Friends of the Prophet, meaning the great companions.
Though there are many, four are caliphs among them.
Whoever denies one of these four,
Ghalib, he is certainly not a Muslim.
This quatrain expresses a strong Sunni Islamic theological perspective, asserting the acceptance of all four Rashidun Caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali) as fundamental to one's Muslim identity. The poem suggests that denying any one of these caliphs would render one outside the fold of Islam, and attributes this viewpoint to the celebrated Urdu poet Ghalib.
faith & the divine · wit & rebuke