18.79
Abbas - Tanwîr al-Miqbâs min Tafsîr Ibn ‘Abbâs
(As for the ship) in which I made a hole, (it belonged to poor people working on the river) transporting people across the river, (and I wished to mar it) I wished to damage it, (for there was a king) called Jalandi (behind them) ahead of them (who is taking every ship by force) and this is why I damaged it.
As for the ship it belonged to poor people ten in number who earned a living on the sea with it leasing it to others as a way of gaining a living; and I wanted to make it defective for behind them whenever they returned — or meaning before them now — was a king a disbeliever seizing every ship that was usable by force ghasban is in the accusative as a verbal noun containing an explanation of the nature of such ‘seizure’.
As for the ship, it belonged to poor people, in the sea of primordial matter, that is [it belonged to] the corporeal faculties such as the external sensoria and the natural vegetative faculties. He referred to these [faculties] as masākīn ('poor') because of their constant stillness (sukūn) and their adhering to the dust of the body and their ineffectualness in contravening the heart during wayfaring and conquering it, as with all of the animal faculties. It is related that these [poor] were ten brothers, five of whom were chronically ill with the other five working at sea, which is itself an allusion to the [five] external sensoria and the internal ones; and I wanted to make it defective, by means of spiritual disciplining lest the-king-the-evil-commanding-soul should seize it by force. This was the king who was behind them, that is, infront of them, seizing every ship by force, by taking possession of it and using it for his own vain desires and pursuits.
This is an explanation of what Musa found so hard to understand, and the appearence of which he condemed. Allah showed Al-Khidr the hidden reasons, so he said, "I damaged the ship to make it faulty, because they used to pass by a king who was one of the oppressors, who
يَأْخُذُ كُلَّ سَفِينَةٍ
(seized every boat), i.e., every good, sound boat
غَصْباً
(by force.) `So I wanted to prevent him from taking this boat by making it appear faulty, so that its poor owners who had nothing else could benefit from it.' It was also said that they were orphans.
18.77-82
Maududi - Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi - Tafhim al-Qur'an
In connection with this story, a very hard problem arises to which an answer must be found: Two of the three things done by Hadrat Khidr are obviously against those commandments of the Law which have always been in force since the creation of man. No law allows anyone the right to damage the property of another and kill an innocent person. So much so that if a man were to know by inspiration that some usurper would illegally seize a certain boat, and that a certain boy would be involved in a rebellion and unbelief, even then no law, sent down by Allah, makes it lawful that one should bore a hole in the boat and kill the innocent boy by virtue of one's inspiration. If in answer to this, one were to say that Hadrat Khidr committed these two acts by the Commands of Allah, this does not solve the problem, for the question is not this, "By whose command did Hadrat Khidr commit these acts"? but it is this: "What was the nature of these commands"? This is important because Hadrat Khidr did these acts in accordance with Divine Command, for he himself says that these acts of his were not done by his own authority, but were moved by the mercy of Allah, and Allah Himself has testified this by saying: "We gave him a special knowledge from Ourselves". Thus it is beyond any doubt that these acts were done by the Command of Allah, but the question about the nature of the command remains there, for it is obvious that these commands were not legal because it is not allowed by any Divine Law, and the fundamental principles of the Qur'an also do not allow that a person should kill another person without any proof of his guilt. Therefore we shall have to admit that these commands belonged to one of those decrees of Allah in accordance with which one sick person recovers, while another dies: one becomes prosperous and the other is ruined. If the Commands given to Hadrat Khidr were of this nature, then one must come to the conclusion that Hadrat Khidr was an angel (or some other kind of Allah's creation) who is not bound by the Divine Law prescribed for human beings, for such commands as have no legal aspect, can be addressed to angels only. This is because the question of the lawful or the unlawful cannot arise about them: they obey the Commands of Allah without having any personal power. In contrast to them, a man shall be guilty of a sin whether he does any such thing inadvertently by intuition or by some inspiration, if his act goes against some Divine Commandment. This is because a man is bound to abide by Divine Commandments as a man, and there is no room whatsoever in the Divine Law that an act may become lawful for a man merely because he had received an instruction by inspiration and had been informed in a secret way of the wisdom of that unlawful act. The above-mentioned principle has been unanimously accepted by scholars of the Divine Law and the leaders of Sufism. `Allamah Alusi has cited in detail the sayings of 'Abdul Wahhab Shi`irani, Muhy-ud-Din ibn-`Arabi, Mujaddid Alf Thani, Shaikh 'Abdul-Qadir Jilani, Junaid Baghdadi, Sirri Saqti, Abul-Hussain An-nuri, Abu Said-al-Kharraz, Ahmad ud-Dainauri and Imam Ghazzali to this effect that it is not lawful even for a sufi to act in accordance with that inspiration of his own which goes against a fundamental of law. (Ruh-ul-Ma ani, Vol. XVI, pp. 16-18). That is why we have come to the conclusion that Hadrat Khidr must be an angel, or some other kind of Allah's creation, exempted from human law, for he could not be the only exception to the above-mentioned formula. Therefore we inevitably come to the conclusion that he was one of those Servants of Allah who act in accordance with the will of Allah and not in accordance with the Divine Law prescribed for human beings. We would have accepted the theory that Hadrat Khidr was a human being, if the Qur'an had plainly asserted that the "servant" to whom Prophet Moses was sent for training, was a man, but the Qur'an does not specifically say that he was a human being but says that he was "one of Our Servants" which does not show that he was necessarily a human being. Besides this, there is no Tradition which specifically says that Hadrat Khidr was a human being. In the authentic traditions related by Said bin Jubair, Ibn `Abbas, Ubayy bin Ka`ab from the Holy Prophet, the Arabic word,,}i~ (rajul) has been used for Hadrat Khidr, which though generally used for human beings, is not exclusively used for human beings. In the Holy Qur'an itself, this word has been used for Jinns also (LXXIII 6). It is also obvious that when a jinn or an angel or an invisible being will come before a human being, he will surely come in human shape and, in that form; he will be called a bashar (man), just like the angel who came before Mary in the shape of a human being (XIX: 17). Thus the word rajul, used for Hadrat Khidr in the above mentioned Tradition by the Holy Prophet, does not necessarily mean that he was a human being. Therefore we are quite justified in the light of the above discussion to believe that Hadrat Khidr was one of the angels or some other kind of Allah's creation who is not bound by the Divine Law prescribed for human beings. Some of the former scholars of the Qur'an have also expressed the same opinion which. has been cited by lbn Kathir in his Commentary on the authority of Mawardi.
