Meeting Khizr, our own the evergreen Master
There is no final station and if there is, it is the station of no-station.
Khizr, has been a perennially sought presence across cultures. Who is he and is he around or is there Khizr within or in every other person if we are attentive enough? Is he alive or dead? Why was Moses asked to be his student? Despite such ever debated questions that have occupied/divided scholars, meeting him is generally considered a privilege though it is also said that few recognize him when this happens. He is around but we are heedless. In many subtle ways, we might have experienced his kind presence and help. So much confusion around him reigns because good works on him are not available. Partly filling the gap for Urdu reading world is Dr. G. Q. Lone’s Hazrat Khizr: Tehqeek ki Roshni Mei; lucid book that reviews and distills centuries of scholarship on the issue though one misses engagement with modern approaches, especially myth criticism, and certain aspects of traditional science of symbolism and detailed engagement with Sufi/metaphysical exegesis of the narrative.
In quite a readable book that can be read by anyone including advanced researchers and general readers, Lone, known for his meticulous footnotes and care in handling traditional texts and mostly nuanced treatment of controversies, adopts a comparative method that illuminates many a dark spot in the narrative. Reviewing accounts in other traditions and deftly comparing them with Islamic account, Lone presents all important aspects before the reader and often resists giving his own view. I invite readers to read the book and can only present some important well argued conclusions and views he sifts from many other alternative views:
In quite a readable book that can be read by anyone including advanced researchers and general readers, Lone, known for his meticulous footnotes and care in handling traditional texts and mostly nuanced treatment of controversies, adopts a comparative method that illuminates many a dark spot in the narrative. Reviewing accounts in other traditions and deftly comparing them with Islamic account, Lone presents all important aspects before the reader and often resists giving his own view. I invite readers to read the book and can only present some important well argued conclusions and views he sifts from many other alternative views:
- Endorses the view attributed to Ibn Abbas that Khizr is best described as a prophet (gayr mursal nabi) and not merely as a saint.
- Evidences of his being alive are too many. Jumhoor ulama, Sufi authorities and common people believe him to be alive. Dissenting view of certain hadith scholars notwithstanding.
- Evidence of failure to authenticate reports concerning narrations regarding Khizr or his life from Ibn Qayyim, Mulla Ali Qari and others don’t necessitate the negative conclusion regarding his long life and presence given other evidences from Salaf and Khalf.
- The book mentions extremely interesting and for some disturbing views concerning encounters with Khizr. For instance,
• Khizr’s presence in armies fighting against Muslims reported from respected Sufi authorities
• Allusion to 300 hadith reports collected directly from Khizr who heard them when the Prophet (S.A.W) was alive. (One needs to note that no less a person than Ibn Arabi who had keen insights in sciences of hadith and fiqh has defended direct verification theory of many Sufis regarding certain ahadith often in debate that mainstream hadith scholars find wanting in credentials.)
• Ibn Arabi’s report from Khizr himself that he had intended to divulge 1000 secrets to Moses but he proved impatient.
• Number of accounts of incontrovertible interventions in lives of major figures in Islamic spirituality about whom it is absurd to imagine that they could concoct lies/get consistently deluded. Numerous accounts from people across religions and ages that they have received help/guidance/azkar/wazayif from Khizr. - Those who argue from narrative in Surah Al-Kahf for superiority of saints over prophets are grossly misled as Khizr himself may well be a prophet and domains of prophets and saints retain independent validity in respective spheres and should not be compared in this way. Mujadid Sirhindi’s illuminating commentary is quoted to establish distinction and complementarity of two domains – perfections of prophets and saints.
Given absence of treatment of much of modern scholarship on Khizr in the book, one feels recommending highly useful review of the same in Irfan Omar’s “Khidr in Islamic Tradition” (in The Muslim World) besides Nigel Jaksons’ illuminating “The Mantle of Elijah” in Oriens for more comprehensive understanding of highly elusive Khizr. For more satisfactory account of allusions in Khizr’s and other narratives mentioned in the Quranic chapter “The Cave” (pioneering psychologist Jung has sought to write exegesis of key narratives in Surah Al-Kahf) one should read Sufi exegesis of relevant verses and mythologists and scholars of esoterism such as Corbin. I briefly summarize some insights in these works: Khizr literally means ‘The Green One', representing “freshness of spirit and eternal liveliness, green symbolizing the freshness of knowledge ‘drawn out of the living sources of life.’” Variously referred or likened to St. George, identified as the Muslim "version of Elijah" and also referred to as the eternal wanderer, wandering Jew, patron saint of sailors, one of the “afrad” and “the hidden initiator of those who walk the mystical path like some of those from the Uwaisi tariqa” Khizr sustains number of interpretations though there remain dangers in reading him either as an archetype or as real person in ordinary sense of term as with the latter “we shall no longer be able to characterize the difference in structure between Khiḍr's relationship with his disciple and the relationship that any other shaykh on this earth can have with his.”
