and fulfills some of the needs of the person seeking aid. The latter then imagines that it is that person, or an angel in his form. In reality, it is a devil who has led him astray because he associated partners with Allah, just as devils used to enter idols and speak to the polytheists.

To some of these people, the devil appears and says, “I am al-Khidr.” He may tell them certain things and help them achieve some of their aims, as has happened to a number of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Among many disbelievers in the lands of the East and West, someone dies, and a devil then comes in his form after his death. They believe that it is the deceased himself. The devil pays his debts, returns property entrusted to him, attends to matters connected with the deceased, goes in to his wife, and leaves. They may even have cremated their dead, as the disbelievers of India do, yet they imagine that he has returned to life after his death.

Among these people was a shaykh in Egypt who instructed his servant, saying, “When I die, do not let anyone wash me, for I shall come and wash myself.” When he died, his servant saw someone in his form and believed that it was the shaykh himself who had entered and washed himself. When the visitor had finished the washing—that is, washing the deceased—he vanished. This was a devil who had misled the deceased by telling him, “After death, you will come and wash yourself.” When the man died, the devil again came in his form to mislead the living, just as he had previously misled the deceased.