Make Yourself Eligible, Don’t Make Demands

the king and his courtiers, speaking without any fear. This greatly angered Yazdgird. He was furious they should talk to him like that. Were it not for the custom that ambassadors were not to be killed, he would definitely have killed them. He told the Muslims to go back and tell their commander that he would be sending an army that would completely crush them. Saying this, Yazdgird ordered his servants to bring a basket filled with mud. When the basket was brought before him, he asked the Muslim delegation, “Who is the most noble person among you?” The members of the delegation kept silent. After a while, one among them, Asim ibn Amr, stepped forward and said that he was the most noble of the group. When Yazdgird asked the other members of the delegation, they testified to Asim’s statement. Yazdgird then ordered that the basket be put on Asim’s head and that he be led out of the court and chased away, out of the limits of Yazdgird’s capital. And so, the basket of mud was placed on Asim’s head and he was taken out of the king’s palace. He then rushed to Qadisiyya, where Sa‘ad ibn Abi Waqqas was waiting. When he got there, he related what had happened to him. Sa‘ad did not get agitated in the least when he learned what had happened. He took it in a positive sense. “Be happy”, he said, because, he explained, “God had given us the keys to their sovereignty.” This was the sort of lofty thinking that made the Arabs, despite having been considered a people of no consequence, victorious over an immensely powerful empire. These people, who were thought to be of no worth at all in history, charted a new history through their character and behaviour. The system according to which this world functions has been made in such a way that here, every day is followed by night. Here, flowers come along with thorns. There is not a single person in this world who does not face some or other unfavourable condition or situation at some time in her