Fish symbolizes knowledge and water, a symbol of life, as well as the sea, symbolizes the limitless immensity of esoteric knowledge. ‘Parting of the sea', symbolizes “the meeting of the two domains of knowledge, viz., the esoteric and the exoteric. “Now this fish (wisdom) was to be Moses' breakfast, which is precisely what Moses needed before he understood the subtlety of the events which occurred while he was with Khiḍr.” [Rather than read the story as encounter of two persons, one might see “Moses' encounter with Khiḍr is actually his encounter with the aspects of the Divine in an attempt to equip him (i.e. Moses) with the infiniteness of knowledge.”
An important lesson is appreciation for life as constituted by paradoxes. There is only mercy everywhere though disguised often as cruelty. Name one thing or event that can be conclusively said to be pointless or meaningless in retrospect or seek a flaw in God’s creation that one finds, in the cosmic non-anthropocentric terms, irredeemable.
We often say and poets lament that the beloved doesn’t come. Even Sufis keep waiting for the Beloved to come. None of our great dreams if fully fulfilled. Is waiting for Khizr something like waiting for Godot? One can’t meet Khizr in the sense that life’s conundrum is solved for good. Khizr gives us a clue, a talisman that takes a lifetime to figure or put in practice. Lazzat-i-wasl haram, declares not only Iqbal but great number of mystics. For some souls we can say that God is encountered in a blinding way but that translates itself into greater zest for life and more intense quest for perfection. One never finds a heavenly hoor in this world; all beauties have something lacking. One encounters God or gets deedar in the full sense of the term (if ever) only after death, according to religions. In this life we have to wait, wait not for God to come or the Beloved to give us a killing embrace or kiss, but for revelations of Being that never cease. There is no final station and if there is it is the station of no-station. And that is the station of Muhammad (SAW). Literature, especially tragedy, shows our fulfillment lies in losing what we had originally sought as desirable, in unlearning what we thought we knew, in giving away, like King Lear, all the kingly robes we thought so important. Like Lear in a storm scene, we are educated by loss and humiliation. Thank God for arranging our humiliation. We meet Khizr in every meeting with our friends and foes. “Yie chu mulaqat,” says a Kashmiri mystic. Take every person one meets seriously as if a messenger of Khizr or Khizr. God comes to us, in unexpected ways, from unexpected quarters. For Hazrat Ali he comes as resistance to our aims or intentions. Let us not forget that Khizr as guide finds us anyway. God’s special messenger whom none can afford to avoid encountering is suffering. Khizr may well be doning the unattractive robes that we flee from.
Jackson’s following words illustrates another missing dimension – and illuminating exegesis of narratives in Surah Al-Kahf – in a work that primarily seeks exoteric-historical explanation of an essentially transcendent transhistorical “encounter.”
…in Qur’anic and Sufic lore he guides Iskhandar Dhu al-qarnayn upon the alchemical quest through the Land of Darkness, the nigredo of the Hermetic opus, to the Hyperborean realm beneath the Pole-star where is situated the glittering well-spring of the waters of the Fountain of Immortal Life which marks the supreme Centre (and in this relationship between Ilyas/Al-Khizr and Iskhandar, the Prophet and the Emperor, the Inner Sage and the Outer King, we may see the right disposition obtaining between Sacerdotium and Regnum). Elijah is the pre-eminent prophetic guide in the Primordial Tradition, the invisible Prophet who appears mysteriously (from above) to initiate the solitary elect as a liberative manifestation of God’s mercy and to restore the world in readiness for the coming of the last times. Strictly speaking, Elijah is not identical with Al-Khizr but rather he belongs to the same ‘spiritual family’ as the ‘Green Prophet.’…Rene Guenon tells us, he would be a manifestation of the ‘Angel of the Face’ as the ‘Celestial Pole’ and thus a hypostasis of the ‘King of the World’…”
Controversies over the belief in hidden Imam in Shias may be illumined by noting that in the esoteric traditions of Shia Islam the Hidden Imam asserts: "I am he whose name in the Gospel is Elijah.”
Against those theologians who have issued death certificates to Khizr, the weight of Islamic Tradition, its saints, sages and poets or mythographers duly recognized by Dr Lone’s work is succinctly stated by Irfan Omar, “Today Khiḍr can be found in the verses of Iqbal,in the poems of Rumi, and ‘Attar. He has immensely influenced the lives of many a mystic, ascetic and man of God throughout the history of Islam, such as 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili, Ibn ‘Arabi, Mansur al-Hallaj and so on. In the Muslim tradition Khiḍr is alive and well and continues to guide the perplexed and those who invoke his name..”
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