Sa’i: Safa, The Beginning of Love

Sa’i

Safa: The Beginning of Love

The first step is Safa…
But every beginning is hidden in the bosom of an end.
And every beginning burns with the spark of a love.
Safa is not an ordinary hill.
What begins there ascends to the heavens as a prayer.
And that prayer flowed from a mother’s heart to the heart of the ummah;
the prayer of Hajar, blended with patience…

Safa is the first move of a heart thirsty for reunion with the Most Merciful.
There, love begins—but this love is not toward a body; it is a turning toward a Power, a Mercy.
In a mother’s helplessness, surrender becomes love.
In a servant’s search, trust becomes a return to the Lord.

"Pause at Safa, O traveler!
Listen to the quiet within you,
For this hill is not just stone, but a prostration turned to the sky…"

The people of Sufism say: Safa is the heart’s first utterance of “Allah.”
The feet have not yet walked, but the heart has already bowed.
Safa is the name of the purest orientation within us.
There, the servant resolves in his heart to walk toward his Lord.
A wordless plea, a sightless search, and a beginning washed with tears…

Thus, Safa is the first name of solitude, the first echo of the search, and the first gate of love.
Marwah; the end of surrender…
The flame of the heart that begins at Safa turns into the glow of patience at Marwah.
The steps have multiplied, but the heart has grown lighter.
The depth of solitude has filled with acceptance, and the search has evolved into finding.

Marwah is the final station of a soul that has surrendered.
There is no more searching there; there is only letting go—
of oneself, of one’s troubles, even of one’s prayer…

"Pause at Marwah and listen…
The silence of Hajar will quiet the noise within you.
The heart that struggled at Safa finds tranquility at Marwah.
For love is not complete only in reaching, but in surrendering too."

In Sufism, they say: Marwah is where mortality is realized.
When you arrive there, you understand:
You neither found the water nor raised your prayer—
you only walked, and Mercy completed the rest…

Marwah is not the gate to reaching God but the shore of letting go into God.
There, the ego falls, and the essence remains.
There, it is not the eyes but the heart that sees…

"O Traveler!
Ignite at Safa, let go at Marwah!
For love requires knowing not only how to begin, but also how to end."

Every Sa’i is a state.
Sa’i is not just steps.
It is a walk woven with the zikr of the heart.
Each departure becomes a “Ya Rab!”
Each return becomes a “Ya Sabur!”

From Safa to Marwah, from Marwah to Safa…
While the body moves, the heart transitions from one state to another.
In the first step, there is doubt; in the second, hope; in the third, supplication;
in the fourth, trust; in the sixth, love; in the seventh, tranquility…

"Each step is a zikr, each step is a cleansing.
Each departure is a renunciation, each return is a surrender."

It is not merely the body that walks in Sa’i;
it is the ego that walks—
with its impure desires, fleeting passions, weary dreams of self…
But with each step, the inside becomes a little purer…
With each step, less of “I” remains, and more of “You” echoes in the heart…

"To go seven times is to pass through seven veils.
Each veil is a rung of the self, and at each rung one ‘I’ diminishes.
In the Sufi journey, Sa’i is the symbol of Sayr-u Suluk—
the servant’s journey back to his Lord…
Whatever exists in the inner world is reflected outward;
whatever happens outwardly finds an echo within…
And in the end, you understand: Sa’i does not end…
Like tawaf around the Kaaba, life itself is a Sa’i.
A weary heart moving between two hills is someday born at Safa, someday rests at Marwah…"

The loneliness of Hajar became the hope of the ummah…
Hajar… A mother…
But not just a mother; a secret woven from patience, a peak knitted from surrender…
Left in the desert after Abraham, a woman…
No shade, no water, no sound…
But she did not fall silent.
Perhaps alone, yet she spoke to the sky with her heart…

"O my Lord!
If You left me here,
Then You are also with me…"

Such was the loneliness of Hajar—
outwardly silent, inwardly crying out…
And the hope born from that plea became a light in the breast of the ummah.

With each step, a call rises:
"Not water, but You suffice for me!"
And that step sanctified the space between Safa and Marwah;
turning it from an ordinary desert valley into a sacred path of walking.

According to the people of Sufism,
the cry of Hajar is the purest state of the heart.
For in it there is no rebellion, but complete surrender.
"Hajar did not speak, but prayed with her state…
And her state had more impact in the sight of Mercy than words…"

In that solitude lay the existence of the ummah.
If not for Hajar, there would be no Sa’i…
If not for Sa’i, how could we walk these steps of love?

That is why Hajar’s solitude became the hope of a nation…
And now, with each of our walks, we join her prayer.
Our steps bear witness to her patience…

Dr. Özer Akpınar
Researcher-Historian