He said, “And repentance is accepted.” I then knew that this man had been Khidr. Indeed, I asked the shaykh to make certain: “Was it he?” He said, “Yes, it was Khidr.”
(The Meeting at the Port of Tunis)
On another occasion I was at the port of Tunis, at al-Hufrah, aboard a vessel at sea. A pain seized my belly after the people aboard had gone to sleep. I rose, went to the side of the ship, and looked out over the sea. In the distance I saw a person in the moonlight—it was the night of the full moon—coming across the surface of the water until he reached me.
He stood beside me and raised one foot, resting upon the other. I saw the sole of his foot, and no wetness had touched it. Then he rested upon that foot and raised the other, and it was the same. He spoke to me of what he had to say, then greeted me and departed toward a tower serving as a watch-post on a hill by the seashore. The distance between us and it was more than two miles. He covered that distance in two or three steps. I heard his voice from the top of the tower, glorifying God Most High.
He may have gone to our shaykh Jarrah ibn Khamis al-Kinani, one of the masters of the people of the path, who maintained a vigil at the port of ʿAydun. I had come from him the day before that night. When I reached the city, I met a righteous man who asked me, “How was your night yesterday aboard the vessel with Khidr? What did he say to you, and what did you say to him?”
(Denying the Breaking of Customary Patterns, and What Appeared in the Mosque)
After that time, I set out wandering along the coast of the Ocean. With me was a man who denied the breaking of customary—
