Prose Lecture 1

A Literary medium distinguished from poetry by its greater irregularity and

variety of rhythm and its closer correspondence to everyday speech.
MUHAMMAD ASAD
1. A newly Muslim scholar
2. A true Christian before Islam
3. Author of the many books at ISLAM

This book is an account of journey to Makah By a ship.

In ship there were many laborers and manufacturers, returning to native
lands from Europe.
After reaching Jeddah, the author is stunned to see the pilgrims in bazars
and everywhere in white ' AHRAMS'.

Next Journey: Jeddah to Makkah by a camel Carwan.

A few cars were seen... the symbol of future development.
Asad observed a sacred dream.
Pilgrims were reciting NAATS, in their tents.

Finally Asad reaches Makkah. Stays at his guide's home. Soon he reaches
Khana e Kabba and reveals the glory of ALLAH.
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE: He decides to see kaaba to enrich his
spiritual experience.
1. Splendid and dignified experience.
2. Sees ALLAH with splendor and power.
3. He feels to be very humble and small creature.
4. Our brief stay in this world.
5. Finds his meaningless life meaningful.
6. Develops pure faith in Islam.
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 LECTURE 2
A story of a European's discovery of Islam and of his integration within the
Muslim community.
Plenipotentiary: adaptation assumption by European proved wrong when
they observed not merely functional but emotional affiliation. *Curiosity
and bewilderment arose.
The change from western heritage to! Shock culture appeared for European
strange and inferior.
Asad endeavored to make the past generation shifted thought of Europeans
explored and awakened.
Narrow angled vision and illusion of western and American superior way of
living and culture.
Occidentals considered themselves the trendsetters and leaders.
Arguments with American friend/intellectual.
(a)Greeks v western (b) spiritless west
(West, emotionally biased/ prejudiced against Islam but accepts Buddhism)
(d) Sameness of spiritual values of west and Islam
LECTURE 3
Thirst
• Last desert journey from the interior of Arabia to Mecca in the late
summer of 1932:
• 'Tayma, 'From Qasr Athaymin,
• Two men, two dromedaries • A journey from Nufud to Tyma, a trackless
desert
• In the company of Zayd, a typical desert man and native.
Character of ZAYD
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• Zayd is probably the handsomest man.
• Expectant gravity which is so characteristic of the desert Arab
• Dignity and self-composure.
• Bedouin's sureness of instinct without the Bedouin’s, emotional liability
• Practical wisdom and sophistication

Describe the unpredictability of the desert

• The writer is astonished to find the fascinating
• Life in the desert in its majesty but unpredictable.
• It is lava ground, dunes without end; sometimes waadi between rocky hills
. Village beneath palm trees, sometimes well in the midst of desert valley,
• Then again, there is loneliness.
Un predicable desert
• glimmering shadows of clouds on horizon. Frequently changing their color
and position,
• But a blandishment of the jinn,
• Warlike commotion of tribes and the traveler does not light fire..
• And those days of peace: they talk of the simple, great things of life and
death, of hunger and satiety, of pride and love and hatred, of the lust of the
flesh and its appeasement, of wars, of the palm groves in the distant village
— and no idle babbling in the desert ...
Days of thirst
• In the days of thirst, when the tongue sticks to the palate like piece of dry
wood and the horizon sends no deliverance but offers flaming wind and
whirling sand instead
• Relish of hospitality in Bedouin tent.

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 Un predicable desert...
• Like red metal the sun disappears behind hills; higher than anywhere else
in the world is the starry sky at night.
• Cold are the nights in winter, biting winds flap against the campfire around
which companions -huddle together in search of warmth;
• Burning the days in summer- ride on rocking dromedary through endless
hours, your face muffled in your head cloth to protect.

LECTURE 4
Draw the character sketch of IBN E SOUD
Like Red metal the sun disappears behind Hills Higher than everyone else in
the world is Starry sky at night
Cold are the nights in winter Biting wind flaps against the Campfire around
with the companions Huddle together in search of warmth
Burning the days in summer ride on rocking dromedary through Endless
hours your face Muffler in your head cloth to protect.

The loneliness is broken by the group of Bedouins who Cross our path four
or Five Men and two women
Elderly man with the sharp face and a black pointed beard is obviously the
leader, turns Dubious
Queries and introduction

My first meeting with King Soud took place at Mecca early in 1927 few
months after the conversion to Islam
Sudden death of wife Made reserved
Conservative and bitterly desperate
Apprised to be enlisted in the royal guests
Impressed by the king's son Amir Faisal Who never left him bow for the
king 
Astonished to See King’s gigantic height
The Faithless wife tried to poison him but averted
The king offered the company with full protocol to the astonishment of the
others but writer pledged for dromedary
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King warned him the hardships and of the ignorant Inhabitants.

