A Quranic narrative in which Moses, seeking a servant of God said to possess knowledge Moses lacks, travels to meet a figure later tradition names Khidr. Khidr agrees to let Moses accompany him only if Moses asks no questions, then performs three apparently unjust acts, scuttling a boat, killing a young man, and repairing a wall for no payment, each explained afterward as concealing a hidden mercy Moses could not see.
Facts
History
Historical NoteThe Quranic passage names its second traveler only as a servant among God's servants, and it is the later tafsir tradition, not the Quran's own text, that supplies the name Khidr, the Green One, and develops him into a recurring figure of hidden spiritual guidance. 1 Historical NoteThe unnamed meeting place the Quran calls the junction of the two seas (majma al-bahrayn) became, in later tradition, a subject of geographic identification rather than a fixed setting: commentators have located it at the Bosphorus, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, none of which the Quranic text itself names. 1 Meaning
Central MotifA servant of God whose apparently unjust acts conceal a wisdom that patience, not questioning, alone can be trusted to reveal 1 Text
Source TextQuran, Surah Al-Kahf 18:60-82 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteIslamicists read Khidr's later development, especially in Sufi literature, as growing well past this single Quranic episode into an archetype of the hidden spiritual guide who appears to seekers outside ordinary time, a figure some later tradition treats as still living rather than as a historical companion of Moses. 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeScholars are divided on how far the Quranic account of Moses and his unnamed companion draws on an older Near Eastern story pattern, sometimes compared to legends attached to Alexander the Great and the water of life, against how far it is a wholly independent composition. 1 Sources
Primary SourceThe Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, a modern scholarly annotated English edition, collates the classical tafsir tradition on the passage. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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