He divorced her, whereupon one of the two women kept the matter hidden while the other betrayed him. He therefore fled until he reached an island in the sea. Two men came along gathering firewood and noticed him; one concealed his presence, while the other informed on him, saying, “I have seen al-ʿAzqīl.” (1) He was asked, “And who saw him with you?” He answered, “So-and-so.” That man was then questioned, but he held his tongue. Their religion decreed that anyone who denied the truth was to be put to death, so he was executed. That same man had married the woman who had also kept the secret.

While the woman was combing Pharaoh’s daughter’s hair, the comb slipped from her hand and she exclaimed, “Perish Pharaoh!” The girl told her father. The woman had two sons and a husband. Pharaoh summoned them and tried to make the woman and her husband abandon their faith, but they refused. He said, “I will kill you.” They replied, “It would be a favor from you, if you must kill us, to place us in one grave.” So he buried them together. The Prophet added, “I have never encountered a fragrance sweeter than theirs, and they have entered Paradise.” (2)

The story of Māʾilah, Pharaoh’s daughter, has already been discussed. This extended account concerning al-Khiḍr may be an insertion from the words of Ubayy ibn Kaʿb or ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās—Allah knows best.

Some have said his kunya was Abū al-ʿAbbās, yet the more plausible view—Allah knows best—is that “al-Khiḍr” is an epithet that prevailed.

Al-Bukhārī, may Allah have mercy on him, reports: Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd al-Iṣbahānī related to us, Ibn al-Mubārak related to us, from Maʿmar, from Hammām, from Abū Hurayrah, from the Prophet ﷺ, who said:

“He was called al-Khiḍr (‘the Green One’) because he sat down on a barren white patch of ground, and behold, it quivered behind him and turned green.”

Al-Bukhārī alone records this ḥadīth. (3) ʿAbd al-Razzāq also transmitted it from Maʿmar. (4)

ʿAbd al-Razzāq then explained: “Al-farwah is pale, whitish grass and the like—that is, dry stubble.”

Al-Khaṭṭābī continued: Abū ʿUmar said al-farwah is a white stretch of land on which nothing grows; others maintained it is dry straw, likened to a farwah. From this usage comes “the farwah of the head,” meaning its skin together with the hair upon it, as the poet al-Rāʿī said:

You may see the Abyssinian round our tents,
delighted whenever he secures a day’s food;
A lean, flat-nosed fellow—his scalp as though
seed were sown on it and each side sprouted pepper. (5)(6)