or of pain…
Illa bi idnallah: it doesn’t happen except with Allah’s Permission according to His Order.
Wa mayyomin Billahi: And the one who believes in Allah and entrusts his matters to Him and makes Him his Disposer of Affairs and makes Him Sufficient and His Protector…
Yahdi qalba hu: He will give guidance to and enlighten his heart and He will show him the Kingdom of Tauheed, One-ness and the symbols of certainty.
Wa: and overall
Allahu: The One who is fully Aware of what is hidden and what is present…
Bi kulli shayan: all that which is under His Control…
Aleem un: because His Knowledge is forever present and nothing can be hidden from Him.
46. The Door of Truth
وَقُل رَّبِّ أَدْخِلْنِى مُدْخَلَ صِدْقٍۢ
وَأَخْرِجْنِى مُخْرَجَ صِدْقٍۢ
وَٱجْعَل لِّى مِن لَّدُنكَ سُلْطَـٰنًۭا نَّصِيرًۭا
And say (in your prayer O Beloved), “O my Sustainer!
Cause me to enter (in whatever I do) in a manner, true and sincere,
and cause me to leave it in a manner true and sincere.
And grant me of from Your Presence, a sustaining support.
Surah Al-Isra’, Verse 80
Tafseer e Jilani:
“O my Lord, enter me into the place of being settled, which is the place of Tauheed where everything else vanishes. And place me forever in it without doubt and change within me.
And take me out of the demands of egoism and selfish desires towards dissolution in You, that enjoins me to the Honor of Your Eternity, with a meeting to a place without jolts and slippage, all the while when I am embattling my ego and my nafs Ammara is trying to control me, with that which silences them once and for all and never turns me towards them but towards an appearance before You, that helps me against my enemies and rescues me when they attack me.”
There is Doer except Allah
لا فاعل في الحقيقة و لا مؤثر الا الله
There is no doer except Allah and there is no effect except that which is caused by Allah.
Ghaus Pak (ra)
47. The Ones given knowledge
بَلْ هُوَ ءَايَتٌۢ بَيِّنَتٌۭ فِى صُدُورِ ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ ٱلْعِلْمَ ۚ
Nay, it is the verses clear in the breasts of those who are given the knowledge.
Surah Al Ankaboot, Verse 49
Tafseer e Jilani:
Bal huwa: The Quran in its essence…
Ayatun: has signs and proofs which prove the One-ness of Allah…
Bayyinatun: which are so clear that no other evidence, is needed, firm…
Fi Sudoor: in the hearts of the ones who are believers of One-ness…
Alladina utol ilm: and have been granted Knowledge from Him, which emanates directly from the Knowledge of Allah, and is received by them from His Divine Treasures according to their capacity and ability due to His Bounty and His Favour upon them.
Are you an Enemy or a Friend?
Hazrat Najmuddin Kubra (ra) says in the Tafseer e Jilani;
“When Allah sends a trial or a difficulty, He is testing to see who is an enemy and who is a friend.
The one who is a friend and close to Him, in their state of pain, returns to Allah with sighs and remembrance. They rely only upon Him, holding on to the rope of patience and surrender and seeking his Pleasure and firmly holds onto the Support of Allah.
Whereas the enemy of God, in the time of difficulty becames impatient and impulsive. They become ungrateful of His Blessings, impatient and do not surrender to the Destiny of His Lord. Then they turn their face away from Allah and start running to people.”
48. I am a man like you except...
قُلْ إِنَّمَآ أَنَا۠ بَشَرٌۭ مِّثْلُكُمْ يُوحَىٰٓ إِلَىَّ
Say O Last Messenger (peace be upon you),
“I am only a man like you, to who has been revealed that your God is one God.”
Surah Al-Kahf, Verse 110
Tafseer e Jilani:
Qul: O Messenger who completes The Message (peace be upon you), after you have conveyed to them, the Words of Allah, endless, Words which are devoid of trying to show-off and to impress which leads to arrogance. These Words are only for wisdom and intellect.
Qari Sahib; Allah never says about him that he is a man. He makes him say it, not Himself; You say it! For it is wisdom and for the intellect.
Inna ana basharum mislukum: No doubt, I am a man in appearance like you, accepting of certain knowledge and knowing according to Mankind. There is no difference between me and you in terms of human nature. But there is one difference…
Youha illaya: Revelation comes upon me and pours upon me Ilm ul Yaqeen, Ayn ul Yaqeen and Haq ul Yaqeen (Knowledge of the Divine, Witnessing of the Divine and the Truth of the Divine).
Qari Sahib; This word yufadu – pouring - reminds me of the hadith when Nabi Kareem (peace be upon you) was praying and he was seeing the grapes of Heaven while he was praying – Ayn ul Yaqeen. He reached his hand upwards as if to break off a bunch – Haq ul Yaqeen.
عَنْ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ عَبَّاسٍ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُمَا ،
قَالَ : خَسَفَتِ الشَّمْسُ عَلَى عَهْدِ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ فَصَلَّى ،
قَالُوا : يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ رَأَيْنَاكَ تَنَاوَلْتَ شَيْئًا فِي مَقَامِكَ ، ثُمَّ رَأَيْنَاكَ تَكَعْكَعْتَ ،
قَالَ : إِنِّي أُرِيتُ الْجَنَّةَ ، فَتَنَاوَلْتُ مِنْهَا عُنْقُودًا ، وَلَوْ أَخَذْتُهُ لَأَكَلْتُمْ مِنْهُ مَا بَقِيَتِ الدُّنْيَا .
Narrated by Hazrat `Abdullah bin `Abbas (ratu):
Once a solar eclipse occurred during the time of Allah's Apostle (peace be upon him).
He offered the eclipse prayer.
His companions asked, O Allah's Apostle! We saw you trying to take something while standing at your place and then we saw you retreating.
The Prophet answered, “I was shown Paradise and wanted to have a bunch of fruit from it. Had I taken it, you would have eaten from it as long as the world remains.”
49. How to receive honour
مَن كَانَ يُرِيدُ ٱلْعِزَّةَ فَلِلَّهِ ٱلْعِزَّةُ جَمِيعًاۚ إِلَيْهِ يَصْعَدُ ٱلْكَلِمُ ٱلطَّيِّبُ وَٱلْعَمَلُ ٱلصَّلِحُ يَرْفَعُهُۚۥ
Whoever for him desires the honor, then for Allah is the Honor all.
To Him ascends the good words, and righteous deeds raises it.
Surah Fatir, Verse 10
Tafseer e Jilani:
Man kana yureed ul izzata: The one who wants honour, endless, after which never comes humiliation ever, then he should turn towards Allah and makes his focus His One-ness.
Fa lillahe izzatu: For only Allah is the True Owner of Honour, which includes control, eternal majesty and all kingdoms…
Jami-an: overt (zahiri) and inner (batini). And the one who desires that Allah bestow upon him honour and control and absolute kingdoms and abundance that remains forever, then he should, in his initial stages toward Allah, praise Him by way of His Perfect Names and Exalted Attributes till his remembrance reaches the stages of their reflection in him.
This (the reflection) is the last effort and then he becomes a reflector of Allah’s Being, wanting to unveil the Veils of His Omnipotence, till he becomes present before Him, able to unveil Him and witness the Signs of His Names and Attributes on the surface of the Universe without the distortion created by others.
And overall (in summary), the one who seeks honour should be occupied in the Remembrance by Allah in the early stages because
Ilayhi yasadu alkalm at tayyabu: towards Him ascend good words which are the Prefect Names of Allah and His Exalted Attributes, increasing in frequency from the tongues of The Sincere and The Ones who Reflect in Allah’s Blessings and His Bounty…
Wal al amal as saleh: and (they should be occupied) in good deeds enjoined with ikhlas, sincerity and tabbatul, devotion to Him (also ascending towards Him)…
Yarfa’uhu: (which will be why) He then raises that deed founded upon sincerity and those good words allowing them to reach towards the stages of Closeness with Allah. So for the one whose sincerity in his deed is perfect, then the ranks of his words which are raised towards Allah Subhanahu are the highest and the most supreme to Him.
50. The Prayer of Tahajjud
وَمِنَ ٱلَّيْلِ فَتَهَجَّدْ بِهِۦ نَافِلَةًۭ لَّكَ
And rise from your sleep and pray during the part of the night and extra voluntary prayer,
it may be well that your Lord will raise you (to) a station praiseworthy.
Surah Al Isra’, Verse 79
Tafseer e Jilani:
Wa: And if you want even more closeness (to Allah) and blessings, then awaken your heart and body, in the last part…
Min al layli: of the night and leave sleep out of desire for the Pleasure of Allah…
Fatahajjad bihi: and pray the Prayer of Tahajjud, prolonging your recitation in it so it becomes…
Nafilatan: extra…
Laka: than the dutied prayers for you. It will increase your Closeness and your honour (before your Lord).
51. Seek help through prayer and patience
وَٱسْتَعِينُوا۟ بِٱلصَّبْرِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِ ۚ وَإِنَّهَا لَكَبِيرَةٌ إِلَّا عَلَى ٱلْخَشِعِينَ
And seek help through patience and the prayer.
And indeed it is surely difficult, except for those who are humble.
Surah Al Baqarah, Verse 45
Tafseer e Jilani:
Wa: And so Allah commands to ask for help through them both (prayer and patience)…
Asta’ino: with (tawajju) focus upon Him and (taqarrab) achieving nearness to Him…
Bis sabr: with control of that which creates lust in the body and that which causes attraction to the world…
Wa salat: and instead incline yourself towards the focus and the nearness and turn away from everything except Allah. Don’t ignore this Command and don’t take it lightly.
Wa innaha la kabeera: Indeed this (turning towards Allah) is heavy and burdensome upon everyone…
Illa ala al-Khashiyeen: except the ones whose hearts are in prostration.
52. Who are the Khashiyeen? – The ones whose hearts are in prostration
ٱلَّذِينَ يَظُنُّونَ أَنَّهُم مُّلَقُوا۟ رَبِّهِمْ وَأَنَّهُمْ إِلَيْهِ رَجِعُونَ
(They are) the ones who believe they will meet their Lord and that they will return to Him.
Surah Al Baqarah, Verse 46
Tafseer e Jilani:
Alladeena: They (the Kashiyeen) are the ones who lift the grime of other-ness (from Allah) from the eye (of the heart). And drop the blemish of duality to attain clarity.
Yadunoona annahum mulaqu Rabbihim: They believe in the meeting with their Lord in this life because they worship him as if they see Him.
Wa: And they know with certainty…
Annahum ilayhi: they will, without doubt, towards Him and no one except Him, because there is no one in existence except Him…
Raji’oon: return, making their abode in the Hereafter.
Then he (Ghaus Pak (ra)) prays: Please Dear Lord, Make us of the one who follow these people and love these people - (who possess certainty of their return to You and worship You as if they see You and make their abode the Hereafter).
53. Man is created Weak
يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ أَن يُخَفِّفَ عَنكُمْ ۚ وَخُلِقَ ٱلْإِنسَنُ ضَعِيفًۭا
Allah wishes to lighten your burdens because Man has been created weak.
Surah An-Nisa, Verse 28
Tafseer e Jilani:
Yureed Allah u: Allah wishes, as The One who manages your affairs,…
Ayyukhaffifa ankum: that He makes it light for you, the ones who are believers – the Momineen - the burdens you carry. For these (burdens) are the reasons for your needs and your state of being dependent on the world.
Wa: And the condition is that…
Khuliq al Insaan: Man is created, in his original nature…
Daeefan: weak. He cannot carry the burden of being needful of the world, just like other animals.
Then Ghaus Pak (ra) prays: Dear Lord, Make light for us the weight of our sins by Your Bounty and remove from us the evilness of evils by virtue of Your Generosity and grant us the life of the ones that were devoted to You.
54. Man was created in hardship
لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَنَ فِى كَبَدٍ
Certainly, we have created Man to be in hardship.
Surah Al Balad, Verse 4
Tafseer e Jilani:
And overall, Allah takes oaths upon so many things (Verses 1-3) because
Laqad khalaqnal insaana: Surely, We created Man and revealed his life in this world, to be buried…
Fi kabad: in extensive exhaustion and toil, which makes busy his entire external physical being as well as his internal organs so much that (that life) envelops all his internal and external parts. This is caused by the needs of his livelihood and its means.
Thus he becomes distracted from Allah and because of those needs, he leaves the affairs of his return to Him. Then begins the gathering of money and the collection of fuel and sins which make him distant from Al Hakeen Al Allaam, The Wise and All Knowing Lord.
So he becomes so intensely busy with this world, forgetting the Afterlife and his feet slip from the Path of His Lord.
55-57: Time
وَٱلْعَصْرِ
إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَنَ لَفِى خُسْرٍ
إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّلِحَتِ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلصَّبْرِ
The human being is surely in a state of loss
Except those who believe and do righteous deeds and enjoin (each other) to the truth and enjoin (each other) to [the] patience.
Surah Al-Asr, Verses 1-3
Wal Asr: Then Allah Suban Ta’ala takes an oath upon time and the ages, the meaning of which is about the Eternal Essence of Allah, from the beginning till the end, timeless and everlasting.
Innal Insaana: Indeed, the human being, created such to have a natural propensity towards the nature of ma’rifa, the Recognition of God and imaan, faith according to the his share of the Lahoot, the Realm of the Divine where there is no time and space…
Lafe khusr: is in a state of loss, immense and humiliating failure, as a result of their busyiness in that which is useless due to the requirements (and needs) of his physical being, as related to his share of the world of Nasoot, the life in this world.
Illa: Except the Muqinoon, those who possess inner certainty…
Alladina Aamami: about the One-ness of Allah Subhan Ta’ala and are conscious, through their steadfastness, in their behaviour continuously in His Kingdom and about His Authority.
Wa: And with this faith and certainty…
Amilos Sualihaat: they do good deeds which points towards their ikhas, sincerity and their yaqeen, absolute conviction, and niyyat, intention.
Wa: And in this condition…
Tawasau bil Haq: they enjoin each other towards the Path of God and His One-ness…
Wa tawasau: and they also enjoin each other…
Bis sabr: towards patience for the practice of matters that require obedience and (patience towards) their tiredness from striving hard and (patience towards) from what they suffer as a result of cutting themselves off from their love of the world and (patience towards) leaving their animalistic desires which are attached to human nature.
Then Ghaus Pak (ra) prays: May Allah grant us the ability to be rid of and cut off (from these desires).
58. And you (O Beloved (peace be upon you)) indeed, possess the Best of Manners
وَإِنَّكَ لَعَلَىٰ خُلُقٍ عَظِيمٍۢ
And truly you possess the most outstanding manners.
Surah Al Qalm, Verse 4
Tafseer e Jilani:
Wa Innaka: Indeed you, O beloved (peace be upon you), who are the personification of the most perfected adoption of Allah’s Akhlaq, Etiquette and Attributes, and proved to be the most truthful and steadfast in fulfilling your friendship with Allah and in being the most exemplary Vice-regent,…
La’ala khuliqin azeem: possess the most excellent of manners. No one’s akhlaq, behavior, is better than yours because you have gathered and brought together the etiquettes of all the ones before and all the ones after, in line with the ranks you were granted, which are the most exalted (of anyone in existence).
Ikhlas
الإخلاص سر من سري استودعته قلب من أحببت من عبادي
And Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that Allah Ta’ala said:
“Ikhlas, sincerity, is a secret from My Secrets
and I place it in the heart of my servant who is my beloved.”
Ikhlas (sincerity) of intention, action and then perseverance on it is the highest station of love and servitude to God. Ikhlas is defined and explained as:
• The honourable `arif and the wise wayfarer, Khwajah `Abd Allah al Ansari (qs) says: “Ikhlas means purging action of all impurities.” And the ‘impurities’ mean desire to please oneself and other creatures.
• The great scholar Shaykh al-Baha'i (ra) has narrated that the people of the heart (those who love Allah by heart) say that: "Ikhlas means keeping action free from other than God having a role in it and that the performer of an action should not desire any reward for it in the world and the Hereafter."
Ikhlas is subsequent to action
One must exercise vigilance as it some¬times happens that man carries out an action faultlessly without any shortcoming and performs it without riya' (showing off) or `ujb (self-love) but after the action he becomes afflicted with riya' through mentioning it to others, as pointed out in the following noble hadith:
• Imam al Baqir (a) said: "Perseverance in an action is more difficult than the act itself."
He was asked, "What is meant by perseverance in action?"
He (a) replied, "A man does some kindness to a relative or expends something for the sake of God, Who is One and has no partner. Thereupon the reward of a good deed performed secretly is written for him.
Later, he mentions it to someone and that which was written earlier is wiped out and instead the reward of a good deed performed openly is written for him. Later, when he makes a mention of it again, the vice of riya' (showing off) is written for him (instead of the reward written earlier)."
