The story of Khalil Farhat with Imam Ali (PBUH)
Khalil Farhat has a wonderful story with Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (peace be upon him), and he narrated it himself in poetry and narrated it to his friends as told by the saint who saw who loves and what he loves.
Khalil Farhat, a religious affiliation, is a Christian committed to his religion. He is a writer, poet and researcher from Lebanon. He was born in Zahle and taught at the Eastern College. He continued his studies in correspondence with the University of "Montpellier" and obtained a BA in the French language. He immigrated to Ghana in Africa, then returned to his hometown in 1960. In the history of Lebanon, they mention that Khalil, the Maronite, wrote in a book named after him "In Alis Niche."
Khalil Farhat suffered from a disease that was difficult to cure, so the doctors decided to amputate his leg from below the knee. The night before the operation was due, his family fell asleep over the materialistic and emotional pain associated with the amputation. However, the poet and intellectual who understood Ali ibn Abi Talib from the perspective of the philosopher and thinker, knew the value of Ali for Allah Almighty, and his Maroniteism did not prevent him from begging Allah in the name of Ali, and trusting Allah in the answer. His love for Ali ibn Abi Talib led him to beg the imam in a vision whose effects came true, and when they woke up in the next morning, and came to take him to the hospital, they found him standing on his feet, mocking the idea of cutting his leg, saying to everyone who was astonished: “Allah Almighty healed him with the blessing of his prayer, pleading in the name of Ali in a vision that came to him.”
In addition the poet Naguib Jamal al-Din says, quoting from Khalil Farhat’s tongue: “I stayed ten days, my leg, and pointed to the left, raised to the top with a rope, after blood was trapped and held in it, and refused to spin, because of the low or high blood sugar, I don’t know. And the whole body is threatened, not the leg. Then the friends of the doctors gathered around me at home, and the decision was to cut it off. I did not object, but I said: I have a journey Ali, and if you cut it, how can I walk? They did not understand ... except for your friend Georgette - meaning the lady his wife - for she said: For God’s sake, its enough! Leave us now from poetry, because the issue is your life, meaning ours all! I replied: And because it is, this is my stand! He continued: Then they left, and after one day, I disassembled my leg from the gallows, and I got up and did not return afterwards to bed. Dont you see that the imam is the one who ordered me to go, how can I fall behind! Then dont you see that he was as I loved, how I cant be as he loves, especially as he loves! He added: O Abu Faisal, you will not go wild on the road, as long as that companion is on it! Then he wrote his collection "In Ali’s Niche".
Furthermore his daughter Shiraz said, when she was asked about her fathers story with the imam: “It is a story of faith and trust in our Lord, and my father used to say that Allah is for all sects, so that every person walks in integrity with Allah, Allah will answer him and help him and fulfill his requests. If Imam Ali did not live in those days, a life full of obedience to Allah who worships Him, he would not reach to what he had reached.”
From what the poet Farhat said in describing the imam:
If you have all the unseen knowledge .. What is the world of chemistry or algebra?
You promoted the human being, then explored it .. and circled the divinity inch by inch
I was nothing but the two things together .. I was nothing but that extravagant and enriching
Take the sun, as they stopped you. They said, “Back .. That sunset sun returned to afternoon
What astonishing it was, it responded with satisfaction.. Is it not the world and the matter cracks?
