Al-Kawthar (the river of abundant good)

Al-kawthar means abundant good in the lexicon, as the presenter of Fi rihab al-hadith al-qudsi says, and when God describes His gift as abundant its good is beyond what people can imagine; the Prophet described it as a river God prepared for him in the Garden. ^{1 2} In its thirteenth episode the programme explains the hadith of the revelation of Surat al-Kawthar (al-Kawthar 1) after the Prophet dozed and then raised his head smiling, which the presenter says al-Nasa'i records from Anas ibn Malik (may God be pleased with him). ^{3 4} The presenter calls it the greatest of the rivers of the Garden, the one this hadith mentions. ⁵

Al-Sha'rawi says that the deniers claimed they were rid of Muhammad, since his line was cut off and he would soon die, and the answer came that he is connected in the Garden. ⁶ He holds that had his son Ibrahim lived he would have been a support for him in this world, so God gave him al-Kawthar as a support in the Hereafter. ⁶ He says that what happened called for thanks: for the child, because he was taken from the world early, and for the Prophet, because he was given better than what was taken. ⁷ He explains the command to pray in the sura as staying connected to the Lord who gave, and the command to sacrifice as a charity by which one gives thanks for the gift. ⁸ He says that al-abtar is the one cut off from good, and that it is the Prophet's hater, not the Prophet, though they claimed his son's death had made him so. ⁹

He holds that al-Kawthar is first understood in general as abundant good, and that the Prophet then specified it as a river in the Garden with vessels more numerous than the stars, because a person knows a thing first in general and then in detail. ¹⁰ He says that those turned away from the Basin are thought by the Prophet to be of his guided community, but he does not know what they introduced after him. ¹¹

Al-Sha'rawi says that God did not give us the "form" of the Garden, because language names only what we know the reality of, and the realities of the Garden are unknown, so He gave us a "likeness" (mathal). ¹² He holds that in describing the rivers of the Garden in Muhammad 15 God names the blessing and strips from it what spoils it: its water does not change as water changes here; its wine gives its drinker pleasure, while worldly wine has none; its honey is pure, while worldly honey is mixed with wax, leaves and pebbles; and its milk does not change in taste, whereas the bane of milk for the Arabs was that it changed when stored for travel. ^{13 14 15} He counts it a marvel that milk, which here comes drop by drop, flows there in rivers, and that the rivers of honey, milk and wine do not mix. ¹⁶

The presenter relates from Anas that the Prophet saw al-Kawthar as a river with domes of pearl on its banks and soil of musk, and from al-Tirmidhi, from Ibn Umar, a description of its banks as gold and its bed as pearl and ruby. ^{2 17} He asks how it can be whiter than milk and sweeter than honey when we know nothing whiter or sweeter, and answers with another hadith qudsi on the bliss God has prepared for His righteous servants, beyond what any sight, hearing or human imagination has reached. ^{18 19} He contrasts worldly rivers, which spring from mountains and pour into seas, with the rivers of the Garden, which he says spring from seas and do not pour into them, relying on a hadith in Ahmad's Musnad. ²⁰ (needs_source: no chain or grading is given.)