The Reality of Action is Intention
• It is the sincere intention and pure purpose on which depend the perfection or defectiveness of 'ibadat (worships) and thus their validity or invalidity. Spiritual traits constitute the soul's primary character and intentions, to which actions are subservient, making up its secondary character. And as long as self love remains in the heart and a person remains in the oppressive habitat of the self, he is not a wayfarer toward God (musafir ila Allah); rather, he is one of those who cling to the earth (mukhalladun ila al 'ard).
Shirk in `ibadah' that encompasses all its levels is the inclusion of the good pleasure and satisfaction of anyone other than God, whether it is one's own self or someone else. If it is for someone else's satisfaction and for people, it is outward shirk and fiqhi riya'.
If it is for one's own satisfaction (rida), it is hidden and inward shirk. In view of the `urafa' (gnostics) this also invalidates the 'ibadah and makes it unacceptable to God. Examples of it are offering the nightly prayer (tahajjud) for increase in one's livelihood, or giving zakat for increase in one's wealth;
Although those 'ibadat are valid, and one who performs them is considered to have performed his duty and fulfilled the require¬ments of the shari'ah, they do not amount to the sincere worship of God Almighty, nor are they characterized with sincerity of intention and purity of purpose. Rather, this kind of 'ibadat are aimed to achieve mundane purposes and to seek the objects of lowly desires. Hence the acts of such a person are not rightful.
The Steps to Learning
And it was indicated to me to read the hadith such that these are the means to gain knowledge not that of the world but of the self.
جَاءَ رَجُلٌ إِلَى رَسُولِ اَللَّهِ صَلَّى اَللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَ آلِهِ فَقَالَ يَا رَسُولَ اَللَّهِ مَا اَلْعِلْمُ
قَالَ اَلْإِنْصَاتُ
قَالَ ثُمَّ مَهْ
قَالَ اَلاِسْتِمَاعُ
قَالَ ثُمَّ مَهْ
قَالَ اَلْحِفْظُ
قَالَ ثُمَّ مَهْ
قَالَ اَلْعَمَلُ بِهِ
قَالَ ثُمَّ مَهْ يَا رَسُولَ اَللَّهِ
قَالَ نَشْرُهُ
The Prophet of God (peace be upon him) was asked:
“What is Knowledge?” He replied: “To keep silent”.
He was asked: “Then?” He said: “To listen.”
He was asked: “Then?” He said: “To remember.”
He was asked: “Then?” He said: “To act upon (what is learned).”
He was asked: “Then?” He said: “To propagate.”
[Ref: Al-Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar, vol. 2, pg. 28]
Said the wise:
اَلحِفْظُ فِى الصِّغَرِ كَالنَّقْشِ عَلَى الْحَجَرِ وَ الْحِفْظُ فِى الْكِبَرِ كَالْكِتَابَةِ عَلَى الْمَاءِ
''Learning something during one's youth is like engraving in stone,
and learning something when one is old is like writing on the surface of water.’’
[Ref : Bihar al-Anwar, v. 1, p. 222, no. 6]
The Child
The Prophet of God (peace be upon him) said:
إنَّ لِكُلِّ شَجَرَةٍ ثَمَرَةً ، وثَمَرَةُ القَلْبِ الوَلَدُ
“For every tree there is a fruit and the fruit of the heart is the child.”
[Ref: Kanz al-`Ummal, no. 45415]
Ghaus Pak (ra) in Al Fath Ar Rabbani:
“An incident goes that the people of Bani Israel once were faced with a suffering. They gathered and went to the Prophet of their time. ‘What can we do, O Nabi (as)?’ they asked him. “What is the deed that will please Allah and it becomes the means to deliver us from our hardship?”
The Prophet (as) prayed to Allah to unveil to him what that deed would be.
Allah Subhan a Ta’ala revealed to his Prophet (as), “Tell them! If you seek My Pleasure, become a cause to bring happiness to the needy. Thus if you bring ease to them, in their happiness I will become pleased with you. And if you displease them, I will remain displeased with you.”
59. If you love God, follow me
قُلْ إِن كُنتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ اللَّهَ فَاتَّبِعُونِي يُحْبِبْكُمُ اللَّهُ
وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ ۗ وَاللَّهُ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ
Say (O Prophet (peace be upon you)), "If you love God, follow me and God will love you
and forgive you your sins for God is Much-Forgiving, a Dispenser of Grace."
Surah Aal e Imran, Verse 31
Tafseer e Jilani:
Qul: Say, O Beloved (peace be upon you), who has been created to reflect Our Appearance, who has been shaped according to the collective standards of Our Names and Attributes, who has been made so as to acquire all of Our Manner, (say) to the one who you wish to guide and make them reach a certain status from amongst Creation…
In kuntum: “If you, O one who is wayward and drowning in the sea of heedlessness and being astray,
Tuhuboon Allaha: claim love for God, The One who brought you into appearance from nothingness, and you want to focus towards His Being and you want to be in good standing at His Door…
Fattabi’ouni: follow me, because it is His Command and His Order…
Yuhbibkum Allahu: and Allah will love you i.e. He will allow you nearness of His Essence and He will make you reach the Honour of meeting Him…
Wa yaghfir: And He will hide and make disappear…
Lakum: for you, from your outer and inner eyes,…
Dhunubukum: your sins, which cause you to be veiled from the witnessing of the Beauty of Allah and His Magnificence and the vision of His Names and Attributes.
Wallahu: Allah is The Only Guide for you towards Sirat e Tauheed, the Path of His One-ness.
Ghafur: And He is Most Forgiving for you, lifting the barriers that prevent you from gaining closeness to Him.
Rahim: And Most Affectionate towards you making you reach towards what you desire eagerly.
60. Allah is Sufficient for you and the believers who follow you
يَٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّبِىُّ حَسْبُكَ ٱللَّهُ وَمَنِ ٱتَّبَعَكَ مِنَ ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ
O Prophet (peace be upon you), Allah is Sufficient for you and those of the believers who follow you.
Surah Al Anfal, Verse 64
Tafseer e Jilani:
Ya Ayyuha Nabi: O Communicator of the Hidden (peace be upon you), the one who has been succored by Allah with His Help and victory against the enemies…
Hasabaka Allahu: only your Lord is Sufficient for you, who is the Disposer of your affairs…
Wa man attaba’ka: and (He is Sifficient) for the one who is obedient to you by the Permission of Allah and His Will…
Min al Mo’mineen: from amongst the believers, the ones who possess certainty in the One-ness of Allah, Al Mo’qineen, the ones who are fulfillers of their promises, Al Muwaffaween, the ones who are striving hard and struggling, in His Way, Al Badileen.
61. Indeed I am Me, Allah
إِنَّنِىٓ أَنَا ٱللَّهُ لَآ إِلَهَ إِلَّآ أَنَا۠ فَٱعْبُدْنِى وَأَقِمِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ لِذِكْرِىٓ
Indeed, only I am Allah. (There is) no god but I, so worship Me
and establish the prayer for My remembrance.
Surah Taha, Verse 14
So let the people know from Me, as My Vice-regent,
Innani ana Allah: Indeed, only I am Allah, The Only One, The All Encompassing, gathering all the Ranks and Names.
La ilaha: There is no one else who is The Gatherer of these ranks…
Illa ana: except Me, The Possessor of All Things, The One Worthy of obedience and being bound by…
Fa’budni: so that you worship Me as is rightful of My Worship i.e. with the best of etiquette with Me by being in your manners as My Manners.
Wa iqm as-salat: And always be inclined with all your (physical and spiritual) parts…
Li dikri: with conscious concentration upon Me with all your (inner and outer) parts so that you can remember Me with all of them and express your gratitude to Me with all of them, till I unveil for you (all your veils), from every part of you, such that I become your hearing and your sight and your body and your feet and everything else in your parts until the Hour of Resurrection comes upon you.
And you stand up in front of your Lord and you find your abode in Jannat al Mawa, near Sidrat ul Muntaha, the Lote Tree, where lies the climax of ascension, the ending of your ascent in moving upwards and your advancement.
62. The Breaking of the Pact
بَرَآءَةٌۭ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦٓ إِلَى ٱلَّذِينَ عَهَدتُّم مِّنَ ٱلْمُشْرِكِينَ
The disavowal from obligations by Allah and His Messenger (peace be upon him) from the covenant with the idolators.
Surah Tauba, Verse 1
Commentary by Hazrat Najmuddin Kubra (ra) on the verse:
The symbolic meaning of the verse is this: The mushrikeen, the idolator, is the wayward and polytheist nafs, the base self, who made desires its lord and master and began to worship the idols of the world. When a person is in their early years, the ruh and qalb, the soul and the heart within the heart which is the Station of Recognition of Allah, made a pact with the nafs.
