Prophet Ayyub (AS) – The Model of Patience حضرت ایوب علیہ السلام – صبر کی مثال

The Quran names Ayyub (AS) among the prophets who received revelation, in the same breath as Nuh, Ibrahim, Ismail, Ishaq, Yaqub, Isa, Yunus, Harun and Sulaiman (An-Nisa 4:163). In Surah Al-An'am he is listed among the descendants of Ibrahim whom Allah guided and chose: 'And from his descendants, Dawud and Sulaiman and Ayyub and Yusuf and Musa and Harun. Thus do We reward the doers of good' (Al-An'am 6:84). So before his story is one of suffering, it is the story of a prophet – a man Allah chose, spoke to and praised.

Most of the early authorities, as Ibn Kathir records in Qasas al-Anbiya and Al-Bidaya wan-Nihaya, place Ayyub within the family of Ibrahim through Ishaq, and some say his wife was a granddaughter of Yusuf (AS). These lineages come from genealogists and People of the Book, not from the Quran or authentic hadith, so they are reported as likely rather than certain. What is certain is the verse of Al-An'am, which places him in the blessed line and among 'the doers of good'.

Where did he live? The most widely transmitted view sets him in the land of Hauran, south of Damascus and east of the Jordan, a region of fertile plains and ancient villages. Later Muslim travellers were shown places there associated with him. Again, the Quran does not specify the place, and the exact location is not a matter of faith. The time is likewise approximate: he came after Yaqub and Yusuf and before Musa, in the long centuries between the entry of the Children of Israel into Egypt and their exodus from it.

The commentators describe his earlier life as one of great blessing. He had broad lands, herds of camels, cattle and sheep, many servants, and a large family of sons and daughters. He was generous to the poor, hospitable to travellers and attentive to widows and orphans; he used his wealth as a trust and not as a possession. This picture is drawn from the reports of Wahb ibn Munabbih and others, who took it largely from the earlier scriptures. It is consistent with the Quran's praise of him, but the details are not independently established in our sources and should be read as background rather than as revealed fact.

Why does the Quran choose to tell us so little about his early life and so much, by implication, about his trial? Because the point of Ayyub's story is not a biography but a lesson. The Quran introduces him in Surah Al-Anbiya with a single phrase: 'And [mention] Ayyub, when he called to his Lord' (Al-Anbiya 21:83). Everything before the call is prologue; everything after it is the answer of a Merciful Lord. The reader is meant to meet Ayyub at the lowest point of his life and to learn from how he behaved there.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught that 'the people most severely tested are the prophets, then the next best, then the next best' (Jami' at-Tirmidhi 2398; Ibn Majah 4023 – graded sound). Ayyub is the clearest illustration of that principle in the Quran. His high rank among the prophets did not spare him hardship; it was the very reason his hardship was so great, and the reason his patience became a model for all who came after him.

So we begin with a man at the height of blessing: a prophet of Allah, a wealthy landowner, a father of many children, a healthy and respected figure in his community. Everything he had was a gift. The chapters that follow show how he responded when, one by one, the gifts were taken away.

The Quran describes the trial of Ayyub in his own words, and in two places. In Surah Al-Anbiya he says: 'Indeed, adversity has touched me, and You are the Most Merciful of the merciful' (Al-Anbiya 21:83). In Surah Sad he says: 'Indeed, Satan has touched me with hardship and torment' (Sad 38:41). From these two sentences the whole shape of the trial can be read: it was 'adversity' (durr), a word that covers bodily harm, loss and distress; it involved 'hardship' (nasab), which is exhaustion and fatigue, and 'torment' (adhab), which is pain; and Shaytan had a hand in it.

The commentators, drawing on earlier reports, describe the stages. First his wealth was taken: his herds died or were seized, his crops failed, his servants scattered. Then his children were taken: the house in which they were gathered collapsed upon them. Then his body was struck: an illness spread over him until he could no longer rise from his bed, and his companions and relatives, who had once crowded his door, withdrew from him. Only his wife remained, serving him with her own hands and, when their means ran out, working for others to feed him.

Ibn Kathir reports that his illness lasted a long time; the figures given vary – three years, seven years, thirteen, eighteen – and none of them rests on a sound chain back to the Prophet ﷺ. What the Quran establishes is that the trial was long enough and severe enough to be the defining test of a prophet's life. Readers should hold to this and not to any particular number.

What did Shaytan have to do with it? The verse of Surah Sad makes clear that Ayyub attributed the 'hardship and torment' to the touch of Shaytan. Scholars explain this in two ways, and both are sound. One is that Allah allowed Shaytan a measure of influence over Ayyub's body and possessions as part of the test, just as He allows the jinn and devils to harm by His permission alone. The other is that Shaytan's real assault was on his heart: whispers of despair, suggestions that his Lord had abandoned him, temptations to say something that would spoil his patience. Either way, Ayyub attributed only the pain to Shaytan, and never the decree; the decree he attributed to Allah, and about it he said nothing but good.

