Appearance
The Tripartite Nature of the Story of Moses and Khiḍr
The story of Moses and Khiḍr is a tripartite narrative, with three questions and answers about boarding and piercing the ship, seeing and killing the youth, and seeing and rebuilding a collapsing wall; it is not three separate stories. The main focus of this single story is the exchange of questions between Moses and Khiḍr’s responses.(276)
The unity of Moses and Khiḍr’s story can be explained in two ways:
Through the independence of purpose: The criterion for unity, multiplicity, independence, and non-independence of stories lies in their purpose, and the main purpose of this story is to present the questions and answers between Moses the Interlocutor and Khiḍr, and Moses’ divine mission to become familiar with Khiḍr’s distinguished mercy and divine knowledge (ʿilm ladunī). What emerges from this triangle is like a text containing three chapters, not three separate books.
Through careful attention to how the story is told: In the verse “So they both proceeded until, when they had embarked on the ship, he made a hole in it,”(277) the conditional clauses are dependent on Khiḍr’s action. The word “pierced it” (kharaqahā) is the answer to the conditional “when” (idhā), after which Moses the Interlocutor asked: “Have you made a hole in it to drown its people? You have certainly done a grave thing.” However, regarding the killing of the youth, instead of saying “So they both proceeded until when they met a youth and he killed him,” God the Exalted did not say “until when they met a youth he killed him” so that “killed him” would be the answer to “when” and Moses the Interlocutor’s question would be mentioned again. In this verse, all of Khiḍr’s action appears in the conditional clause, and its consequence is the question from Moses who said: “Have you killed a pure soul other than in retaliation for a soul?” and Khiḍr’s action of killing the youth “so he killed him” is the completion of the condition, and the sentence is not yet complete(278), and after that, the sentence ends with Moses’ response: “Have you killed a pure soul…” which is the consequence of the condition.(279)
In the verse “So they both proceeded until, when they came to the inhabitants of a town, they asked them for food, but they refused to offer them hospitality. Then they found therein a wall about to collapse, so he set it up straight. [Moses] said, ‘If you wished, you could have taken a wage for it’”(280), the phrase “If you wished…” is the consequence of the condition, and the request for food which comes with the letter “fa” in “but they refused to offer them hospitality,” as well as “Then they found therein a wall” are integral parts of one original story, not independent stories. Therefore, in the story of the youth and the wall, Khiḍr’s action is part of the condition, unlike the incident of piercing the ship. From this difference in the consequence of the condition in the first verse and the two subsequent verses, it becomes clear that the central element of this event is the dialogue between Moses and Khiḍr, rather than three separate stories each with its own question and answer.
Indeed! Only the first of these three events (the piercing of the ship) is expressed in terms of condition and consequence: “when they had embarked on the ship, he made a hole in it”.(281) Since no other consequence is mentioned there, the “fa” is for consequence, while in the verses under discussion, the “fa” is for subdivision and there is another mentioned consequence.
This establishes the beginning of the story and its entry point; then Moses the Interlocutor’s objections begin. It is as if God said: Khiḍr pierced the ship, killed someone, and rebuilt a wall that was about to collapse, then Moses asked the first question and received an answer, after which he posed the second question and received a response, and then asked the third question and was given an answer to that as well. Therefore, the story of these two great figures is a single tripartite story with three sides; a story that has three main elements in the form of three questions and three answers, but it is one story, and the main focus of this story is for Moses to pose his questions about Khiḍr’s actions and become knowledgeable.