The terms of it being that the ruh and the qalb will not fight and kill the nafs until the person reaches maturity. Similarly, the nafs also makes a pact not to instigate problems with the ruh and the qalb so that the bodily skeleton reaches complete maturity and the physical strength is attained at its peak, which carry the burden of Allah’s Trust and become watchful of Islamic Jurisprudence, the Shari’a.
In this time, the aql, the intellect, the power to reason and reflect, becomes strong which can then accept the invitation of Truth and have the ability to answer it. It is this aql that allows the recognition of the Prophets and their miracles. And it is through this aql that the proof of the Presence of Allah is established and it understands the compulsion of His Worship in order to express gratitude towards Him for His Blessings.
Indeed, Allah and His Messenger (peace be upon him) withdraw from the pact after maturity is gained.
Because Man broke the pact which was between the nafs and the ruh and the qalb. Before maturity was gained, the nafs was only focused on eating, drinking and clothing itself so that the body can develop and all its needs are met. To this extent, there was no problem for the ruh and the qalb from the nafs. But once maturity was gained, lust and desires became added to these needs.
When the lust appeared along with the need for food and drink, its destruction, created physical desires for a mate. When that lust was aroused and started tempting the body, the qalb and the ruh began to become weak. This was the fatal disease for which the Prophets were sent so as to dispel it.
انما بعثت لرفع العادات و ترک الشھوات
Just like Nabi Kareem (peace be upon said),
“I have been sent to end the ways of ignorance and to prevail over the desires of lust.”
63. God bears Witness that there is no god but Him.
شَهِدَ ٱللَّهُ أَنَّهُۥ لَآ إِلَهَ إِلَّا هُوَ وَٱلْمَلَٓئِكَةُ وَأُو۟لُوا۟ ٱلْعِلْمِ قَآئِمًۢا بِٱلْقِسْطِ ۚ
لَآ إِلَهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْحَكِيمُ
God bears witness that there is no god but Him.
And so do the angels and all who are endowed with knowledge and He is the Upholder of Justice.
There is no God except Him, the All-Mighty and the Truly Wise.
Surah Aal e Imran, Verse 8
Tafseer e Jilani:
Shahid Allah: Allah bears witness Himself for His Self that, without doubt, He is…
Annahu la ilaha: The Only One Present and there is no being except His and there is nothing else and there is no reality and nor will there be any presence, being or reality and there is nothing lasting…
Illa hu: except Him Who is, in fact, The Only One Ever-Living with Truth, The Only One who is the Sustainer of All Existence, The One Alone forever, there is nothing except Him.
Wa: And in the way He proffers evidence about Himself…
Al-Malaikatu: so do the angels, which are His Perfect Names and Attributes which exist with the existence of His Essence, because everything is in existence because of His Existence, Unchanging and there is no Authority to resort to except for His.
Wa: And in the way that He proffers evidence about Himself…
Ulol ilm: so do the people who were given knowledge, who are from amongst the phenomenon of Creation (created) upon His Appearance that is nourished by His Attributes and His Names. And indeed, the witnessing of each thing is a returning towards His Witnessing so it is as if everything…
Qaiman: is made to be forever (because He has made it everlasting)…
Bil qist: with His Justice extended across the surface of the Universe from the beginning till the end because…
La ilaha: there is nothing that makes a thing appear…
Illa huwal Aziz: except The One who is Dominant, All Powerful
upon making all things appear…
Al Hakeem: The One who is Perfect in its nurturing and its management, these witnesses say with obedience and with love after they become steadfast in the rank of being worshippers.
64. This religion was made according to your nature
فَأَقِمْ وَجْهَكَ لِلدِّينِ حَنِيفًۭا ۚ فِطْرَتَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلَّتِى فَطَرَ ٱلنَّاسَ عَلَيْهَا ۚ
لَا تَبْدِيلَ لِخَلْقِ ٱللَّهِ ۚ
ذَلِكَ ٱلدِّينُ ٱلْقَيِّمُ وَلَكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ ٱلنَّاسِ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ
So set your face steadfastly to the faith, upright, made by Allah according to the nature Mankind was created upon.
There is no changing God’s Creation.
That is the correct religion but most people do not know it.
Surah Ar-Rum, Verse 30
Tafseer e Jilani:
And after you heard, O Messenger who completes the Message (peace be upon you), that guidance and being astray, indeed, both are entrusted to Me, The Greatest, The Most Exalted…
Faiqm wajhaka: be steadfast and firmly rooted by the focus of your heart, which is a special bestowing from Allah upon you, perfecting your perfection and purifying you from your limitations of being mortal and the shackles of your nature, so that you can reach the Place of One-ness, which is what you have been created for…
Liddini: in the religion that was sent upon you from your Lord, to teach you manners (ta’deebun) O Messenger who completes The Message (peace be upon you), and the ones who follow you and to reform your state (islaha-ka) and the states of your followers…
Haneefan: so you are the ones who turn away from the religions of falsehood and untrue perceptions in entirety. And be certain, O Messenger who completes The Message (peace be upon you), that indeed…
Fitratallaha allati fatarn naasa aliyha: this is the nature established by Allah upon which He has created Mankind and (the nature) set-up by Allah upon which they have been born, originally moulded, which stays in them forever because…
La tabdeela: it does not alter and it does not change and it does not transform…
Likhalq illah: Allah’s Creation. The One who is All-Wise, All Knowing and His Planning, which is set-up according to His Knowledge and Wisdom as He says, “My Decree does not change - Surah Qaf/29”…
Dalika Adeeno: this is the religion that was sent upon you from your Lord, O Messenger who completes The Message (peace be upon you), for safeguarding the original nature, mentioned above. This is the religion…
Al Qayyum: that is the Path that is straight, moderate and steadfast, which will connect to the One-ness of Allah, through this Path which is upright without crookedness and inclinations.
Wa liknna akthar anaasi: But most people, who have been created upon inability to be attentive and are forgetful…
La yalamoon: do not know the reality of this religion. And they do not understand its uprightness and its connection with Allah’s One-ness. So it is dutied upon you all, who follow the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), that you accept the faith and are obedient in everything from that Allah commands and that which He forbids you from.
66. What you want (in goodness) is only that which Allah wills
وَمَا تَشَآءُونَ إِلَّآ أَن يَشَآءَ ٱللَّهُ رَبُّ ٱلْعَلَمِينَ
And you cannot will it unless Allah wills it.
Surah At-Takwir, Verse 29
Tafseer e Jilani
Wa: And the end of this chapter is this, that indeed…
Ma tasha’oona: what you will and what you choose in the way of your conscience and guidance for yourselves…
Illa ayyasha Allahu: is not except that which Allah wills for your guidance and gives you ability for with steadfastness and morality, as a favour upon you and His Bounty.
Because the deeds performed by you in your routine are only coming from Allah, generated by Him in their origin, because He is the Only One, Glory be to Him…
Rabbul Alimeen: The Sustainer of the Universe. There is no Sustainer present except Him and there is no Disposer of Affairs in the apparent realms except Him. And the demand of His Nurturing and making perfect and complete is fulfilled by guiding His Servants and granting them ability towards that which is best for them and what is the most suitable for their situation.
Then Ghaus Pak (ra) prays: “Dear Allah! Give us ability to do, by Your Bounty and Your Munificence, that which You love and that which pleases You from us, O Our Protector!
Continued at flickr.com/photos/42093313@N00/51722302249/in/dateposted-...
Jefferson City Sub local LSE 53 gets the green at Maplewood to continue the journey home to Lesperence Yd.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisville,_Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 29th most-populous city in the United States. It is one of two cities in Kentucky designated as first-class, the other being Lexington, the state's second-largest city. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, located in the state's north and on the border with Indiana.
Louisville was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark, making it one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachian Mountains. It is named after King Louis XVI of France. Sited beside the Falls of the Ohio, the only major obstruction to river traffic between the upper Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, the settlement first grew as a portage site. It was the founding city of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which grew into a 6,000-mile (9,700 km) system across 13 states. Today, the city is known as the home of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), the University of Louisville and its Louisville Cardinals athletic teams, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and three of Kentucky's six Fortune 500 companies. Its main airport is also the site of United Parcel Service's worldwide air hub.
Since 2003, Louisville's borders have been the same as those of Jefferson County, after a city-county merger. The official name of this consolidated city-county government is the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government, abbreviated to Louisville Metro. Despite the merger and renaming, the term "Jefferson County" continues to be used in some contexts in reference to Louisville Metro, particularly including the incorporated cities outside the "balance" which make up Louisville proper. The city's total consolidated population as of the 2017 census estimate was 771,158. However, the balance total of 621,349 excludes other incorporated places and semiautonomous towns within the county and is the population listed in most sources and national rankings.