Here it is necessary to warn the reader about a family of stories that have circulated for centuries in popular tellings. They say that worms ate his flesh, that his body became so loathsome that people threw him on a rubbish heap outside the town, and that he would pick up the worms that fell from him and return them to their places. These descriptions come from Isra'iliyyat and later storytellers, and the scholars of Islam have rejected them. A prophet is sent to be followed and loved by people, and Allah does not afflict His messengers with what makes others flee from them in disgust; the illnesses of prophets are heavy, but they are never degrading. Ibn Kathir, Ibn Hajar and others point out that there is no authentic basis for these reports and that they contradict the honour Allah gives His prophets.

What can be said with confidence is this: he lost his wealth, he lost his children, he lost his health, and he lost the company of people, and the loss lasted long. In the end he was a sick man in a bare house with a faithful wife, and all the world could see of him was ruin. That is the stage on which the next chapter is set.

What makes Ayyub the model of patience is not that he suffered – everyone suffers – but how he suffered. The Quran's one-word verdict on him is 'sabiran', patient (Sad 38:44), and the Quranic meaning of sabr is precise: to hold the heart firm upon what Allah has decreed, to restrain the tongue from complaint against Him, and to keep the limbs from any act of despair. Through the long years of his illness, Ayyub did all three.

Notice first what he did not do. He did not curse the day he was born. He did not demand of Allah an explanation. He did not say, 'Why me, when I was generous and obedient?' He did not abandon prayer, nor did he stop remembering his Lord. The reports say that when his wife, worn down by watching him suffer, once urged him to ask Allah to lift the trial, he replied: 'I lived in blessing for so many years; shall I not be patient in hardship for as long?' Some narrators give this as seventy years of ease against seven of trial. The exchange is reported by Ibn Kathir from earlier sources and is not an authentic hadith, but it captures exactly the attitude the Quran attributes to him: a sense that blessing had been undeserved and that hardship was therefore nothing to protest.

The role of his wife deserves its own mention. The Quran refers to her indirectly in the verse about the oath (Sad 38:44), and the commentators are unanimous that she stood by him when everyone else had gone. She nursed him, she carried him, she went out to work when there was no food, and she bore the humiliation of being the wife of a man whom the town regarded as cursed. Islam honours her as one of the great wives in the history of the prophets, alongside Hajar, Asiya and Khadijah, and her loyalty is part of what the Quran means when it says Allah restored to Ayyub 'his family'.

The commentators also record that Shaytan did not leave the couple in peace. Some reports say that he came to the wife in human form and offered to cure her husband if she would make a small gesture of devotion to him, and that she, desperate and not recognising the trap, mentioned the offer to Ayyub; that he saw through it at once and, angered that she had listened, swore an oath to strike her a hundred lashes when he recovered. This is the explanation the majority of commentators give for the oath mentioned in Surah Sad. The chains of these reports are weak and the details differ, so the reader should take from it only what the Quran itself requires: that Ayyub made an oath during his illness that involved his wife, and that Allah later provided a merciful way to honour it.

There is a particular dignity in the way the Quran preserves his words. Across all those years, the only sentences of his that Allah chose to record are two short prayers, and neither contains a complaint. In the first he says only that 'adversity has touched me', and immediately turns to praise: 'and You are the Most Merciful of the merciful' (Al-Anbiya 21:83). The grammar itself is instructive. He does not say 'You have afflicted me' but 'adversity has touched me', using the passive, courteous form; he does not say 'cure me' but leaves the request unspoken, implied by the praise. Ibn Kathir calls this the finest example of adab, of good manners with Allah, in a moment of extremity.

Scholars draw a line between complaining to Allah and complaining about Allah. Yaqub said, 'I only complain of my suffering and my grief to Allah' (Yusuf 12:86), and that is permitted and even praised. Ayyub did the same. What breaks patience is not telling Allah one's pain – He already knows it, and He loves to be asked – but objecting to His decree, despairing of His mercy, or speaking of Him with anything less than praise. Ayyub never crossed that line, and that is why, when at last he spoke, Allah's answer came at once.

When Ayyub finally lifted his voice, it was with the words every Muslim has since memorised: 'Rabbi anni massaniya ad-durru wa anta arhamur-rahimin' – 'My Lord, indeed adversity has touched me, and You are the Most Merciful of the merciful' (Al-Anbiya 21:83). The Quran then says, without any pause: 'So We responded to him and removed what afflicted him of adversity' (Al-Anbiya 21:84). Years of silence, one sentence of supplication, an immediate answer: the structure of the verses is itself a lesson about the nearness of Allah to those who are patient.

Why did he speak then and not earlier? The commentators suggest several reasons, all drawn from reports rather than from revealed text. Some say that his wife's distress reached a point he could not bear. Others say that two of his old companions came to visit, and one said to the other that Ayyub must have committed some great sin for Allah to afflict him so; when the words reached him, the grief of being thought a sinner was heavier than the illness, and he turned to his Lord. Whatever the occasion, the Quran's emphasis is on the manner, not the moment: he described, he praised, and he left the decision to Allah.