And if you ask Gemini who has become their Lord ... she points to your heavens with the ten fingers
You have known and all the people like you have not known .. for you poured out a hurricane in an era
You were the prince of intuition, realizing its inferiority ... and probing for its most concealed issues
You indicated to the Most Merciful, were you other than Him .. In you, the Most Merciful in actions and thought
And in you the power of Allah was revealed as a sign .. just as the pure pearls shone in the light
The ground rose up, and its bases tightened .. However without you, this land has been destroyed
Some take on the poet, writer, and philosopher Khalil Farhat his exaggeration in describing Imam Ali, peace be upon him, and his direct verbal statement of theological attributes of Ali’s personality, which may constitute a problem for the deficient in understanding and comprehension, and enter them into confusion that may affect their beliefs of faith. Perhaps Khalil Farhats theology was the one that gave him this space in terms and connotations, as he was the son of a religious environment, in which he learned the basics of monastic life to Allah, so he selected for his poetry all the expressions that carry the highest faith meanings and carry a person to a sublime and luminous world. Here he compares the personality of Christ and the personality of Imam Ali, peace be upon them, in giving and the supreme ideal of morality, in love and tolerance, and the victory of belief over the whim of the soul, and he says:
And it was said, the Christ of love, was fed up with his love ... and repeated upon the visionaries with a whip and rebuke
He shouted, "Leave my house. Leave me, for .. I am alone, and the house has displaced my country."
My house was built for worship and guidance .. so you turned it for voyeurism and doing immoral actions
And how much he trampled over plains and drifted faces .. And the dowry worshipers drowned with forced labor
You have always widened people with mercy ... so they have rained you with continues prayers
You have risen and you were the most able one ... to conquer it, that which is full of arrogance
And the minds of the people were shortened to conquer their inclination .. so you were blessed with oppression on the soul.
Khalil Farhats friend, the poet Najib Jamal al-Din, explains this aspect as well, saying: “Khalil Farhat allowed himself to enter Ali, a raid that no one dared to travel to. The trip to Ali was tried by many with a fondness for adventure, but they kept hanging out on the contact lines. Why did Khalil Farhat set out from militant positions in Al-Aliya or Al-Alawiya? Perhaps it is an attempt to build a new Arabic person, and this is an educational issue, and he is an educator who is interested in preparing a person capable of confrontation, after all ages have gone bankrupt.”
On the other hand the dwelling of Khalil Farhat in the metaphor of his poetry, especially in describing Ali, makes the reader confused about his matter. Khalil the philosopher did not believe at all in the idea of the Sufi “solutions”, but his poetry is almost exuding it. Whereas Allah Almighty, He is manifested - without a doubt - in His creatures. Undoubtedly, it is a great adventure, to delve into the metaphor to the point of saying: “You showed the Most Merciful, were you other than Him .. In you the Most Merciful was both real and thought!” The poet Najeeb Jamal al-Din says about this:
“A good reader is the one who" sips ", and the aspiration is a term that most people call upon intelligence, and the observation is with the eye of the mind, not the eye of the face. Otherwise, if the reader is deprived of that eye whose pupils are the brain, and he recites a verse: "Whenever their skins mature, we change them into other skins." A sin that reduces all other sins.”
So, Khalil Farhat’s goal in the symbolic dwelling is not exaggeration and arrogance, but rather to accustom the reader to sailing beyond the word and the ostensible meaning, so how if what the described person is Ali. Najib Jamal al-Din says in his defense of Khalil Farhat: “Armstrong stormed the moon, which is a few from the land, but Ali is more difficult than the moon and the sun as well. Wasnt Khalil the one who dealt with that issue? And he tried to subordinate the myth to the charge of personal feeling, and individual conviction? And Ali takes back the sun to perform the obligatory prayer that is what is known about him to spend!”
On the other hand, Khalil Farhat did not stop at symbolic only, for this language is obedient for Ali, and he is the one who obeyed it. So Farhat addressed the general public, referring to this in a direct language in which he demonstrated Ali’s virtues over language, jurisprudence, and grammar. Then without him the language, we would not be able to read now with the comfort that it is now, for the language, in its frank and metaphor, acknowledges the credit for Ali:
I see jurisprudence as a hurricane, pitted doubts ... and when you arose, the dowry obeyed
I see the way in the veins whose paths are lost .. and I said to him to step away, he lost his way without wine.
Likewise, the line was a step in darkness ... and you made the line at the crack of dawn
Likewise, the tolerant language of yours was brightened ... just as the radiation fluttered on dust
It raised its meanings and tightened its zodiac ... How many constellations were opened ny your magic key
It is that the known world, otherwise you would not have grown .. An unknown would not have fled if you had not cleaved
