Revisiting My First Tadabbur Notes

I have added two more surahs: Al-Fatihah and Al-Quraysh.

I chose Al-Fatihah because it was among the first surahs I studied for tadabbur. It had been a long time since I last read my notes. As I started flipping through them, I realised just how much I had written,one ayat alone could have up to five pages of notes.

I also realised something else, my old notes were so messy.

During my early days of learning tadabbur, I wrote only for the sake of understanding what I was learning at that moment. I did not write with the intention of preserving it for the future. As I have told you before, I love to write while learning. At that time, I could remember almost every detail mentioned by the ustaz, so I did not feel the need to jot down everything.

But after studying more than 30 other surahs over almost two to three years, much of that detail was lost from my memory.

Then I remembered that I had once shared some of my notes online. I searched for them and, Alhamdulillah, I found them. The online notes were much more detailed, so I decided to compile them together with my handwritten notes. I sorted everything, cross-checked the surah and ayat references, and made sure each point flowed properly and fell under the right category.

It took me one full day to complete Al-Fatihah. I became demotivated halfway through, especially when I looked at how messy my original notes were. But Alhamdulillah, I managed to sort everything out.

Looking back, even if this page does not benefit anyone else, it has surely benefited me. I spent two days of my weekend revising the surahs I had previously studied for tadabbur and rediscovering lessons that I had forgotten.

I also chose Al-Fatihah because I want everyone to benefit from understanding this surah. We recite it at least 17 times every day in our five obligatory prayers. And did you know that as we recite Al-Fatihah, Allah has a specific response to what His servant recites? This is mentioned in a hadith narrated in Sahih Muslim 395a. Understanding this changes Al-Fatihah from something we simply repeat into a personal conversation between us and Allah.

The second surah I added was Al-Quraysh. I chose it for a much simpler reason: my notes from the later years were already more organised, and Al-Quraysh is a relatively short and straightforward surah to study. I had also captured most of what the ustaz mentioned during the class.

By then, even my handwriting had become neater because my intention had changed. I was no longer writing only to understand the lesson at that moment. I was writing because I wanted the notes to become a reference that I could return to in the future, instead of simply jotting things down and scratching all over the paper.

And there goes my weekend, scratching my head while sorting out my own messy notes.

I know the notes, especially for Al-Fatihah, are quite long. But I really hope you will take some time to read through them slowly. I sincerely hope that what I have learned and shared here will benefit all of us, help us understand the surah we recite every day, and bring us closer to Allah.

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