He waited eighty-six years for a son. And then, almost as soon as the boy was born, Allah told Ibrahim, peace be upon him, to take the mother and the child, carry them across the desert, set them down in a valley with no water, no shade, and no people, and walk away. Two days of food. That was all they had.
This is day twelve, and it is the strangest test yet: not a fire, not an idol, not a king, but an instruction that made no sense at all. What Ibrahim did with it, and what his wife Hajar did in that empty valley, the whole world still copies, every single year. You will copy it too, the day you go.
The man who never lost hope
قَالَ وَمَن يَقْنَطُ مِن رَّحْمَةِ رَبِّهِۦٓ إِلَّا ٱلضَّآلُّونَ
“He said, "And who despairs of the mercy of his Lord except for those astray?"”
Surah al-Hijr 15:56 Read 15:56 with tafsir
Years had passed in the land of Sham, and Ibrahim, peace be upon him, had everything except the one thing he asked Allah for night after night: a child, pure, who would surrender to Allah the way he had surrendered. The du'a was not a habit he muttered. He meant every word of it. And still the years went by with no answer.
He never gave up. Mufti Menk lingers here on something the Qur'an puts in Ibrahim's own mouth: who could ever despair of the mercy of his Lord, except a person who has lost his way entirely? To lose hope in Allah is to misunderstand Allah. So Ibrahim kept asking. His wife Sarah, who could not bear children, gave him Hajar in marriage, and when Ibrahim was eighty-six years old, after all those years, Allah gave him Ismail. The lesson lands before the story even begins: sometimes Allah withholds a thing so that you keep turning back to Him for it, and sometimes He is saving you from something you thought was good. Never read His silence as His refusal.
Leave them, and go
Then came the command that breaks the human heart. Take this wife and this child, Allah told him, and travel until you reach a certain place. He walked them all the way to a valley that was nothing but soil and burning heat, no crop, no spring, no living thing. It was the place we now call Makkah. And there the instruction came again: leave them here, and go.
There are many stories told about why Ibrahim left, and here Mufti Menk is careful, because this is exactly the kind of detail where the discipline matters. Most of those stories reach us from the People of the Book, who, after rejecting the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, had reason to dim the honour of his lineage. So the version where Sarah was simply jealous and demanded they be sent away is an Israili report: we neither build our faith on it nor go out of our way to deny it. What we hold with certainty is the thing the Qur'an makes plain. This was not a family quarrel. This was a command from Allah, and Ibrahim obeyed it because of where it came from, not because it made sense to him.
That is the whole secret of the man. He did not weigh the instruction against his own logic. The source was Allah, and that was enough. Mufti Menk draws the contrast straight at us: our own instructions come labelled, this is forbidden, this is commanded, and still we stand there asking why, why this, why that. Ibrahim heard a command that tore at everything in him, and he submitted, because a friend of Allah trusts Allah past the edge of his own understanding.
Has Allah commanded you to do this?
He set them down with their day or two of food and started walking away, and did not look back. Hajar, peace be upon her, called after him. Where are you going? What is happening to us? He gave no answer. He just kept walking. And then she understood, the way only a believer understands, that there was only one thing in the world that could make a man like Ibrahim do this. So she changed the question. "Has Allah commanded you to do this?"
Now he turned, and he said yes. And the moment she heard it, she stopped asking. "Then He will not abandon us." She let him go. Look closely at what just happened, because Mufti Menk does not want you to miss it: the test was never Ibrahim's alone. Hajar passed the same exam, in the same instant, with a baby on her hip and a desert closing in around her. The strength of his surrender was matched by the strength of her trust. She did not need to see the rescue to believe it was coming.
The du'a he left in the valley
وَإِذْ قَالَ إِبْرَٰهِيمُ رَبِّ ٱجْعَلْ هَٰذَا ٱلْبَلَدَ ءَامِنًا وَٱجْنُبْنِى وَبَنِىَّ أَن نَّعْبُدَ ٱلْأَصْنَامَ
“And [mention, O Muhammad], when Abraham said, "My Lord, make this city [i.e., Makkah] secure and keep me and my sons away from worshipping idols.”
Surah Ibrahim 14:35 Read 14:35 with tafsir
رَّبَّنَآ إِنِّىٓ أَسْكَنتُ مِن ذُرِّيَّتِى بِوَادٍ غَيْرِ ذِى زَرْعٍ عِندَ بَيْتِكَ ٱلْمُحَرَّمِ رَبَّنَا لِيُقِيمُوا۟ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ فَٱجْعَلْ أَفْـِٔدَةً مِّنَ ٱلنَّاسِ تَهْوِىٓ إِلَيْهِمْ وَٱرْزُقْهُم مِّنَ ٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَشْكُرُونَ
“Our Lord, I have settled some of my descendants in an uncultivated valley near Your sacred House, our Lord, that they may establish prayer. So make hearts among the people incline toward them and provide for them from the fruits that they might be grateful.”
Surah Ibrahim 14:37 Read 14:37 with tafsir
As he walked, he prayed. And Allah kept the prayer for us in the Qur'an, in the surah that carries Ibrahim's own name. He asked first for the valley itself: my Lord, make this city secure, and keep me and my children far from ever worshipping idols. Then he named exactly what he had just done and why: our Lord, I have settled some of my offspring in a valley with no crops, beside Your sacred House, so that they will establish the prayer. He left them there for worship. That was the reason. Not abandonment, but consecration.