The Louisville-Jefferson County, KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), sometimes also referred to as Kentuckiana, includes Louisville-Jefferson County and 12 surrounding counties, seven in Kentucky and five in Southern Indiana. As of 2017, the MSA had a population of 1,293,953, ranking 45th nationally.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisville_Slugger_Museum_%26_Factory
The Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory, is a museum and factory tour attraction located in Louisville, Kentucky's "Museum Row", part of the West Main District of downtown. The museum showcases the story of Louisville Slugger baseball bats in baseball and in American history. The museum also creates temporary exhibits with more of a pop culture focus, including collaborations with the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, Coca-Cola, LEGO artists Sean Kenney and Jason Burik, Topps Trading Cards, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, and Ripley's Believe It or Not!.
Maybe not a typical Christmas tree and a bit big for the house - but it is my favourite tree and does have a great view! On Boxing Day last year, we had a walk round Lyme Park in weather much like this shot - today has been much milder and we had family around, continuing our Christmas festivities.
Hope Santa brought you everything you wished for and happy holidays to all my friends on Flickr!
Woven Stories continues Astman’s career-long exploration of society’s excess production and consumption of images and the effects on individual identity, particularly for women. The artist radically reworks consumer-based images by cropping, repeating and flipping fragments, which are arranged into a grid pattern. She created these works by making “film strips” constructed of newspaper images transferred onto packing tape. These strips are then woven together, scanned and the files uploaded to a digital weaving machine which creates a tapestry of overlapping images in an abstracted grid pattern.
Golden Half, Ferrania Solaris 200 (exp. 11/08)
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Da hilft nur Farbe und die Erinnerung daran, dass es mal besser war. Rechts ist noch relativ weit oben, links sind wir unten am Friedhof angekommen. / The right one is from above, the left one shows the cemetery of Cofete. It's on the beach!
Continue in prayer
"Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving." [Colossians 4:2]
It is interesting to remark how large a portion of Sacred Writ is occupied with the subject of prayer, either in furnishing examples, enforcing precepts, or pronouncing promises. We scarcely open the Bible before we read, “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord;” and just as we are about to close the volume, the “Amen” of an earnest supplication meets our ear. Instances are plentiful. Here we find a wrestling Jacob—there a Daniel who prayed three times a day—and a David who with all his heart called upon his God. On the mountain we see Elias; in the dungeon Paul and Silas. We have multitudes of commands, and myriads of promises. What does this teach us, but the sacred importance and necessity of prayer? We may be certain that whatever God has made prominent in his Word, he intended to be conspicuous in our lives. If He has said much about prayer, it is because He knows we have much need of it. So deep are our necessities, that until we are in Heaven we must not cease to pray. Do you want nothing? Then, I fear you do not know your poverty. Have you no mercy to ask of God? Then, may the Lord’s mercy show you His misery! A prayerless soul is a Christless soul. Prayer is the lisping of the believing infant, the shout of the fighting believer, the requiem of the dying saint falling asleep in Jesus. It is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honour of a Christian. If you be a child of God, you will seek your Father’s face, and live in your Father’s love. Pray that this year you may be holy, humble, zealous, and patient; have closer communion with Christ, and enter oftener into the banqueting-house of his love. Pray that you may be an example and a blessing to others, and that you may live more to the glory of your Master. "Continue in prayer" Hallelujah, God bless
•This necklace is made of a stone perforated by sea creatures
placed and fastened on a firm wire ring fully wrapped with
thin aluminum wire.
• I placed the stone on a simple round ring to accent the beauty
of the stone itself - the stone being the centerpiece of the
whole necklace placed asymmetrically building a dynamic
composition. The ring is carefully wrapped with thin wire
cherishing the wonder of continued subsistence.
• Formed by the continuous sea wave movements and pierced
by the enduring nibble of sea creatures in their effort to shelter
their bodies in it - it is an astonishing work of nature clearly
manifesting the strength of endurance and the infinite loop of existence.
2007.
The amazing weather continues and long may it!
Trident 33176 heads along Slapton Ley towards Torcross, the only Mayflower link one I saw on the route.
A revival of the open top 373 service from years back would have gone down well in this heat!
This was another battle we encountered on our trip to Namibia. Every once in awhile we would come across to zebras having a conflict. They can be quite brutal and we saw them almost laying on the ground as the biting and kicking continued. Obviously this must be quite painful but fortunately we never encountered a real serious battle.
I prepared it for coming artwork competition. The hamster looks a bit agressive aiming at the dragonfly with carrot))))
Btw, dragonflies bite! Did you know? :D
Continuing my Southern Arizona Adventure 2024 and continuing my visit to Bisbee Arizona. This is stage 7 of 9.
I arrived just a little before the original Bisbee Breakfast Club opened so I walked around Erie Street. Then I ate a Harvest Omelette with egg whites at BBC. Then I walked around Erie Street a little more.
Lots of memories for me since I grew up in Arizona in the 1950's. Miami & Globe Arizona were a lot like Lowell.
This is the hood ornament on a 1939 Chevrolet Master Deluxe.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Master
The Chevrolet Master and Master Deluxe are American passenger vehicles manufactured by Chevrolet between 1933 and 1942 to replace the 1933 Master Eagle. It was the most expensive model in the Chevrolet range at this time, with the Standard Mercury providing an affordable product between 1933 and 1937.[1] Starting with this generation, all GM cars shared a corporate appearance as a result of the Art and Color Section headed by Harley Earl.[1] From 1940 a more expensive version based on the Master Deluxe was launched called the Special Deluxe. The updated corporate appearance introduced a concealed radiator behind a facade with a grille.
This was the last Chevrolet that was exported to Japan in knock down kits and assembled at the company's factory in Osaka, Japan before the factory was appropriated by the Imperial Japanese Government. When Toyota decided to develop their own sedan called the Toyota AA, a locally manufactured Master was disassembled and examined to determine how Toyota should engineer their own cars.[2][3]
www.atlasobscura.com/places/erie-street-historic-lowell
Erie Street, Historic Lowell
Bisbee, Arizona
A living snapshot of a different time in America is preserved and maintained by a community of volunteers.
Visiting Erie Street is like walking into a 1950s post-apocalyptic landscape. From all that is immediately apparent, it could have been abandoned in a hurry and forgotten for half a century. Rusting cars, trucks, and an old Greyhound bus sit deserted along the street as if their passengers had suddenly vanished (or worse).
Erie Street is most of what is left of Lowell, Arizona, a mining town incorporated into Bisbee in the early 1900s. Much of the town's residential area was demolished to widen an open-pit copper mine. Losing most of its residents caused the commercial district to struggle, and many businesses failed as a result. Today, the street's special curiosities include a Harley Davidson repair shop with a now-defunct gas pump and Sprouse Reitz Co., a department store that is nearly empty except for a few appliances and a whole pile of mannequin parts.
Despite appearing untouched since its decline, further investigation reveals that Erie Street is continually restored by a vibrant and passionate community of residents and volunteers who want to remember a different America. So although you can no longer see a show at Lowell's movie theater or pay $0.22 for gasoline, the Lowell Americana Project has made it possible to experience the street as a living snapshot of another time. And not everything on Erie Street is purely decorative visit the Bisbee Breakfast Club for an excellent Huevos Rancheros.
www.legendsofamerica.com/lowell-arizona/
Lowell, Arizona was once a sizable mining town located just to the southeast of Bisbee. Today, it is a small neighborhood of the larger community.
Though the majority of the original townsite was consumed by the excavation of the Lavender Pit mine during the 1950s, what remains today is a photographer's dream. The one street that is left features mid-century buildings, signs, and artifacts in a colorful display that makes visitors feel as if they have taken a step back in time.
Haiku thoughts:
Erie Street lingers,
Ghosts of fifties' laughter hum,
Time stands in still frames.
Southern Arizona Adventure 2024
was in June 1992 that an unusual architectural manifesto was launched in Great Britain. For the next ten years or more, the manifesto entitled "Urban Villages, a concept for creating mixed-use urban developments on a sustainable scale" continued to make waves, and was much commented and criticised - often unfavourably - in the specialist and general media.
In the language of contemporary British town planning, the expression "urban village" has for many people come to be synonymous with the name "Poundbury", the neo-traditionalist suburban development on the fringes of the rural town of Dorchester, piloted and largely masterminded by the Prince of Wales. Yet although Poundbury is certainly the most extensively developed of Britain's urban village projects, there are many others throughout Britain, and the expression "urban villages" is also used in other English speaking countries to describe modern suburban developments - and in some cases rural developments - that conform (or more or les conform) to certain holistic principles of planning that run against the grain of accepted modern practices in suburban development.
This article takes a concise look at the origins of the "urban village" concept, and its definition, before studying the situation of urban village development in the UK today, looking at Poundbury and the other projects throughout the country that were in 2001 affiliated to the Urban Villages Forum, the think tank set up under the patronage of the Prince of Wales.
Indeed, no discussion of "urban villages" in a British context can begin without reference to the role of the Prince of Wales who, long dissatisfied by much of the dreary suburban development that has occurred in Britain during his lifetime, has used his position to spearhead the development of socially and architecturally successful sustainable communities designed to avoid the failures of the recent past.
The much-used expression "neo-traditionalist", imported from the United States, clearly establishes the conceptual framework that underlies the urban village movement; urban villages are seen as not just an architectural or planning concept, but one predicated on a form of social organisation that has its roots in a long-established model that has stood the test of time. In Britain, as in the United States, the aim of the proponents of urban villages is not just to design modern living environments that reflect those of a previous and supposedly more stable rural society, but to rediscover the forms of living environment that engendered the stability of such traditional rural communities. In this respect, the "urban village" is a concept that takes its place in a historic British - and notably English - paradigm that has previously been illustrated in the model towns of Lever, Cadbury and others, the garden cities of the first half of the twentieth century, and, in community terms at least, in late twentieth century developments such as Newcastle's Byker village.
The expression "urban village" seems however to be an American invention. The earliest bibliographical reference to the phrase would seem to be a book entitled Urban Village: Population, Community, and Family Structure in Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1683-1800, by Stephanie Grauman, published in 1980. Yet early usages of the expression do not refer to any specific planning concept, but are a more a convenient pairing of words used to describe certain types of close-knit urban communities whose structures reflected traditional rural models. The phrase was even used as a rendering of the Spanish expression "barrio". It was in the early eighties, however, that the first references to the "urban village" as a planning concept began to appear, in the writings of Christopher Leinberger, a Los Angeles based urban affairs consultant (Urban Villages: The Locational Lessons. Wall Street Journal. New York. November 13, 1984) and Charles Lockwood (The Arrival of the Urban Village in Princeton Alumni Weekly November 1986). Leinberger used the phrase "urban villages" to describe what he saw as a new tendency towards mixed-use development in suburban America, resulting from the fact that in post-industrial America, there was no longer any need to separate business and residential areas for environmental reasons (pollution, noise, etc.).
More recently, and notably in the 1990's, the phrase has been used sporadically in discussions of the American "new urbanism" movement, often by and with reference to neotraditionalist planners Leon Krier and the Andres Duany / Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk partnership; yet generally speaking, American writers and planners - until recently - have made considerably more use of the expression "new urbanism", rather than "urban village". The idea of the "village", with its notions of "community", seems to be particularly English, and it was only in the late 1990's, following the international interest aroused by the first of England's "urban villages", Poundbury, that the expression really began to become popular in the United States and Australia.
It was the Prince of Wales who introduced the concept of the "urban village" into the vocabulary of British planning; the expression is used briefly in his 1989 book A Vision of Britain (the follow up to a 1988 television documentary), though not at the time directly in conjunction with the Poundbury project, which is mentioned. It was also this book that clearly established the dual parentage of the urban village concept in the English acceptance of the phrase; on the one hand, the historic English village tradition, on the other hand the American neotraditionalist architectural planners, notably Krier and Duany. In the final pages of A Vision of Britain, a presentation of Krier's archetypal neotraditionalist development in Florida, the town of Seaside, covers a full five pages, compared to just two covering the development of "model villages" in the U.K. from Saltaire to the garden cities.
Yet clearly, however great the influence of Krier on Prince Charles has been, it is the historic English concept of the village, and the idealised view of village life, that form the theoretical models that the British proponents of the "urban village" have sought to translate into a modern idiom.
One may speculate as to whether Prince Charles, while thinking over the possibility of creating a planned modern urban village at Poundbury, on the outskirts of Dorchester, had read P.H.Ditchfield's 1908 book The Charm of the English Village, which had recently been reprinted (1985); there is a lot in this book, most notably perhaps its preoccupation with the small details, the use of materials, and the stylistic and functional variety that characterise traditional English villages, that prefigures the Prince's view of the model community. Along with many other publications, both Prince Charles's and Ditchfield's books are also woven on the loom of nostalgia for a supposed almost utopian past, common to the proponents of New Urbanism, and anathema to many modernists. In an article in Harvard Design Magazine in 1997, marxist geographer David Harvey, professor at Johns Hopkins university wrote :
"The New Urbanism in fact connects to a facile contemporary attempt to transform large and teeming cities, so seemingly out of control, into an interlinked series of 'urban villages', where, it is believed, everyone can relate in a civil and urbane fashion to everyone else."
Harvey, however was looking on new urbanism in the fundamentally North American idiom; and although, historically, many earlier settlers in the United States - notably in New England - transposed onto north American soil social models imitated from those of the English village, on the whole the American model was, by definition, different. Early American villages may not have been subject to the rectilinear grid planning of 19th century American towns and villages, but neither did they evolve slowly over time in the manner of the historic English village. In addition, America's "New Urbanism", as exemplified by Seaside, is rather different from the English "urban village" as first exemplified at Poundbury.
Ditchfield (1908) more than once stresses the particular nature of English villages, even as opposed to villages in other parts of Europe, referring to the particular social structure of the English village as the "village commonwealth", a structure that would more normally be referred to in modern terms as the "village community". It should be noted that the notion of "community" is a fundamental building block in the societies of modern English speaking countries, and is considerably more deeply rooted in the English tradition (and more broadly speaking the Germanic traditions) than in that of any newer country, or even of other European countries in which the structures of pre-industrial society had evolved out of Roman law.
Since the departure of the Romans, the village has been the core community unit in the British Isles. Though England long boasted, in London, Europe's largest city, and though Britain was the first European nation to undergo major population drift to the towns, the village has always survived - in thought, literature or art - as the ideal, and often idealised, social unit. In Roman times, cities became the nuclei of life in Britain; but after the Romans left, most of their great cities, with the exception of London, were largely abandoned, the British populations moving out to occupy new village sites outside the city walls or further afield; and whilst in continental western Europe the great cities of Roman times remained great cities after the Romans left, and in many cases remain so to this day, the same was not true in the British Isles.
In mediaeval Britain, the extensive devolution of power and authority under the Anglo-Norman feudal system - inherited from the Anglo Saxon period - and the territorial representation that existed in English parliaments from the late thirteenth century onwards, played their role in formulating, in the national psyche, an image of England as being a nation represented emblematically by its villages, rather than by its capital city. In the English mind, London has never been the nexus of national identity in the way that Paris has long been the symbol of France and French life. In Shakespeare, the quintessential images of English life are not those of Henry IV and Bolingbroke at court or on the battle field; they are those of Justice Shallow in his orchard in rural Gloucestershire.
The Industrial Revolution completed, by the mid nineteenth century, a process that had been set in motion by the Enclosures Acts of the eighteenth, precipitating Europe's first massive rural exodus, and with it a further pauperisation of the former rural labourers. It was during this period that poets, artists and novelists, from Blake to Constable to William Morris or Thomas Hardy, began to place rural England at the heart of English art and writing, often in an idealised manner that helped give a new impetus to the longstanding perception of the superiority of English rural society over urban society. The apparent immortality of the BBC's classic radio soap opera, the Archers, set in its fictitious village of Ambridge, is just another more modern illustration of the same point.
It is perhaps significant that Trevor Osborne, chairman of the Urban Villages Group, notes, in the introduction to Urban Villages, that "the term 'urban village' will not be readily understood in mainland Europe; when exported to other EC member states, it will need a different label." One might even add : "or to the USA".
It is clearly by another quirk of coincidence that the first English "Urban Village", Poundbury, should have been located on the outskirts of Dorchester, the town immortalised under the name of Casterbridge, in the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Proposals for a major expansion of Dorchester were first debated in 1987, and two years later outline planning permission for the westward extension of the town was granted by West Dorset District Council, for a mixed-use residential suburb that will eventually stretch over 400 acres (about 190 hectares). The initial development was to cover 35 acres of land.
Prince Charles was involved in the project from the start; the greenfield site on the outskirts of Dorchester was in effect his land, agricultural leasehold land belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall. When the Dorchester council applied to the Duchy to purchase the land for development, the answer they received was more favourable than they had imagined possible. Not only would the Duchy make the land available for development, but Prince Charles himself would oversee the operation, with the aim of establishing an attractive mixed-use and socially mixed suburban development; Britain's first "urban village".
For many in the UK architectural and planning establishment, news that the Prince of Wales was to take charge of a major suburban development project was like a red rag to a bull. Relations between the Prince and many of Britain's leading architects and planners had been, to say the least, tense ever since the Prince had begun airing in public his none-too-complimentary opinions on the architecture and planning of the sixties and seventies. His famous description of Birmingham's new library as looking more like an incinerator than a place of learning, or his much quoted speech to the Royal Institute of British Architects, in 1984, when he described the proposed extension to London's National Gallery as being like a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend", had done little to endear him to the modernists in British architecture.
Consequently, and unsurprisingly, reactions to the initial proposals for Poundbury were not favourable, neither in the specialised reviews nor in the architectural columns of the British broadsheets. The project was decried variously as an exercise in retrophilia, a pastiche, an irrelevance, or worse.
That was in 1989; and it is true that Leon Krier's bird's-eye sketch of what Poundbury might look like, published at the time in A Vision of Britain (p138), does look more like a heteroclite exercise in nostalgia than a serious plan for a late twentieth century suburban development.
The reality of Poundbury has been somewhat different: with the first phase of building now complete, the earliest streets have already had time to mellow, and as an urban environment, the general consensus among both residents and the press is that this new "urban village" is a success. After its early hostile coverage, the British mainstream press - including the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Mirror and the Mail - has now changed tack, and since 1998 press coverage of the ever-evolving project has been largely positive.
Among the common complaints voiced by residents now is that Poundbury is a victim of its success, with large numbers of tourists and visiting architects and town planners who invade their space, sometimes in coachloads, turning their residential quarter into an unintended tourist attraction.
So why do they come? What is it that has established Poundbury as a stopping point on the architect's and town planner's tour of Britain in the early twenty-first century? Firstly, of course, there is its curiosity value - an unusual - some would still say eccentric - act of royal patronage, an experiment in suburban architecture and planning, masterminded by an amateur planner who is due to become the next King of England. Secondly they come to see how the ten point theory of the "urban village", laid out in the Vision of Britain, transforms into reality.
Over 22 pages, the book sets out a list of "ten principles we can build upon" in order to create a successful modern urban living environment. These are as follows:
1. Place. That planners should understand the local environment, and design their projects to blend with it.
2. Hierarchy. That the design of buildings should always reflect their hierarchical position in the community, that "public buildings ought to proclaim themselves with pride", and others be designed in function of their value in society.
3. Scale. That buildings should bear relation to the human scale, and the scale of other buildings in an area.
4. Harmony. That buildings should blend harmoniously with others in the vicinity.
5. Enclosure. That spatial identity is of major importance, and that new developments should incorporate such public spaces as squares and courtyards
6. Materials. that building materials used should reflect the diversity of local traditions, and not conform to any national or international standard.
7. Decoration. That decorative craftsmanship should still be, as it always has been, a major feature of the urban environment.
8. Art. That artistic decoration has a major and a symbolic role to play in the enhancement of the urban environment, and that artists as well as architects should have a role to play in the designing of new living environments.
9. Signs and lighting. That these also contribute to the success of the built environment, not detract from it, and should therefore be put up with care and attention.
10. Community. That a successful community is a place where residents feel involved, and contribute to the planning and running of their environment.
While points 1 - 9 can be - and in the case of Poundbury, are being - ensured through the masterplan, point 10 cannot. A successful community can only be brought about by the people who live in it; and so far, in spite of the fact that Poundbury is still very much an ongoing project, those who live there are happy with their environment and, on the whole, consider it to be a successful community.
Besides the above ten points, which essentially concern the architectural and visual aspects of the environment in urban villages, there are other fundamental aspects that distinguish the urban village from other suburban or rural housing projects, aspects that are perhaps rather more fundamental than aesthetics. These are social mixity, and mixed use - together seen as preconditions for the creation of new sustainable communities.
As well as reflecting the ten principles, the masterplan for Poundbury was for a housing development that would include a seamless and indistinguishable mixture of owner-occupied dwellings and social housing. The mixed-use plan also called for the inclusion, within easy walking distance of the residential streets, of shops, workshops and factories, enabling residents to live and work in the community without the need for commuting.
In many details, the masterplan for Poundbury went against conventional planning orthodoxy. Its fundamental tenet, mixed use, ran counter to accepted zoning theory, which prefers to concentrate business in business parks, housing in housing estates, and shops in shopping centers.
As for social diversity, critics of the Poundbury plan argued that the type of home buyers wanting to buy in Poundbury would not wish to buy houses that shared a dividing wall with social housing units; it was also suggested that the densely-packed housing environment was out of keeping with the tastes and expectations of modern middle-class British house-buyers, more usually attracted by the ideal of detached houses in wrap-around gardens.
Others predicted that industry would not want to relocate in the middle, or even on the edge, of a residential area, and that in the end, Poundbury would end up as no more than a "glorified council estate".
So far at least, this has not been the case - which is exactly what its planners expected. Having conceived Poundbury as a carefully planned (or, in its critics' opinions, contrived) recreation of a traditional organically developed village, they did not expect to encounter the problems facing many other suburban developments.
Like the village, the urban village is conceived as a community of mixed housing, catering for all ages and income groups. At Poundbury, the first phase of housing consisted of 55 units of social housing, administered by a housing association, the Guinness Trust, and 141 freehold owner-occupier homes, as well as retail and commercial premises. By the time the development is completed, towards the year 2020, Poundbury will have between 2,000 and 3,000 housing units, with social housing accounting for about 20% of the total, in line with the national average.
The question that remains, however, is whether the model of Poundbury can be transposed into other settings, or whether the success of this rather middle-class development on the edge of a rather trouble-free county town in the heart of the Westcountry, can be replicated in other areas?
Following the media coverage - both positive and negative - given to the Poundbury project when it was first mooted in the late 1980's, a forum known as the Urban Villages Group was founded in 1989, at the Prince of Wales's behest, under the wing of Business in the Community, an organisation whose purpose is "to tackle economic, social and environmental issues affecting local communities" (Aldous, p8).
Among the founder members of the Group were Leon Krier, plus the chief executives of a number of property development companies, housing corporations, and the Managing Director of the Cooperative Bank. The aim of the Group was to encourage councils and property developers to take the urban village concept nationwide, as a viable - if slightly more costly - alternative to the monotonous standardized run-of-the-mill developments, the "edge cities" that have mushroomed, and will continue to mushroom, on the outskirts of most British urban areas.
As of January 2002, eighteen development projects across England are being carried out in partnership with the Prince's Foundation, according to "urban village" principles; none however is as advanced as Poundbury, and some, such as the Westoe Colliery project at South Shields and the Northwich city centre project, are still on the drawing board. Yet as the location of these two projects shows - one in the heart of the depressed northeast, and the other in the rundown centre of a Cheshire town - the "urban village" concept can be, and is being, applied in areas that are very different from semi-rural Dorset.
Only two other projects are listed, like Poundbury, as "urban extensions" on greenfield sites, one in Basdildon Essex, the other in Northampton; by far the majority of projects are "urban regeneration" projects on brownfield sites.
Some of these are in fact far removed from the "urban village" concept as illustrated by Poundbury. In particular, the Ancoats project in Manchester, the Jewellery quarter in Birmingham and the Little Germany redevelopment in the centre of Bradford appear more like classic industrial heritage preservation programmes, along the lines of the Albert Dock regeneration scheme in Liverpool, or the redevelopment of Butler's Wharf on the South Bank in London.
They are, however, different, inasmuch as these three projects, though they will never become villages in the sense that Poundbury can call itself a large village, have been conceived with the ethos of the urban village concept in mind, and not as just three more chic urban residential areas for the upwardly mobile.
Little Germany and the Jewelry Quarter are interesting cases, both being central urban areas which, in the past, had a clear spatial and social identity, the former as the fiefdom of Bradford's German cloth merchants, the latter as the densely populated network of small streets which housed both the homes and the workshops of Birmingham's hundreds of jewelers and watchmakers - a classic historic example of both mixed usage and a clearly defined urban quarter.
A hundred years ago, Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter provided employment for some 70,000 people – many of whom lived and worked in the quarter. Since then, the number of jobs in the sector has fallen by over 90%, and the residential population has all but disappeared. In 2000, the quarter harboured some 1,200 business, but only about 700 residents. The aim of the project is to redress this imbalance, and rekindle the vibrant community that existed at the start of the twentieth century.
