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| Masjid As-Sayyid Hashim, Gaza |
Yāqūt Al-Ḥamawī[1] said: ‘In Gaza,[2] Al-Imam Abū ʿAbdullah Muḥammad Bin Idrīs Ash-Shāfiʿī was born, may Allah be pleased with him. As a child he moved to the Hijāz and acquired knowledge there, and it is related from him that he remembered [Gaza] by saying:
Indeed I yearn for the land of Gaza
To be taken far away from it is the cause of my silence
Allah sends rain upon a land; if only I had taken some of its earth
I would rub it on my eyelids out of my intense yearning
[Translated from Dīwān Al-Imām Ash-Shāfiʿī, p.391 (Beirut: Dar Al-Fikr, 2007/1428)]
[1] Yāqūt Bin ʿAbdullah Ar-Rūmī Al-Ḥamawī, Abū ʿAbdullah, Shihāb Ad-Dīn, reliable historian, master of geography and scholar of language and literature (d.626/1229).
[2] (tn): i.e. Gaza City, which is where Hāshim Bin ʿAbdul Manāf is buried, the grandfather of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him, and this is why it is also known as Ghazzat Hāshim. (Muʿjam Al-Buldān: 4/202)
