Al-Khidr

A salted fish lies in a basket beside a rock where the sea meets the sea. Two travellers sleep. The fish stirs, slides free and makes its way into the water, and where it goes the water holds its shape, a tunnel through the sea, as if the ocean had forgotten for a moment how to close. Nobody notices. The young servant sees it and forgets to mention it until the next day, when his master asks for breakfast.

That lapse is how Moses finds al-Khidr. The story sits in the eighteenth chapter of the Qur’an, Surat al-Kahf, verses 60 to 82, and it is one of the strangest passages in the book. Moses sets out with a young attendant and swears he will not stop until he reaches the junction of the two seas, even if he walks for ages. When the lost fish tells them they have overshot the place, they retrace their steps and there they find “a servant from among Our servants”, a man to whom God has given mercy and a knowledge of His own. The Qur’an never names him. The name comes from the commentators and from the hadith.

The collection of al-Bukhari fills in what the Qur’an leaves bare. In one account Moses stands before his people and, asked who is most learned, says that he is. God corrects him: there is a servant at the junction of the two seas who knows more. The attendant is named as Yusha, Joshua, and the fish rides in a basket until it leaps into the sea by a rock. When the two men meet, a small bird lands on the side of a boat and dips its beak into the water, and the stranger remarks that all the knowledge he and Moses hold, measured against God’s, is about as much as that sparrow has taken from the sea. A second hadith explains the name. He was called al-Khadir, the Green One, because he once sat on a barren white patch of ground and it turned green with plants beneath him.

Moses asks to follow and learn. The stranger warns him that he will not have the patience, and sets one condition: ask nothing until I explain it. They board a boat, and the stranger knocks a hole in it. Moses objects that he will drown the passengers. Further on they meet a boy, and the stranger kills him. Moses protests that he has taken an innocent life. They come to a town whose people refuse them food, and there the stranger finds a wall about to fall down and rebuilds it for nothing. Moses, hungry and exasperated, says he could at least have charged for the work. That is the third question, and it ends the partnership.

Before they part the stranger explains. The boat belonged to poor men who worked the sea, and a king ahead was seizing every sound vessel; a damaged one would be left alone. The boy’s parents were believers, and he would have burdened them with rebellion and unbelief, so God would give them a better son in his place. Under the wall lay a treasure belonging to two orphan boys whose father had been a righteous man, and the wall had to stand until they were grown. None of it, he says, was done on his own account. The passage offers no comfort beyond that. It simply insists that what looks like cruelty may be mercy seen from the wrong side.

Around this unnamed figure a vast body of legend grew. The Iranian tradition, surveyed by Anna Krasnowolska in the Encyclopaedia Iranica, joins him to the Alexander romance. In the Greek romance attributed to Pseudo-Callisthenes, a cook washes a salted fish in a spring, watches it come alive, and so gains immortality. In Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and Nizami’s Eskandar-nameh, Khezr leads Alexander into the Land of Darkness in search of the Water of Life. The king loses the way. Khezr finds the spring, drinks, and never dies. Popular tradition gave him the name Balya ibn Malkan, and some accounts paired him with the prophet Elijah, Ilyas, the two sharing the care of land and sea. In Syria he was identified with Saint George.

Deathlessness is his defining power, and it comes with a restlessness. He cannot be summoned, only met. The lost traveller on a dark road, the pilgrim without water, the dying man in the desert: these are the people to whom he appears, in the form of an old man, a beggar or a dervish in green, and whom he sets right before disappearing. For the mystic poet Rumi the meeting with Moses became the model of disciple and master, the student who must surrender his judgement to a guide who sees further. Sufi brotherhoods, calligraphers, potters and water-carriers counted him as their patron elder. His shrines in Iran and Central Asia stand at springs, underground pools, islands and footprint stones, places where water comes up or land meets sea.

The green follows him everywhere. In Turkey and North Macedonia the spring festival of Hıdrellez, held on 6 May and inscribed by UNESCO in 2017, takes its name from Hızır and Ilyas, remembered there as protectors of earth and water. In Bengal, as the historian Rila Mukherjee has described, he is Khwaja Khizr, the guide of those who lose their way, who arrives riding a giant fish. On the last Thursday of the month of Bhadra, at the end of the monsoon, people set rafts of plantain on the river in his honour. At Murshidabad the nawab Murshid Quli Khan, who ruled from 1704 to 1727, made the rite a state pageant, with gold lamps from the court and paper boats from everyone else drifting out on the dark water under fireworks.

His limits are written into the Qur’anic story itself. Al-Khidr acts, but not of himself; every blow he strikes is an errand. He can explain his deeds only after they are done, and he cannot give his knowledge to anyone unable to wait for it. Even Moses fails the test. Al-Bukhari’s account closes with the Prophet saying he wished Moses had held his tongue a little longer, so that God might have told more of their story.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is al-Khidr in Islam?

Al-Khidr is the servant of God whom Moses meets at the junction of the two seas in Surat al-Kahf, Qur’an 18:60 to 82. The Qur’an describes him as a man given mercy and special knowledge by God but does not name him. The name al-Khidr comes from the hadith and the commentators.

Why is al-Khidr called the Green One?

According to a hadith in the collection of al-Bukhari, he was called al-Khadir, the Green One, because he sat on a barren white piece of ground and it turned green with plants beneath him. Later tradition describes him appearing to people dressed in green.

What did al-Khidr do in the story with Moses?

Al-Khidr holed a boat, killed a boy and rebuilt a crumbling wall in a town that refused them food, while Moses objected each time. He then explained that the damage saved the boat from a king seizing ships, that the boy would have led his believing parents into unbelief, and that the wall protected treasure belonging to two orphans. He said he did none of it on his own account.

Is al-Khidr immortal?

Yes, in later Islamic and Persian tradition al-Khidr is immortal. In Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and Nizami’s Eskandar-nameh he guides Alexander through the Land of Darkness to the Water of Life, drinks from it while Alexander fails to reach it, and never dies.

How is al-Khidr celebrated today?

Al-Khidr is honoured in the spring festival of Hıdrellez on 6 May in Turkey and North Macedonia, named after Hızır and Ilyas and inscribed by UNESCO in 2017. In Bengal he is Khwaja Khizr, honoured at the end of the monsoon by setting rafts and lamps on the river, a rite made into a state pageant at Murshidabad in the early eighteenth century.

Related Entries

Moses, Dhul-Qarnayn, Al Rakim, Gabriel, Buraq (Burak), Saint George, Bonbibi, Sraosha, Soma, Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim