The Circle Of The Qur'an #2[The Arkaan Series|Book One]

7 |The Marabout's 1000 Profound Steps.[Iqra Wartaqi..(Recite And Ascend..)]

AsSalaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. I hope you're all doing well:D

This is the last but one of the Eid chapters before we go back to normal. Enjoy! :)))

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"Zayn.." Abdul Bâqi murmured, looking at the boy. Zayn too was the youngest amongst them, just as this boy was the youngest amongst their line of competitors, yet still both were very knowledgeable! You could tell, since this boy was a Mureed.
His indifferent expression was probably due to sluggishness from the lack of sleep, Abdul Bâqi noted.

However what made him stand out to Abdul Bâqi, was the faint aura of holiness that seemed to vault him on all sides. It was a strange feeling Abdul Bâqi felt, but it was there.

He must be Isrâ'il. The Number Nine Mureed.. Mika'il said everyone calls him Isra though.. Abdul Bâqi thought in amusement, remembering when Mika'il had briefed him on the Mureeds just after they had finished the Salah. Mika'il had mentioned him, as well as the other four, and had given him an estimation of their levels of erudition, their talents and an assessment of the scores they had earned from challenging the Qur'an quest in previous times.

Even though he had already talked to him previously about the nature of the quest, Mika'il had taken him through it again, such that if you were to ask Abdul Bâqi to recite all that he said from beginning to end, he'd do it offhand. He sighed. That guy was really worrying too much.. even more than he, who was going to bear the consequences if he lost.

"You could never be too prepared." Mika'il had said. He had even gone to the extent of searching for his Baba for help, before the 'Asr salah. However he hadn't found him anywhere. The old man seemed to have disappeared entirely from the surface of earth, and that too, at the time he was most needed.

Why was this old man Zeeshan presenting himself as an unreliable master, and not appearing when he was most needed..? Could he be intentionally doing it to have him go against the Mureeds and prove himself as a worthy Doyen's apprentice..? Abdul Bâqi thought with a somewhat bashful expression on his face, remembering how he shamelessly persuaded the old Sheikh into taking him as an apprentice. Now he really couldn't feel wronged by the old man, even if he wanted to.

So this apprenticeship was not for free eh..?

Three of the nine posts were empty, and all of them just happened to be the very three just before Abdul Bâqi's own, as he stood at the path to the very edge of the nine archway paths. The closest path to him with a fellow competitor was Isra's own, and the one at the farthest end from his was where Prince Reyaz stood, the other three occupied what was in between these two.

As the final preparations were being made for the test to start, Abdul Bâqi turned to look once more at the letters on the keystone of the first solitary archway of his path - his Solitary Gate. They happened to glow a myriad brilliant colours like an iridescent rainbow of gold and silver, reflecting beautifully in the aureate glow of the post meridian sun. He realized that the words might not have just been written in gold and silver lines, but also glittering dusts and precious minerals which might have been added.

His eyes looked yonder, where 199 similar arches, each complete with their inscriptions were waiting for him to decipher. His path up the stairs was going to be filled with a striving and an attempt to decipher all 200 archway inscriptions. They each had disjointed letters which he had to decode into words. These words related to a particular ayah of the Qur'an which he had to unravel. For every ayah he unraveled from the inscriptions, he had one mark awarded. The keystones of each of the 200 archways had their inscriptions, but.. four other voussoirs on each arch of a solitary archway also possessed their own inscriptions!