in dedication; so accept it from me, for You are the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.’

When she gave birth she said, ‘My Lord, I have borne a female’—yet Allah knew best what she had borne—‘and the male is not like the female. I have named her Mary, and I place her and her offspring in Your protection from Satan, the accursed.’ Her Lord accepted her with gracious acceptance, caused her to grow in a goodly manner, and entrusted her to the care of Zechariah. Whenever Zechariah entered her mihrab, her private place of worship, he found provisions beside her. He would ask, ‘Mary, where did this come from?’ She answered, ‘It is from Allah; indeed Allah provides for whom He wills without reckoning.’

Thus, whenever Zechariah entered Mary’s mihrab—that is, her place of prayer—he found food which one would not normally expect to find there. He would say, ‘Where has this come from? Who brought it?’ and she would reply, ‘It is from Allah.’ She never said, ‘So-and-so brought it,’ or, ‘It was purchased.’ It was solely from Allah. Allah, exalted is He, has power over all things: He can send provision directly from Himself, without any human effort, for He says, ‘Allah provides for whom He wills without reckoning.’

At that moment Zechariah supplicated his Lord. Though he had reached old age and had never been blessed with children, he reflected that the very Lord who brought this sustenance to Mary without any human cause is fully capable of granting him a child. Taking that manifestation of divine power as proof of Allah’s perfect ability, he prayed for offspring—and Allah granted him a son. This, too, contains its own miraculous honors.

Mary, peace be upon her, was favored with several such karamat. One of them is the incident under discussion: her provision reached her directly from Allah—neither bought in the market nor brought by any person, but sent from Allah alone. Another, which we mentioned yesterday, occurred when the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree and she cried, ‘If only I had died before this and been forgotten, lost in oblivion.’ We have already commented on that event.

Among the karamat as well is what befell the Companions of the Cave. A cave is a broad hollow in the mountain, and those men—seven in number—saw the state of their townspeople with respect to