• whom the Bedouins call always his first name, Abdul Aziz, without any
formal, title or in their free humanity they see only man in the King, to be
honored, no doubt, but not beyond the deserts of man.
• Thousand guests live daily off the King's bounty, receiving on departure
presents.
King
• From handful of silver coins or an abaya to the heavy purses of golden
sovereigns, horses or dromedaries which he frequently distributes among the
chieftains. But the king's generosity is not the matter of the purse but heart.
Perhaps more than anything else, it is his warmth of feeling that makes the
people around.
King IBN Sound....
• He calls me his friend, although h-is a king and I am a journalist.
• I love to call him my friend, for, despite all his faults.
• Kind hearted but self-centered man.
Zayd sprained his ankle in the Endeavour of hunting a rabbit. They camped
there.
• Found camel lost.
• Met with a sand storm while searching for the missing camel.
Survived.
How did the missing camel adventure lead Asad to the verge of death?
Discuss Asad implicit faith on the holy verses in the jaws of death?
On return missed the camp and Zayd,
Kept searching with thirst.
One night consumed... another night spent
Kept changing the directions for south to north — form west to east.
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Sand dunes and heat Dunes behind dunes, and no end.

• Climbed tall on the dunes to have a better look of landscape and finally
found the camp.
• This time he takes every precaution not to miss it: I ride in straight line, up
sand hills, down sand valleys, thus doubling, trebling.
• and my heart seems to stop beating:
for what I see before me is the dark
outcrop of granite rocks which I
passed three days ago with Zayd and
revisited two days ago alone ...
• For two days I was going in circle•
• How long it is since I have wept.
But, then, is
not everything long past? Everything is past, and
there is no present. Here is only thirst. And heat.
And torment.
• I have been without water for nearly three days
now, and it is five days before dromedary has had
its last drink. It could probably carry on like this
for one day more, perhaps two; but I cannot, I
know it, last that long. Perhaps I
shall go mad
before I die
• I want to rest, but at the same time l know that if I rest now shall never be
able to get up again. I drag myself into the saddle and force the dromedary
with beating and kicking to get up;
• We plod with the rest of our strength
through the night. It must be morning
when 1 fall from the saddle
• in the narrow shadow of the
dromedary's body, wrapped in the abaya
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against the heat outside and the pain and
thirst and dread within me.
• Thirst and heat; thirst and crushing silence.
• Appearance of vultures, encircling
• but cannot stop moving my big tongue in pain,
backward, forward against the dry cavity of
mouth.
• He tries to commit suicide by bullets but reminds a
holy verse
• We shall most certainly try you with fear
and hunger and with the lack of
possessions and lack of labor's but give
the good tiding to those who remain
steadfast and ,calamity befalls on them;
say, behold to God we belong and unto
Him do we return.
• Camel's body movement, snorting
• There is faint sound like the vibration of an old
harp, very delicate and brittle, high Pitched:
the high-pitched, brittle sound
• He is unable to move, so he fires a shot in air
by carbine to attract their attention.
• At last the Bedouin crowed commuted around
him
• Judicious handlings of Bedouin
people, rubbing of moist rag and
sipping of hot water
• roaring blackness, black, black.
• Zayd takes the charge and reveals
the happening

Lecture 5

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• 'THAT IN WHICH ONE HAS THE SHARE,
• Comment on the holy verses with Assad’s view point?
• 'Why, brother, do we expose ourselves to
such things instead of staying in our
homes like sensible people'
• 'THAT IN WHICH ONE HAS THE SHARE'
• the holy verses
• Strangled in chills with Tatar servant
Ibrahim
Chills
the goal. Caravan serai of Khan-i-Khet
we were chilled to the bone; but the
knowledge that the swamps were close was
even more chilling.
I sensed its desperate struggle against of the
swamp.
Chills
from Shiraz to Kirman
in southern Iran
The caravanserai of
Khan-i-Khet
My skin broke out in cold perspiration.
I sensed its desperate struggle against the
embrace of the swamp.
I could hear, for seconds that were like hours,
the relentless sucking sound of the swamp...
The end must be near,
He was ready to jump.
Chills
the horse's hooves struck against hard
ground,
And they were saved.
The struggle against the swamp had been
only fruit of my imagination.
At last they got khan-i-khet.
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