Then he asked Allah for two things, and Mufti Menk says watch how completely Allah answers when Allah gives. First: make the hearts of people incline toward them. Stand at that spot today and you are crushed in a sea of millions who came from every corner of the earth, and still it is not enough room, and still they are building outward, and still the hearts keep coming. Is there a single one of us whose heart does not lean toward Makkah, who would not go right now if we could? That pull is this du'a, answered. Second: provide them with fruits. In a valley where nothing grew, the produce of the whole world now arrives, the best of it, carried in and traded and shared by people from every land. He asked for it standing in bare sand. Allah granted all of it.
Hajar's run, and the water that came
The food ran out. The water ran out. Everything dried up, and a mother sat in an empty valley with a baby who needed to drink. So she did not just sit and pray. She climbed the small hill of Safa and scanned the horizon: any sign, any movement, any caravan, anyone. Nothing. She came down, and at the bottom of the valley she ran, because the low ground hid the far hill from view and she did not want to miss a soul who might pass while she was down there. She climbed Marwah on the other side and looked again. Nothing. Back and forth she went, up Safa and down, up Marwah and down, calling on Allah the whole way, certain He would not let her down. Seven times.
And then she heard a sound, and turned, and by the baby Ismail there was water gushing from the ground where a moment before there had been only sand. She rushed to it and began to bank the sand around it with her hands to hold it, saying to it in her tongue, zam zam, stop, stop, because she wanted to gather it and keep it. That is the well we call Zamzam. Here Mufti Menk pauses on something striking: of all the contested histories in these stories, the origin of this well has no rival account at all. There is one narration, and no one has ever produced another. It is the most certain history there is. And it is still flowing, this very moment, thousands of gallons an hour, drunk by millions across the earth, from that exact spot where a mother trusted Allah in a place with nothing in it.
Now feel the weight of what she did. When you go for Hajj or Umrah, you walk between Safa and Marwah seven times, hurrying through the low stretch exactly where she hurried. That rite has a name, the sa'i, and it is not a symbol someone invented. It is Hajar's run, kept alive in the body of every pilgrim who ever came, so that none of us forgets that effort is part of trust. She did not wait for the ceiling to crack and gold to fall. She made tawakkul and she moved her feet, and Allah met her there. Mufti Menk says it plainly: there is no point sitting at home expecting provision to rain down while you do nothing. Tie your camel. Then trust.
The tribe that asked permission
Birds began to circle the new water, and birds in open desert mean one thing to anyone who travels it: water is near. A caravan of the tribe of Jurhum, passing at a distance, saw birds where birds had no business being, and sent someone to look. He found a woman and a baby beside a spring that, in that desert, simply does not happen. They came, and they understood it was a miracle.
And notice how Mufti Menk reads their character, because it is easy to miss. They could have driven a lone woman and her infant off and seized the water by force. They could have enslaved them and taken it. Instead they asked her permission to settle. That request told her everything: these were honourable, disciplined people. She agreed, on one condition, that the water remained hers, theirs only to drink from, not to own. And to this day Zamzam is not sold; it belongs to no one and is for everyone, the water of the Ummah of Muhammad ﷺ. Jurhum stayed, and they loved the boy, and as Ismail grew they taught him their pure Arabic and their manners, while his father came and went, watching the family Allah had planted in the empty valley grow into the beginning of a people. From this child would come the Arabs, and from this line, in time, would come the final Prophet ﷺ himself.
Why Allah called him His friend
وَمَنْ أَحْسَنُ دِينًا مِّمَّنْ أَسْلَمَ وَجْهَهُۥ لِلَّهِ وَهُوَ مُحْسِنٌ وَٱتَّبَعَ مِلَّةَ إِبْرَٰهِيمَ حَنِيفًا ۗ وَٱتَّخَذَ ٱللَّهُ إِبْرَٰهِيمَ خَلِيلًا
“And who is better in religion than one who submits himself to Allah while being a doer of good and follows the religion of Abraham, inclining toward truth? And Allah took Abraham as an intimate friend.”
Surah an-Nisa 4:125 Read 4:125 with tafsir
Pull back and look at the whole of it. Told to leave his land, he left. Told to leave his family in a valley with nothing, he left them. And the test was not finished: there would come a night when he was told in a dream to sacrifice this very son, and he would set out to do even that, and the boy would answer, father, do as you have been commanded, you will find me patient. The sacrifice, and the day father and son raised the walls of the Ka'bah together, belong to tomorrow's story. But the thread is already clear tonight. Every time Allah said surrender, Ibrahim surrendered, without flinching, because he knew the One who was speaking.
That is why Allah gave him a title He gave to no one else in quite this way. Mufti Menk reads it from the verse: Allah took Ibrahim as a khalil, an intimate friend. He did not earn that by debating idols or surviving the fire alone. He earned it here, in the small invisible obediences with no audience, leaving a wife and a baby in a desert because Allah said so. The Qur'an then turns and tells us to follow his way, and tells the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ himself to follow the path of his father Ibrahim in pure, undivided worship. The friendship was offered for the same reason it is always offered: he gave Allah everything, and kept nothing back.