Allah's answer came with a command and a miracle. 'Strike [the ground] with your foot; this is a [spring for] a cool bath and drink' (Sad 38:42). Ayyub struck the earth with his foot, and water gushed up. He bathed in it and drank from it, and the illness left his body, inside and out. The reports say that his skin was restored, his strength returned, and he rose from the ground a healthy man. The healing came through water – ordinary cool water – because Allah placed the cure in a means, so that His servants would learn to seek means while trusting only in Him.

Then came restoration. 'And We gave him [back] his family and the like thereof with them as mercy from Us and a reminder for the worshippers' (Al-Anbiya 21:84; Sad 38:43). Scholars differ on how to understand 'his family and the like thereof with them'. Some say Allah brought his children back to life; most say that He gave him new children in the number of those he had lost, and that his earlier children would be with him in Paradise. Ibn Kathir leans to the view that Allah blessed him with new offspring and restored his wife to health and youth, so that she bore him many children. His wealth, too, returned in abundance.

There is one authentic hadith on this moment, and it is a beautiful one. The Prophet ﷺ said: 'While Ayyub was bathing naked, locusts of gold fell upon him, and he began gathering them into his garment. His Lord called to him: "O Ayyub, had I not made you rich enough to need what you see?" He said: "Yes, by Your might, my Lord! But I cannot do without Your blessing"' (Sahih al-Bukhari 279 and 3391). The hadith shows the heart of Ayyub after his trial: no sense of entitlement, no weariness of gifts, only a servant who knows that everything that comes from his Lord is a blessing to be welcomed, and that one can never have enough of Allah's bounty.

This is also where Allah explains why the story was told. The restoration was 'a mercy from Us' for Ayyub himself, but also 'a reminder for the worshippers' (Al-Anbiya 21:84) and 'a reminder for those of understanding' (Sad 38:43). The story is a message to every servant of Allah who is suffering: the trial has an end, the end is in Allah's hand, and the way to it is patience, prayer and praise.

One matter remained from the years of illness: the oath. Allah says: 'And take in your hand a bunch [of grass] and strike with it and do not break your oath' (Sad 38:44). As the previous chapter explained, the commentators report that Ayyub had sworn, in anger during his sickness, to strike his wife a hundred lashes. Now he was well, and she – who had served him with such loyalty – stood to receive a punishment that neither he nor any just person wished to carry out. Allah Himself provided the solution: take a bundle of a hundred thin stalks, strike her once with it, and the oath is fulfilled.

The jurists call this a rukhsah, a legal concession, and they discuss whether it applies generally or was specific to Ayyub. Either way, the verse displays two qualities of Allah's law at once: the sanctity of an oath, which must not simply be ignored, and the mercy that finds a way to honour the letter of a commitment without harming the innocent. The Quran mentions this small detail before anything else about his recovery, as though to say that the first duty of a man restored to health is to set right what he said in the hour of pain.

Then comes the testimony, the verse that is the summit of Ayyub's story: 'Indeed, We found him patient, an excellent servant. Indeed, he was one who repeatedly turned back [to Allah]' (Sad 38:44). Three titles in one verse. 'Patient' – the quality for which he was tested. 'An excellent servant' – ni'mal-abd, the same praise Allah gives to Sulaiman (Sad 38:30), placing the sick, bereaved Ayyub on the same level as the king who commanded the winds and the jinn. 'One who turns back' – awwab, a word that describes a heart continually returning to Allah in every state, in ease and in hardship. This last is the secret of his patience: he could endure because his heart had somewhere to go.

How did Ayyub end? The Quran does not say, and there is no authentic hadith about his death. Ibn Kathir reports from the genealogists that he lived to a great age after his recovery, that he had sons who were righteous, and that one of them, Bishr, is said by some to be the prophet Dhul-Kifl, since 'Kifl' may refer to the 'portion' or responsibility he took on from his father. This identification is uncertain and is discussed in the chapter on Dhul-Kifl. The ages given for Ayyub – ninety-three years, or more – are likewise from unverified reports. He died, by all accounts, in the land where he had lived, and was buried there; the exact grave is unknown.

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and his companions saw in Ayyub the pattern for their own trials. When the Prophet ﷺ lay in his final illness with a high fever, and a companion remarked that he suffered as much as two men, he said: 'Yes, and I have a double reward'; then he explained that no believer is touched by harm, even a thorn, without Allah expiating his sins (Sahih al-Bukhari 5648; Sahih Muslim 2571). That is the theology of Ayyub's story put into a sentence. Suffering is not a sign of Allah's displeasure; borne with patience, it is a purification and a means of rising in rank.

The legacy of Ayyub, then, is not a monument or a kingdom. It is a sentence of prayer that millions of people in every age have whispered from hospital beds and graveyards and empty houses: 'My Lord, adversity has touched me, and You are the Most Merciful of the merciful.' And it is a promise, written beside that prayer in the Book of Allah: 'So We responded to him.'