Notes on Time from Shaykh Amin’s Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī Lessons
Sayeed Siddiqui
Levels of Time
The Quran presents various levels of time in its terminology, along with the terminology of the scholars who followed. The first is described by the terms azal and abad, respectively denoting pre-eternity and eternity. These terms are often applied to Allah Most High to indicate His beginningless-ness and endlessness, and thus timelessness. They indicate Allah’s Absolute Existence in Himself (al-wujud al-mutlaq), which is utterly incomprehensible to humans as the Absolute Unseen (al-ghayb al-mutlaq). We can only indicate this reality by vaguely pointing it out with pronouns, such as in the Quranic statements “He is Allah” (huwa Allah) and “Then That is Allah, your Lord” (dhalikum Allahu Rabbukum).
The second level is the term dahr. It is a Quranic term, as it appears in Surah al-Insan, also eponymously known as Surah al-Dahr: “Was there not a period of time [hin min al-dahr] when man was nothing to speak of?” As al-Raghib al-Isfahani explains, dahr linguistically means the time from the beginning of the world to the end, and in this way the dahriyya, materialists who believed in the eternality of the world without need for Allah, were named. It is also one of the Names of Allah. In a well-known hadith qudsi, Allah says: “The children of Adam curse al-dahr; though I am Al-Dahr. In My Hands are the night and the day.” (Bukhari, Muslim). Relating to Allah Most High, dahr means infinite time which is logically post-manifestation of the Divine Names and Attributes. In this way it differs from azal and abad, which are logically prior to this manifestation, which is His Absolute Existence.
Next, we have created time and its subdivisions. Zaman is infinite but created and comprehensible, and constitutes the time we experience. Everything which is created exists within zaman, and the Afterlife will continue to infinity within zaman. ‘Asr, which Allah swears by in the eponymous Surah al-’Asr, is declining time, as correctly translated by Pickthall. It is declining, like the sands of an hourglass, because it is finite and nearing the end. Lastly, waqt is a finite, short amount of time which is usually attached to a particular action, such as prayer: Indeed, prayer is obligatory for the believers at prescribed times.
Time Has Come Full Circle
The pace of time may vary depending on the moment, place, and observer. Allah says, Indeed a day with your Lord is like a thousand years by your reckoning, and the angels and the Spirit will ascend to Him on a Day fifty thousand years in length.
In Paradise, there are no spatio-temporal limitations: you will have what you desire immediately, unrestricted. As soon as you see an appetizing bird, it will appear in front of you, cooked and ready to eat. In a paradox of space, fruits will be neither detached from the tree, nor prevented [from eating]1. Paradise is thus infinity and absolute creativity for its inhabitants.
At the beginning of time, Adam and Hawa experienced this in Paradise. When they were sent to earth, the first test (or punishment, of sorts) is that everything was slowed down, but not to the extent of our lives today. The Prophet Adam would plant a seed in the morning and harvest the plant by evening. Similarly, our mother Hawa would conceive in the morning and give birth by evening. It was a relative inconvenience compared to the life they had been accustomed to, and thus required a process of acclimatizing to life in time and space. Thus, time gradually slowed down at the beginning, from infinity to a moderate pace.2
In the same way, time will speed up towards the end. The Prophet ﷺ informed us, “The Hour will not be established until time passes rapidly, such that a year is like a month, a month is like a week, a week is like a day, a day is like an hour, and an hour is like the flicker of a flame.” Perhaps we are already witnessing a portion of this, as our hyperconnected and globalized lives give us instant gratification, dissolving the barriers of time and space.
Between these two extremes, we have the perfect middle, which was the time of the Prophet ﷺ. He informed us, “Time has come full circle to its form the day Allah created the heavens and earth”3, meaning that it has reached the ideal pace that Allah originally intended. It has ceased to slow down, and will begin to speed up again. We know that the coming of the Prophet ﷺ was itself the first sign of the Day of Judgement, and it is thus the beginning of ‘Asr: the countdown to the end of time.
The Human Trajectory
Parallel to the theory of the trajectory of time, Qari Muhammad Tayyib Qasmi suggests a trajectory of human development based on the verse: It is Allah Who created you in a state of weakness, then developed your weakness into strength, then developed your strength into weakness and old age. This is usually interpreted in the context of a single lifetime; a human being begins as a weak infant, then gains strength until adulthood, then becomes weak in old age. But there are indications that this also applies to the human species on a macro-level.
As we previously mentioned, in the beginning there was a growth in strength as Prophet Adam and his descendants acclimatized to life on Earth. In those days, human beings were physically strong – it is narrated that Prophet Adam was 70 cubits tall – and long-lived: the Quran mentions that Prophet Nuh gave dawah to his people for 950 years, and there are similar narrations regarding the other early prophets. This growth and development reached its peak in the time of ‘Ad and Thamud: The people of ‘Ad behaved arrogantly throughout the land without any right, saying, “Who could be stronger than us?” Did they not realize that God, who created them, was stronger than them?. From then, lifespans and physical fitness decreased.
In our times, human beings are physically weaker than at any other point in history, and socially weaker, through dependence on technology, sedentary lifestyles, and social atomization. We also have the least burdensome Divine Law, through Allah’s favor in lightening the burden (takhfif). We may have made some intellectual progress in material matters, but ultimately we are like the old man at a party who is content to enjoy his food, sitting by himself, watching the vigorous young folk before him.
The Islamic Calendar
Allah has given us astronomical bodies in part to keep track of time, and Islam governs the human demarcation of time through the calendar. In the time of ‘Umar, when the Islamic state grew rapidly and began to constitute a civilization, there came a need for a calendar for the purposes of settling debts and dating communications. A man named Hurmuzan, who was familiar with the Persian administration, suggested something like the Persian calendar, which was based on the reigns of their kings. ‘Umar gathered the senior Companions, and various viewpoints were proposed. Some recommended beginning the calendar with the birth of the Prophet ﷺ, or his death, or the revelation of the Quran.
‘Umar made istikhara for one month and ultimately decided that it should not be based on any of those events, but rather on the Hijra. He made a fascinating observation about the harmonious ordering (nazm) of the Quran. In Surah al-Tawba, there is the verse which establishes the Islamic calendar and protects it from the Jahili practice of adding intercalary months (nasi’): Indeed, the number of months in the sight of Allah is twelve months, in Allah’s decree on the day He created the heavens and the earth; of these, four are sacred. Four verses later, Allah mentions the Hijra: [It does not matter] if you do not support him, for Allah did in fact support him when the disbelievers drove him out and he was only one of two. While they both were in the cave, he reassured his companion [Abu Bakr], “Do not worry; Allah is certainly with us.” ‘Umar’s deep insight was that there must be a relationship between the two verses, because of Allah’s precise organization. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Hijra was the most influential event ever; it was the birth of a civilization, the best one in human history.
Hijra is an Islamic value: the first migration was that of Ibrahim with his nephew Lut, from Iraq to Sham. Perhaps there is a connection between the month of Muharram, the first in the calendar, and the migrations of prophets which led to the birth of civilizations. Ashura was the day that Nuh’s ark came to a stop on Mount Judi, and when the fire was made cool for Ibrahim, and when Musa and his people were saved from Pharaoh.
1 Based on Ibn Abbas’ interpretation of Surah al-Waqi’ah, 33.
2It is possible that this process would interfere with techniques like carbon dating, so that the world is in fact much younger than modern science concludes.
3 Bukhari #3197.
