Being a Guest, Not Begging

Moses and Khiḍr, due to weariness from their journey and hunger, presented themselves as potential guests to the people of the village: “So they proceeded until they came to the inhabitants of a village and asked them for food.” The meaning of “asked for food” (istaṭʿamā) here is “sought hospitality” (istaḍāfā), meaning to present oneself as a guest to others, which is also indicated by the phrase “but they refused to show them hospitality.”

Being a guest is not a deficiency, unlike asking for charity. These two noble figures neither begged nor asked for a loan, but rather presented themselves as guests to the village people. Hospitality is an international custom that reason and human nature accept, and it is not a deficiency, because a hungry person seeking food is permissible in all religious laws, and in some cases obligatory. Being hospitable is a virtue and compatible with dignity, while refusing guests and turning them away is contrary to ethics and shows meanness of spirit. The Qur’an does not speak of Moses and Khiḍr begging, and the verse “My Lord, I am in need of whatever good You would send down to me”(319) is Moses’s intimate conversation and sharing of his heart’s pain with the true Provider. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that “istaṭʿamā” means that Moses and Khiḍr—God forbid—were begging.

Such exegeses demonstrate the abandonment of the Qur’an and are evidence of the Prophet’s words when he addressed his Lord saying that his people had abandoned this Qur’an: “O my Lord, indeed my people have taken this Qur’an as [a thing] abandoned”.(320) When the Qur’an falls into the hands of a non-wise literary scholar, like the author of Maqāmāt al-Ḥarīrī, according to some exegetes, he plays with religion, does not maintain respect for divine prophets, and interprets “asking for food” (istiṭʿām) as begging!(321)