18.82
Abbas - Tanwîr al-Miqbâs min Tafsîr Ibn ‘Abbâs
(And as for the wall) which I repaired, (it belonged to two orphan boys) called Asram and Suraym (in the city) of Antioch, (and there was beneath it a treasure belonging to them) it was a tablet of gold containing knowledge and wisdom and written on it: "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. I am really amazed regarding a person who believes in death: how could he ever be happy; and amazed at a person who believes in the evanescence of this worldly life and the fluctuation of its people: how he can find tranquillity in it; there is no deity except Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah (pbuh)" (and their father had been righteous) he was a trustworthy man called Kashih, (and your Lord intended that they should come to their full strength) that they should reach the age of puberty (and should bring forth their treasure) i.e. their golden tablet (as a mercy from their Lord) as a blessing from your Lord; it is also said that this means: as an inspiration from your Lord; (and I did it not upon my own command) I did not do it from my own initiative. (Such is the interpretation of that wherewith thou couldst not bear).
And as for the wall it belonged to two orphan boys who lived in the city and beneath it there was a treasure a buried trove of gold and silver belonging to them. Their father had been a righteous man and so because of his righteousness they were protected both in terms of their souls and their possessions and your Lord desired that they should come of age that is He desired for them the attainment of maturity and extract their treasure as a mercy from your Lord rahmatan min rabbik is a direct object denoting reason operated by the verb arāda ‘He desired’. And I did not do it namely what has been mentioned of his making a hole in the ship the slaying of the boy and the repair of the wall of my own accord that is out of my own choosing; nay it was because of a command in the form of an inspiration from God. This is the interpretation of that over which you could not maintain patience’ one may say istā‘a or istatā‘a to mean ‘he had the capacity for something’; in this instance and the previous one both forms of the verb have been used. Moreover there is a variety of expression in the use of fa-aradtu ‘I desired’ fa-aradnā ‘We desired’ and fa-arāda rabbuk ‘Your Lord desired’.
And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys [who lived] in the city: that is, the twin rational faculty of the considerative and the practical that are severed from their parent, who is the holy spirit, because they have veiled themselves from him by means of corporeal coverings, or [he is] the heart that has died or was slain before perfection by the soul's conquest of the city-the-body. And beneath it there was a treasure belonging to them, that is, the treasure of gnosis which is only actualised through these two [faculties] at the station of the heart on account of the fact that all of the universals and the particulars are able to come together in it [the heart] in actuality at the moment of perfection, which is the state of coming of age and the extraction of that treasure. Some exoteric commentators relate that the treasure was scrolls in which there was [certain] knowledge. Their father had been - [this is valid] in the case of both interpretations - a righteous man: it is also said that he was a father from 'above' to them and God preserved them for him, in which case, he can only be the holy spirit.
The story of DhūÌl-Qarnayn is well-known. He was a Greek (rūmī) who lived in times not long ago. The [spiritual] correspondence [for this story] is as follows: DhūÌl-Qarnayn in this existence represents the heart which took possession of his two horns (qarnān), that is, his two setting points, the East and the West.
(And they say: "Why is not this Qur'an sent down to some great man of the two towns (Al-Qaryatayn)'')43:31 meaning Makkah and At-Ta'if. The meaning of the Ayah 18:82 is: "I repaired this wall because it belonged to two orphan boys in the city, and underneath it was some treasure belonging to them.'' `Ikrimah, Qatadah and others said, "Underneath it there was some wealth that was buried for them.'' This meaning is apparent from the context of the Ayah, and is the view chosen by Ibn Jarir (may Allah have mercy on him).
وَكَانَ أَبُوهُمَا صَـلِحاً
(their father was a righteous man,) indicates that a righteous person's offspring will be taken care of, and that the blessing of his worship will extend to them in this world and in the Hereafter. This will occur through his intercession for them, as well as their status being raised to the highest levels of Paradise, so that he may find joy in them. This was stated in the Qur'an and reported in the Sunnah. Sa`id bin Jubayr narrated from Ibn `Abbas: "They were taken care of because their father was a righteous man, although it is not stated that they themselves were righteous.''
(your Lord intended that they should attain their age of full strength and take out their treasure) Here will is attributed to Allah, the Exalted, because no one else is able to bring them to the age of full strength and puberty except Allah. In contrast, He said about the boy:
(as a mercy from your Lord. And I did them not of my own accord.) Meaning, `These three things that I did, come from the mercy of Allah for those we have mentioned, the crew of the ship, the parents of the boy and the two sons of the righteous man; I was only commanded to do these things that were enjoined upon me.' This is proof and evidence in support of those who say that Al-Khidr, peace be upon him, was a Prophet, along with the Ayah which we have already quoted:
(He was called Al-Khidr because he sat on a barren Farwah that turned white, then it turned green (Khadra') beneath him.) Imam Ahmad also recorded this from `Abdur-Razzaq. It was also recorded in Sahih Al-Bukhari from Hammam from Abu Hurayrah that the Messenger of Allah said,
(He was called Al-Khidr because he sat on a barren Farwah and it turned green (Khadra') beneath him.) The meaning of Farwah here is a patch of withered vegetation. This was the view of `Abdur-Razzaq. It was also said that it means the face of the earth.
(That is the interpretation of those (things) over which you could not be patient.) meaning, `this is the explanation of the things which you could not put up with or be patient with until I took the initiative of explaining them to you.' When he explained them and made them clear and solved the confusion, he used a milder form of the verb,
تَسْطِـع
(you could) When the matter was still confusing and very difficult, a more intensive form was used,
(I will tell you the interpretation of (those) things over which you were unable to be patient with) 18:78. The intensity of the verbal form used reflects the intensity of the confusion felt. This is like the Ayah:
فَمَا اسْطَـعُواْ أَن يَظْهَرُوهُ
(So they (Ya`juj and Ma`juj) were not able to scale it) 18:97 which means ascending to its highest point,
وَمَا اسْتَطَـعُواْ لَهُ نَقْبًا
(nor are they able to dig through it) 18:97 which is more difficult than the former. The intensity of the verbal form used reflects the difficulty of the action, which has to do with the subtleties of meaning. And Allah knows best. If one were to ask, what happened to the boy-servant of Musa who appears at the beginning of the story but then is not mentioned The answer is that the objective of the story is what happened between Musa and Al-Khidr. Musa's boy-servant was with him, following him. It is clearly mentioned in the Sahih Hadiths referred to above that he was Yusha` bin Nun, who was the one who became the leader of the Children of Israel after Musa, peace be upon him.
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.
