‘Blessed are the Strangers (ghurabāʾ)’: An Apocalyptic Hadith on the Virtues of Loneliness, Sadness and Exile

The Prophet told his companions: “Islam began strange, and will [one day] return to being strange—just as it began—so blessed are the strangers (á¹­Å«bÄ li-l-ghurabÄʾ).†Other hadiths further define this idea of estrangement, strengthening the hadith’s apocalyptic tone. Today, many followers of militant groups such as ISIS call themselves ghurabÄʾ, or strangers, but how did pre-modern Muslims understand this concept? And which networks of transmitters were responsible for the dissemination of the texts? This chapter surveys interpretations of the hadith of al-ghurabÄʾ in a range of texts from the Early and Middle Islamic periods (tenth–fourteenth centuries CE), including encyclopedic hadith commentaries, fatwa collections, and independent treatises such as KitÄb al-ghurabÄʾ by AbÅ« Bakr al-Ä€jurrÄ« (d. 360/971) and Kashf al-kurba bi-waá¹£f ḥÄl ahl al-ghurba by Ibn Rajab al-ḤanbalÄ« (d. 795/1393).