How many of you have Heard the story of Tha’alaba ibn Abdurrahman رضي الله عنه .
This Story Wallahi, Every Time i Think about this story, and i talk about it and i narrate it, its so difficult not to become emotionally moved by the story. sit back and relax and walk through the life of a young thirteen year old boy during the time of the prophet ﷺ,
His name was Tha’alaba رضي الله عنه he was the messenger boy for the prophet ﷺ. any time the prophet ﷺ had a message that he wanted to send to another house or another village, he’d call this little boy and say, here, take this message and go to so and so’s house and deliver it. so he was like this errand boy. one day, the prophet ﷺ gave him a message and said, go and deliver it to so and so’s home, so he takes it, remember, he is a thirteen year old kid,
According to some narrations, its between thirteen and sixteen year old, either way, this is a young kid. So here he is, he takes the message and he starts walking and it was a real windy day, the breeze was blowing really really hard and he walked by a house. Back then, the homes did not have doors, they had curtains. So on a windy day, the curtain would blow open. So as he is walking by, just instinctively, he sees a curtain by a door and it kind of turns this way, and guess what he saw?
He saw a woman inside that home and she was bathing herself.
As soon as he looked,
He turned away immediately and he started crying and he ran away.
He actually ran outside of madinah, he ran outside of madinah and he left. you know why?
Listen to what the thirteen year old kid is thinking now. He said, o my goodness! I just saw this woman and allah now is going to put me in the hellfire.
That is what he is thinking! what do thirteen year old kids think when this stuff happens to them?
so he is thinking, my god, allah is going to probably send down a verse against me, so i m going to run away. i do not want to confront the prophet ﷺ about this. he runs away. no body hears from him again.
eventually when the prophet ﷺ is leading the companions in prayer, after a couple of days, he notices tha’alaba is not around anymore, and he says, where is tha’alaba?
Where is he?
i have not seen him.
imagine, this is the leader of the ummah, he is concerned about one child.
All the companions and all of their problems and issues, he is concerned about this one kid, where is he?
What is the wellbeing of this child?
So everybody is saying, we do not know ya rasulallah, we have not seen him in while. The prophet ﷺ says to omar and salman al farisi, He says, both of you, go out and find him, go and look for him, Omar and this other companion, they go out and they start searching for Tha’alaba, and they go outside of the city of madinah.
They come across a shepherd, he has his sheeps and his animals and they come across him, and they stop at him, sort of like a service station they want to re-fuel, so they want to get some milk and so on.
This shepherd asks omar, What are you guys doing here?
it is kind of abnormal to see you, guys from madinah coming around this area.
So omar says, we are just looking for somebody,