The Ancoats Urban Village, in Manchester, is different - so different indeed that although Ancoats announces itself as an "urban village", the project's development manager herself is not convinced that it really is one.
"I feel uneasy about offering Ancoats as representative of the Urban Villages movement, as it does not conform to many of the criteria that the Urban Villages movement sets out, and although we are still members of the Prince's Foundation, I don't think they would suggest Ancoats as an example of their philosophy; we seem to spend most time disagreeing!" (Lyn Fenton, private letter of 02/01/02).
Ancoats prides itself for its place in urban history, as the world's first industrial suburb – an area in which 13,000 people once lived and worked; the targets of the Urban Village project are to bring people back to live in this historic industrial site, close to the centre of Manchester, through a programme of mixed use residential and business development. Classed as a conservation area in 1989, it is on the UK's short list for designation as a UNESCO world heritage site. In spite of the reservations of the developers, the targets set out in the Ancoats Supplementary Planning Guidance reflect the same principles as those adopted for Poundbury; the fact that this, as some other urban village sites, are not totally new-build areas, does not fundamentally change the perspective.
Naturally perhaps, it is not in Britain's great urban centres that other urban village projects closer to the Poundbury model can be found, but on the edges of Britain's smaller towns and cities, as the following two examples illustrate. The Westoe site in South Shields is being developed by Wimpey on the 17 hectare site of a disused colliery, as a high-density mixed-use and socially mixed suburb with up to 800 homes, its own school, shops and office premises. In Lancashire, the Luneside development at Lancaster, albeit smaller - 6 hectares - is being developed along similar lines.
Finally, although only 18 projects are affiliated to the Prince's Trust as recognised "urban village" developments, neither the Prince nor the trust has exclusive rights to the expression, and other new housing development projects elsewhere in Britain, are taking up the label in order to give themselves a certain cachet.
Indeed, the "urban village" approach to the design and planning of residential areas has now found its way into official UK government guidelines, a new guide from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions showing among its primary inspirations:
" the 'Urban Villages' movement in the UK and neo-traditional design generally. Indeed, the design philosophy promoted is essentially one of working with context, promoting pedestrian friendly environments, returning to traditional perimeter block systems, and - where possible - mixing uses." (DETR Website 2002)
The current popularity of the notion of the "urban village" in contemporary UK planning would tend to indicate that a sea change in planning theory has taken place in the UK since Prince Charles first launched his vision of Britain in 1989. Whether or not this will result in the recreation of something resembling the types of close-knit communities that existed in nineteenth century, or pre-Enclosures English villages, or even in twentieth century industrial villages, and whether "mixed usage" will really have any serious impact on the social habits of the British in the 21st century, other than reducing car usage, are different matters.
And in the end, it is perhaps of little matter in the context of this paper, in which I have set out to show the peculiarly high value attached to the word village in England, and the particularly strong belief that runs through English thought and culture, that the village - and notably the idealised village with its green spaces, flowered gardens, and friendly folk, is the finest possible form of spatial and social organisation - even in the resolutely urban society of the start of the third millennium. In this respect, the phrase "urban village" has readily come to be seen not as a contradiction in terms, but as a means of having one's cake and eating it, or at least getting the best of both worlds.
Bibliography
Aldous, Tony. Urban Villages, a concept for creating mixed-use urban developments on a sustainable scale, London, The Urban Villages Group 1992.
Ditchfield, P.H. The Charm of the English Village, 1908, reprinted London, Bracken Books, 1985,
Harvey, David. The New Urbanism and the Communitarian Trap, in Harvard Design Magazine, Winter/Spring 1997, no. 1.
Miller, Anthony. The role of Landscape Architecture in fostering community; Byker, a case study, in L'Espace Urbain Européen, Cahiers du Créhu 6. Annales littéraires de l'Université de Franche Comté 1996
Mumford, Lewis. T, The City in History, Secker & Warburg 1961, reprinted Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1973 &&.
Rossiter, Andrew. Retour à l'Utopie? Poundbury; redéfinir la banlieue en village urbain. In Ville et Utopie, Cahiers du Créhu no. 10, actes du Colloque. Presses Universitaires de Franche Comté, 2001.
Wales, Charles, Prince of. A Vision of Britain, a personal view of architecture. London, Doubleday, 1989
Webography:
Thandani, Diriu A. New Urbanism Bibliography, published by the Architectural Resources Network
periferia.org/publications/cnubibliography.html
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions:
www.planning.detr.gov.uk/livingplaces/02/03.htm
Copyright :
About-Britain academic : texts © Authors and About-Britain.com
Andrew Rossiter, Université de Franche Comté
From a paper presented at the International Symposium on Urban and Rural Britain at the University of Valenciennes, France, 2002
Continuing our theme of Zephyr's Favorite Things, we now showcase her servant's bells. Zephyr loves her bells. She uses them to summon a human whenever she wants something.
When Zephyr and her sister were puppies, we taught them to ring bells to let us know when they needed out. In many ways, the bells have worked wonderfully. Zephyr does in fact ring them to let us know she needs out. Or that she simply wants out. Or that she wants attention. She learned long ago that ringing the bells brought a human, so she will ring them, then wander into another room expecting us to follow and adore her. Or she will ring them when she is out of water. Or, more recently, she will ring them at 3:00 am when she wants to come upstairs to sleep on our bed but wants "an escort" going up the stairs (because of her arthritis). We have often said that she considers us her servants, her butlers, and these are the bells that summon us to her service.
She has bells on the other side of the door as well, to let us know when she needs (or wants) to come inside. Zephyr adores her bells and uses them often. You can see where she has banged up the wall by bashing the bells.
And appropriately, she is currently ringing the bells, looking for a butler to let her out :)
Continuing a series... Each morning, fishermen pull their boats up alongside the walkway by the inlet in Curacao and sell their catch directly from the boat.
whats going through your head? - nature stuff, magic, trans-humanist prophesy, self replicating bio-technical nano-synthetic forms, cybernetic organisms, miscellaneous heads, space armor, goblins, extra terrestrial humanoids, insectoids, reptilians and such...
#Jon Boam #Drawing
I must admit, I can't explain
Any of these thoughts racin' through my brain
It's true
But, baby, I'm howlin' for you
Alright
There's something wrong with this plot
The actors here have not got
A clue
Baby, I'm howlin' for you
Continuing with posting photos from my archives. Not sure when I will get out for a drive, given that our winter weather continues. November 23 2024: lots of snow and it looked like almost 10-12 inches of snow on top of my back fence. Can't complain, though, as mild, fall weather lasted well into November, which was wonderful. So thankful that I managed to get out for groceries a few days ago, so now I can hibernate for a little while.
28 November 2024: got up early, thinking of driving south to the Saskatoon Farm. However, change of plans, as our weather yesterday morning was -17°C (feels like -23°C), with freezing fog. More freezing fog today (29 November 2024), too. Another good day to stay home! Next week is forecast to be 'warmer'.
I will be adding the description that I wrote under a different, previously posted image taken on the same day.
"This photo was taken on a day out with four friends, driving the area SW of Calgary, on 20 May 2017.
Part of that morning was spent at our friend, Barb's, acreage, SW of Calgary, enjoying the variety of birds that visit her property. Thanks so much, Barb, as always, for letting us visit you. Such a joy to see birds like the handsome male Rose-breasted Grosbeak and the Evening Grosbeaks.
We then drove the various roads SW of the city, as far south as Turner Valley, hoping to see a few birds. Beautiful scenery in the whole area. In Turner Valley, we called in to see another mutual friend and watch the birds that visited her tiny, but beautifully and thoughtfully designed, back deck. Thanks so much for having us, Jackie - and for the most welcome coffee! - especially at such very short notice!
On my way home from this enjoyable day out, I drove a few backroads, looking for any Mountain Bluebirds. Not much luck, though I did see one pair close to their nest box.
This coming weekend, it is the annual May Species Count. This year (2017), I am only going to do the Sunday Count - no walking : )"
"The count goes May 27-28: Calgary birders have been out in force every May since 1979, contributing to a broad census of the constantly changing patterns of bird distributions in North America. The count circle is the same as previous years, extending from Olds to Nanton, and from Exshaw to Standard, and includes a variety of environments." From Nature Calgary.
Nikon FA AF Nikkor 50/1.8
Unknown Fuji B&W film@ 100 ISO.I think it is orthochromatic motion picture or technical film (there are any markings near perforation).
Rodinal 1:100 per 1hour.