The love of the companions for the messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was not simply a rational love suspended in their intellects, but rather it was real and experiential.
After the flight of the messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) unto his Lord, our master Bilal (radiya Allah anhu) could not remain in Madinah any longer, because all of his emotions in that city were attached to the messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). So he himself took flight unto the Levant, which is of the most blessed of lands.
Whilst in the Levant, there was not a single battle that took place, except that Bilal was in the midst of it; he had true chivalry and he always desired that Allah (exalted is He) would ennoble him with martyrdom, so he could meet his beloved (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). However, destiny protected him, and he was not martyred.
He thought that by staying away from Madinah, his deep and intense love would be brought into balance. During the time of Abu Bakr’s caliphate, Bilal returned to Madinah. Abu Bakr asked him to call the adhan once again (as he had done in the time of the Messenger), but Bilal said that he had took an oath only to call the adhan at the command of his beloved (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). Due to his continuing deep emotions, Bilal returned for a second time to the Levant.
Whilst in Shaam, the messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) came to Bilal in a dream, gently asking: “O Bilal, what is all this distance? Why are you so harsh with me?” And so immediately Bilal returned to Madinah, and the companions were ecstatic. They asked him once again to call the adhan, but again Bilal refused. The companions replied, “we once could see the Messenger, and hear the adhan – now that the Messenger has taken flight, do not bar us from hearing the adhan also.” But Bilal saw it as too great an affair to call the adhan for someone other than the messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), and so he had refused the requests of Abu Bakr and Umar (radiya Allahu anhuma).
One day Bilal saw al-Hasan and al-Huseyn, and they said to him: “call the adhan in the same way you used to call the adhan for our grandfather, salallahu alayhi wa sallam.” To them Bilal replied: “as for you, I could never refuse, for you are the pieces of my beloved, salallahu alayhi wa sallam.”
So our master Bilal thereby ascended, and began to call the adhan. The people of Madinah gathered, and they began to reminisce of the times of the messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. When he reached “Ash-hadu anna Muhammad ar-rasul Allah” Bilal broke down into tears, and could not complete the adhan.
And so too the people cried; Madinah had not seen as many tears since the very day of the flight of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.
Years later, when Bilal was upon his deathbed, his wife being emotionally moved (as people normally would be), would cry out: “woe, woe, how wretched this is!” But Bilal, completely oblivious to her, would call: “how beautiful this is, how ecstatic I am!” Initially his wife accepted what he was saying as something normal, but when he continued to repeat it, she questioned him. He replied, explaining his desire for death: “tomorrow I meet my beloved – Muhammad wa hizbihi (Muhammad and his people)!”
from al-Habib Kazim al-Saqqaf, translated by Shaykh Ibrahim
may Allah preserve them both.
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