Muqaddimah

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim.

All praise is for Allah, Lord of all the worlds. May His peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, upon his family, his Companions, and all who follow them in goodness until the Day of Judgement.

When Musa saw a fire on the side of the mountain, he told his family: "Wait here. I have seen a fire. Perhaps I can bring you a burning brand from it, or find some guidance there" (Quran 20:10; see also 28:29). In Arabic, that small flame is called a qabas. This project takes its name from that moment: a little light, carried back to others by someone who did not light the fire himself.

That is all I am trying to do. The light is not mine. It belongs to the words of Allah and to the guidance of His Messenger (peace be upon him). It reached us through his Companions, then through the Tabi'un who learned from them, and then through generations of scholars who memorised, checked and explained every narration with more care than we can imagine. Everything good here reached us through them.

Why stories? Because the Prophet (peace be upon him) told them. A man who took ninety-nine lives and still found the door of repentance open. Three men trapped in a cave, each saved by one sincere deed. A man who trusted Allah with a thousand dinars and an empty sea. These stories were told to soften hearts, and I wanted them to reach a generation that watches more than it reads. So we tell them in animation. Under every episode you will find the original text, its sources and what the scholars said about it, so you can always go back to the source.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: "Convey from me, even if it is a single verse" (Sahih al-Bukhari 3461). He said: "May Allah brighten the face of a person who hears something from us and conveys it just as he heard it" (Jami' at-Tirmidhi 2657). And he said: "Whoever guides someone to good will have a reward like the one who does it" (Sahih Muslim 1893). These words are the hope behind Qabas. He also warned against attributing to him what he did not say (Sahih al-Bukhari 110). So every story is checked against the books of hadith before it is published, and anything without an authentic chain is clearly marked and never called a hadith.

I have to be honest with you about who is doing this. I am not a scholar. I am a servant of Allah, weak, and I make mistakes, many of them. There will be errors here: in a translation, in a summary, in an image, in a choice of words. As Abdullah ibn Mas'ud said: if it is right, it is from Allah, and if it is wrong, it is from me and from Shaytan (Sunan Abi Dawud 2116). What is true is what the hadith says and what the people of knowledge have explained, not my telling of it. If you find a mistake, please write to me. I will correct it, and I will be grateful to you.

I do this for the sake of Allah, and for nothing else. I will not earn a single cent from Qabas. If any income ever comes in, it goes straight back into making more beneficial content for the Ummah. What I hope for is something no money can buy: that Allah forgives me through this work, that He has mercy on me through it, and that one story, one day, brings someone a little closer to Him.

"My success is only through Allah. In Him I have put my trust, and to Him I turn" (Quran 11:88).

Our Lord, accept this from us. You are the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing (Quran 2:127).

— Qabas