A certain woman who converted to Sufism - and she belonged to the disgraced Umayyad dynasty (the first Muslim dynasty of caliphs) - came to the queen from the ruling al-Mahdi family, which replaced the Umayyads.
The Queen considered herself a delicate and compassionate woman. Seeing the emaciated figure of a beggar woman at the door, who was an Umayyad princess, dressed in rags, she invited her to enter. Words of consolation were ready to fall from her lips, supported by gifts that could alleviate the naked need of her guest. But as soon as the Umayyad princess said: “I am the daughter of the Umayyad house,” the queen, forgetting about mercy, shouted:
- A woman from the damned Umayyads! You came for alms, forgetting what your relatives did, how they oppressed and mercilessly pushed us around, leaving us nothing but trust in the Lord!
“No,” said the Umayyad princess, “I did not come here in search of compassion, not for forgiveness and not for money.” I came to see whether the al-Mahdi family had learned how to behave from the experience of their predecessors, the ruthless sons of the Umayyads. Or the behavior that you condemn has turned out to be contagious, which will certainly end in the overthrow of those who adopted it.
And the Umayyad princess left and never appeared again.
This story has come to us from the words of Queen al-Mahdi, which means that what happened served to at least partially improve people’s behavior.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru