Waaa Mu'tasamaaa

[fatima_43]

‎"Wa Mu'tasima!"

In Ibn Atheer's famous history book Al Kaamil, he mentions the story in our history of a King called Al Mu'tasim, who was from the Banu Abbas.

The event goes like this;

A Muslim woman was captured by the Romans and imprisoned, so the Romans laughed at her. The leader of the Roman king sarcastically said, "You won't ever leave this place until the muslim king himself removes you from these shackles." The woman shouted "Wa Mu'tasima!" (Oh my grief, Mu'tasima!).

The Roman King laughed at her and said : "He will never come to save you unless he was riding "ablaq" (a kind of horse that is colored with black and white). (he said this in a way of mocking her and showing the impossibility of the situation.)

A Muslim man who was in the land of the Romans heard the woman call out the Muslim kings name, he found out she was Muslim. So he ran to the Muslims and told them about what he had heard.

When Al Mu'tasim heard of the news, he gathered a whole army, and said the famous quote "When the first person of my army reaches the land of the Romans, the last of my army will have left us (i.e. the Muslim barracks)." He made the entire army ride the "ablaq" horses. So they set off, and he went with them on his black and white horse too.

When they reached there, he took control of the area, captured it and himself entered the prison where the Muslim woman had been imprisoned.

"Who are you?" she said.

"I am al-Mu'tasim." He freed her from her shackles, a sign of humiliation for the Romans.

Al Mu'tasim took over the land where this occurred, because they had waged war against the believers by humiliating a Muslim woman. Just like Allah's Messenger expelled the Banu Qaynuqa, for humiliating a Muslim woman.


Subhaanallaah! Mu'tassim was not satisfied until every aspect of the Romans' mockery was responded to:

1. [Mockingly] "You will not be freed until the king himself removes your shackles": And Mu'tassim freed her from her shackles himself

2. "He will never come to you unless he was riding a black and white horse": Not only did Mu'tassim literally ride a black and white horse, he sent a gigantic army doing the same! What a sense of honour for this Muslimah, what an Islamic nation. Not helping because of knowing someone personally, or because they have helped in the past, but purely because they are a sister in faith!

[fatima_43]

I love this story, especially the way my cousin told it.

It's become a famous phrase in the Middle East in current times to say WAAA ISLAAMAHHH, WAAA MU'TASIMAHHH

It's a call of grief as in why isn't there another Mu'tasim in our times or another Umar bin Khattab or Khalid ibn Walid radiyaAllahu anhum..

[Najwa Al Mu'minah]

subhanallah ONE muslim lady was imprisoned, and a whole army and the king himself were out to save to her..i wonder what the king would have done if he heard what was happening to the Muslims in Syria or Burma

[fatima_43]

yeah what about Salahudden al-Ayyoubi, when he was asked why don't you smile? he said 'how can I smile when Al-Aqsa is in the hands of the Crusaders?' what would Salahudden say now when the whole of Palestine is taken except for Gaza and West Bank?

[fatima_43]

there are various narrations of the story of Mu'tasim that have extra quotes. In one it says that when the Roman king wrote to Mu'tasim threatening him, Mu'tasim wrote back

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم . أما بعد . فقد قرأت كتابك وسمعت
ندائك . والجواب ما سوف ترى لا ما تسمع . (وسيعلم الكفار
لمن عقبى الدار ) { الرعد : 42 }

In the Name of Allah the Most Gracious the Most Merciful.
I have read your message and I have heard your call and the response is something that you will SEE not something that you will HEAR. "And the disbelievers will soon come to know for whom is the Home of the Hereafter" (Ar-Ra'd:42)