Deviation Actions
Description
شجرة الرسول
Visited on 25/1/2013 & on 26/4/2013
The Blessed Tree, also known as the Last Living Companion and the Rasool’s Tree, is a tree that the Prophet Muhammad sat under when he was a young boy, according to various accounts.
The story goes:
A young Muhammad was traveling with his uncle’s caravan to Damascus that was passing through a small town home to a Christian Monk. This monk had been searching for a prophet who would emerge from the Arabian Peninsula, and one day while staring out his window at the approaching caravan, he noticed a white cloud following it above, providing protection from the sun. The cloud would follow the boy and would only disperse as he found shade under the tree’s extended branches. That was when he realized he was in the presence of a prophet.
One account of the story continues to say that the monk had befriended the caravan party and later guessed that the boy was an orphan. It was after recognizing a mark on Muhammad’s body (a mark which is said to be visible on all prophets) that the Monk informed the uncle of the boy’s future and asked him to protect him until the day in which God will reveal his message to him.
Local Safawi legend states that this very old Lebanese pistachio tree standing in solitude on the steppe is the tree of the Prophet Muhammad and so it is protected and revered as his Last Living Companion. Some scholars think it more likely that the meeting between the Prophet and the Monk happened on the Roman frontier town of Umm Al Rassas (96 kilometers away), attributing that to the fact that Arab trade routes never passed through Safawi, nor is there any archaeological evidence of a monastery anywhere near the tree. Nonetheless, the tree’s magnificence is a testament to life in a harsh environment.
Copyright © Bashar Tabbah. All rights reserved.