Islam
Arabic: سكينة sakīnah is mentioned six times in the Quran, in chapters 2, 9 and 48.
Their prophet said to them: "The sign of his kingship is that the Ark will come to you in which there is tranquility from your Lord and a relic from the family of Moses and the family of Aaron, borne by the angels.
Al-Qurtubi mentions in his famous exegesis, in explanation of the above-mentioned verse, that according to Wahb ibn Munnabih, Sakinah is a spirit from God that speaks, and, in the case of the Israelites, where people disagreed on some issue, this spirit came to clarify the situation, and used to be a cause of victory for them in wars. According to Ali, "Sakinah is a sweet breeze/wind, whose face is like the face of a human". Mujahid mentions that "when Sakinah glanced at an enemy, they were defeated", and ibn Atiyyah mentions about the Ark of the Covenant (at-Tabut), to which the Sakina was associated, that souls found therein peace, warmth, companionship and strength.
Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj Nishapuri says in his Sahih al-Bukhari, that a certain man (during the time of Muhammad), was reciting the sura al-Kahf from the Quran by his tethered horse, and as he was reciting, a cloud engulfed him, which was encircling and descending, whose sight caused his horse to jump and move, and so when morning came he went to Muhammad and informed him of what occurred, to which Muhammad replied that it was the Sakinah that descended for the Quran.
According to Sunni traditions, when Muhammad was persecuted in Mecca and the time came for him to emigrate to Madinah (Medina), he took temporary refuge with his companion Abu Bakr in the cave of Thawr. Seeking to be hidden from the Makkans who were looking for him, it was at Thawr where God brought down His sakina over them, protecting them from their enemies. According to Sufism, it was at Thawr that Abu Bakr was blessed with divine secrets whose transmission from him to the latter generations formed the Naqshbandi path of Sufism. It was this experience that led the second Caliph Umar to say that all the good Umar did cannot stand as an equivalent to Abu Bakr's sole virtue of companionship with Muhammad at the Thawr cave.
Muhammed's grandson Hussein ibn Ali named one of his daughters Sakina. She tragically perished in a Syrian prison during the imprisonment of Hussein's family members, mostly women and children, who survived the Battle of Karbala. She was the first person in the history of Islam to have been given the name Sakinah. It is currently a popular female name in most Islamic cultures.
Read more about this topic: Shekhinah
Famous quotes containing the word islam:
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)
“Sooner or later we must absorb Islam if our own culture is not to die of anemia.”
—Basil Bunting (1900–1985)
“The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Needless to say everyone involved has a different angle, and they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along the line.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)