The third example: "I find the breath of the Most Merciful from the direction of Yemen."

The Shaykh :"The third example:

I find the breath of the Most Merciful from the direction of Yemen

إني أجد نفس الرحمن من قبل اليمن

" The third example is from where? From the examples we will present, but we started with this one because al-Ghazali transmitted it from Imam Ahmad. "The third example:

I find the breath of the Most Merciful from the direction of Yemen

إني أجد نفس الرحمن من قبل اليمن

" The answer is: This hadith was narrated by Imam Ahmad in al-Musnad from the hadith of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him). He said: The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . "He said in *Majma' al-Zawa'id*: 'Its narrators are the narrators of the authentic collections, except Shabib, and he is trustworthy.' I said: He also said in *al-Taqrib* that Shabib is trustworthy from the third generation, and al-Bukhari narrated something similar in *al-Tarikh al-Kabir*."
So it is not in the two Sahihs, nor in either of them alone, but there is no harm in it. However, how do we respond to it?
"This hadith is to be taken at its apparent meaning, and 'nafs' in it is a verbal noun from the root n-f-s, meaning to relieve, just as faraj is a verbal noun from f-r-j, meaning to relieve." Praise be to Allah. 'Nafs' here means relief, not the air that comes out of the lungs. Is it correct that 'nafs' can mean relief? We say yes. Listen: the verb is faraja, the present tense is yafraj, the verbal noun is tafrij, and the noun is faraj. The verb is nafa, the present tense is yunfis, the verbal noun is tanfis, and the noun is nafs. So, does 'nafs' mean relief? Yes. He said: There is no god but Allah. "This is what the linguists said, as in *al-Nihayah*, *al-Qamus*, and *Miqyas al-Lughah*. He said in *Miqyas al-Lughah*: 'Nafs is anything by which relief is granted to one in distress.'" From this comes the word nafsaa, so the letters nun, fa, and sin indicate relief and the removal of distress. "Thus, the meaning of the hadith is that the relief of Allah the Exalted for the believers comes from the people of Yemen. Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) said: 'These are the ones who fought the people of apostasy and conquered the cities, and through them the Most Merciful relieves the believers of their distress.' End of quote, page 398, volume 6, *Majmu' Fatawa of Shaykh al-Islam*, by Ibn Qasim."
Praise be to Allah. So there is no problem now. Did we turn the hadith away from its apparent meaning? No, but we interpreted it to a meaning it can bear. As for the meaning that a claimant might assert is the apparent one, that is not befitting of Allah Mighty and Majestic. It is not befitting because Allah the Exalted encompasses everything. And it does not come from one direction, even if we assume it does. So we say there is a denial and an acceptance. The denial is that we say this hadith does not indicate what you imagined, namely that the meaning of 'nafs' is the air coming out of the lungs. It does not indicate that at all. As for the acceptance, we say: Yes, it is not an acceptance in reality, but we say the meaning of 'nafs' is what? Relief. It is a verbal noun, a verbal noun. And we brought a witness from the Arabic language: faraj, yafraj, tafrij, and what? And faraj.