Moses and Al-khidre

During the forty years spent by the Israeli people in the wilderness, one of Moses’ folks came and asked him: “Who is the most learned man in the world?”

“It is me,” was Moses’ answer to the question. He was blamed by Allah for such an answer, and for not attributing his attained knowledge to the Favor of the Lord God. “There is a Slave of Mine, living at the meeting-point of the two seas, who is much learned than you,” Allah informed His prophet. Moses asked the Lord God how to determine the position of the two seas meeting-point, and Allah told him: “You should take with you a fish for food; put the fish into a bag; where you miraculously lost the fish, thence the meeting-point of the two seas.”

“I will never stop traveling until I reach the meeting-point of the two seas, even if I would be traveling for centuries,” said Moses to his servant boy in his determination to meet Al-khidre, the man of much knowledge than him.

The servant boy made the necessary arrangements for such a journey of an unknown time and distance; he took an adequate provision of food, with the fish in Moses’ bag, and then they together set out. For many days they were walking without any portent of miracle to occur, and at a certain point Moses became so weary, and so he stopped for a respite:

“Get for us our luncheon ready;” said Moses to his servant boy, “we have get weariness of our traveling.”

“Have not you seen, when we had retreated to that rock for a respite,” remarked the servant, with such alarmed countenance, to prophet Moses, “I had forgot the fish, and nothing indeed had made me forget to inform you but the Satan; and it miraculously made its way into the sea!”

“That is what we have set out for,” commented on the venerable prophet, and, thereupon, they returned back, retracing their steps.

When they reached the place, they found an aged man, whom Moses asked his permission to be, for a time, his accompanying person on terms of teaching him of what he was taught through Allah. The sage man never refused, but he remarked: “You would never be patient with me!”

“You shall find me patient, God willing, and I will never disobey an order of you,” Moses reply came back.

“Then,” said the sage, “if you want to accompany me, do not ask me about anything until I declare it to you.”

Moses accepted, and the journey was begun. They took off together on the board of a ship, whose owners, being acquainted with Al-Khidre, refused to be paid for the service. When they disembarked, and the ship owners were absent, Al-khidre made a hole in the ship’s hull by an adze!

“Have you pierced it to drown its owners?” retorted Moses, “you have done a wrong act indeed.”

“Have not I told you that you would never be patient with me?” came, in calm, the man’s reply.

Moses was alarmed when he indicated that he broke his promise to the man, and asked his pardon for being forgetful. The sage excused him, and they went on traveling. Many days later, while they were walking in the streets of some town, the travelers came up with some boys who were playing together. Al-Khidre caught hold of one boy, and, to Moses’ astonishment, killed him!

“Did you kill a purified soul for no reason?” addressed Moses, in rage, his venerable companion. “You have done an evil act indeed.” And in the same calmness, and words, came the sage’s reply.

Feeling some discomfiture within him, Moses gave the man the right to end this accompaniment on the next failure of being impatient with him. “You have reached a point of inexcusability with me,” Moses admitted. They started off. On reaching a village, whose people refused to make them their guests, Al-Khidre and Moses found a wall that neared to falling down. The sage stopped to set to rebuild the falling wall, and duly executed the mission. Moses commented on: “Had you wished to be paid, you would have attained that.”

“That’s the point of our separation, Moses,” said Al-Khidre, in his calm way, to his impatient companion. “I shall tell you about what you could not be patient of. As to the ship, it was in the possession of some poor people who are working at sea, and behind them there was a king who captures by force every appropriate ship; as for the boy, he was the son of two faithful parents, and fearing that he would cause much troubles to them through his evil acts, Allah wanted to compensate them with a pious boy instead; while the wall was in the ownership of two orphan lads of the town, and there is a treasure beneath it: and as their father was a good man, Allah wanted that the treasure be kept for them till they grow up. All that was a Bless from my Lord God, and I have not done it of my accord―that’s what you could not help bear it.”

The journey thus was ended, and Al-Khidre and Moses returned back to the place where they first met. While the two magnificent men were seated on the seashore, and before everyone of them went his way, a sparrow came into their sight and squeezed from the sea a drop of water by its beak, thereat Al-Khidre remarked on: “The amount of my lore and yours and that of the creatures, in comparison to the Lore of Allah, is like what the bird has attained by dipping its beak into the sea!”