The Prophet’s Simple Life

There is a famous Hadith by Umar ibn Al-Khattab (RA). He mentions, he entered the mosque in Madina when the Prophet (peace be upon him) was lying down on his small compartment.

The compartment only had a small jug of water and a bed for him to lie down. The bed was not made out of leaves of the date palm, rather it was made out of the branches of the date palm.

When Umar comes in, the Prophet sits up to greet him and Umar notices that the fiber or the branch of the date palm has left a mark on the Prophet’s back.

This is an incident of the 7th or 8th year of Islamic calendar, by this time the Prophet had already become the undisputed leader of a large chunk of Arabia.

So Umar could not control himself and began to cry, he said,

O Messenger of Allah, how can we allow you to live like this? Look at the kings of Roman, Persia. Look at how they live. Surely O Messenger of Allah, you deserve better.

Instead of saying maybe you are right or I will think about it, the Prophet rather got irritated at him. The Prophet said,

O Umar, is this why we are here for? O Umar, aren’t you happy that they have this ‘Dunya’ (this life) and we have the ‘Akhira’ (the afterlife)?

So the Prophet rebuked Umar by saying I am not here for this, I am not even thinking about this. Such was the simple life of the Prophet despite having all the power to afford a lavish lifestyle.