Safar
Definition
Safar is the Arabic word for travel — any journey away from one's home, whether short or long, sacred or mundane. Al-Ghazali frames safar as one of the great teachers of the spiritual life: the road removes the familiar structures that allow self-deception to flourish at home, forces reliance on Allah for safety and provision, and creates encounters with human diversity that challenge provincial assumptions. The prophetic tradition surrounding safar is rich — specific supplications, shortened prayers, legal concessions, and ethical guidelines for the traveller that together transform the journey from a logistical event into a structured opportunity for spiritual growth.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Ghazali and the scholars of his school.
How the scholars use Safar.
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"Khalid then sent commanders to right and left to lay siege to the fortresses there, and they took them, some by force and some by treaty, and seized from them abundant wealth. Khalid did not molest the cultivators — those of them who had not fought — nor their children, but only the fighting men of Persia. Then came the Battle of al-Madhar in Safar of this year. It is also called the Battle of al-Thani, which means the river. Ibn Jarir said: on that day the people said, "Safar of Safars, in it every tyrant is slain, at the meeting of the rivers.""
— Ibn Kathir, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq
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"passed away in the city of Saleh in the Maghreb. I met a group of righteous people there, including Abdullah al-Safar and others. I stayed there for five days. I then traveled to the city of Marbella. The route between the two is harsh and rugged, but Marbella is fertile and splendid. I found there a group of knights heading towards Malaga, and I intended to travel with them. But Allah, in His grace, protected me, and they went ahead of me. They were captured on the way, as we will recount. I followed afterward, and as I approached the territory of Marbella and entered the territory of Suheil, I passed a dead horse in one of the ravines, then passed a discarded"
— Ibn Battuta, Volume Two: From India to the Lands of the West
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"May God be pleased with him and grant him satisfaction, and may He gather us with him in the abode of His mercy; In what he wrote to me and permitted me to narrate, in Safar of the year five hundred and sixty-one. And my father, the unique, learned, ascetic, devout, pious imam, the crown of religion, informed us about him: Abu Bakr Abd al-Razzaq ibn Abd al-Qadir ibn Abi Salih ibn Abdullah al-Jilani May God be pleased with him and grant him satisfaction, who said: It was read to my father, may God be pleased with him and grant him satisfaction, while I listened on Tuesday, the fourteenth of Rabi' al-Awwal in the year five hundred and fifty-three."
— Shaykh Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Futūḥ al-Ghayb — Revelations of the Unseen · playable in the free preview
Appears in
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