Patrick Franke. Begegnung mit Khidr: Quellenstudien zum Imaginären im traditionellen Islam. Beiruter Texte und Studien 82. Beirut-Stuttgart 2000. XV + 620p, 23 ill.
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Patrick Franke. Begegnung mit Khidr: Quellenstudien zum Imaginären im traditionellen Islam. Beiruter Texte und Studien 82. Beirut-Stuttgart 2000. XV + 620p, 23 ill. |
The legend of Khidr, 'the Green one', has been of abiding interest for both Muslim and Western scholars over the centuries. Although Khidr, an imaginary figure, can be encountered in the practices and traditions of Muslim societies around the world, no comprehensive survey of this phenomenon has been undertaken. Patrick Franke's Begegnung mit Khidr: Quellenstudien zum Imaginären im traditionellen Islam presents the first ever study of Khidr as a focus for worldwide Muslim piety. Franke divides Begegnung mit Khidr ('Encountering Khidr'), a revised version of his Ph.D. thesis, into five parts. Part 1 analyses the literary theme of the encounter with Khidr, its important components, as well as the significance of, and expectations tied to, such meetings. Part 2 deals with the basic elements of Muslim reverence for Khidr, while part 3 examines his connection to the world of the friends of God. Franke highlights, in part 4, the instances when Khidr was used as a symbol for God's endorsement of particular places, rulers, Hadiths. Sunni schools of law as well as Shii distinctiveness. The last section of the book is devoted to the 'Khidr-controversy', contentious aspects of the myth which have been debated among Muslims to the present day. Annexed to these sixteen chapters are 173 stories of encounters with Khidr arranged and translated by Franke and spanning the period from ninth to twentieth centuries.
Based on a wealth of material in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, Begegnung mit Khidr offers a macro study of the veneration of Khidr in the Islamic/Muslim world. Franke draws on collections of hattiths, commentaries on the Quran, Sufi manuals, legends of saintly figures, biographical dictionaries as well as chronicles, travelogues, folk traditions and novels to provide a rich survey of encounters, manifestations, symbols and rituals involving Khidr. The study locates him at the centre of a complex system of discrete religious phenomena and sets out to disentangle and order these in a systematic fashion. It traces the collective interpretive processes, which led to the emergence, changing shape and function of the figure of Khidr, and thus provides a global historical phenomenology of reverence for him.
Texts speak of Khidr as a man to whom God granted eternal life and who made sudden appearances in the lives of humans. His interventions were largely meant to help and provide succour to people in times of need, a characteristic that is underlined by the fact that ambulance services in Turkey today are called 'Khidr-Service' (p. 26). In parts of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Central Asia and Afghanistan people offered the Khidr-meal at home to gain his blessings; in areas of the Balkans and Turkey Muslims celebrated the Khidr-feast; while his sanctuaries and pilgrimage-sites can be found throughout the Muslim world. Both Sunni and Shii Islam contain supplicatory prayers to Khidr, the most famous of which, the Du'a Kumayal, was read publicly during the burial of Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran (p. 112). Seeing and meeting Khidr was regarded as a great distinction among Muslims, indeed being able to encounter him was one of the distinguishing marks of Sufi saints. Khidr, far from being a rival figure to the Prophet Muhammad, developed into his supporting helper, and was tightly woven into the Islamic fabric of Quran, prayer, mosque attendance, hajj and charity.
Why was the veneration of Khidr never transformed into a coherent religion devoted solely to him? Franke addresses this question in the last section of his book. 'Ulama' from the tenth century onwards took a defensive position with regard to this legendary figure and participated in debates, still ongoing, as to the nature of Khidr. Two questions were at the forefront of their concerns: Was Khidr a prophet or a friend of God, a Sufi saint? And was Khidr still alive or not? The importance of the first question was linked to Khidr's etiology. Identified as the nameless servant of God in Sura 18: 60-82 of the Quran, whose deeds, the destruction of a boat, the killing of a boy, were against Islamic law, religious scholars were concerned that if Khidr were understood to be a friend of God, other friends might decide to take the same liberties. In order to prevent this license for lawlessness, some 'ulama' declared Khidr to be a prophet and his deeds thus not to be a precedence for Sufi saints.
The second question, whether Khidr was still alive, was a more contentious issue. In the twelfth century a Hanbali scholar denied the continued existence of Khidr. The majority of scholars, on the other hand, affirmed Khidr's eternal life and have continued to do so into the twentieth century. New Arabic texts on Khidr have appeared during the last twenty years of the twentieth century, the majority of which have rejected the idea of his eternal life as 'unislamic' without enlisting new arguments for their viewpoint though. New developments, however, have taken place in quranic exegesis, which have refocused this century-old controversy.
Both Mawlana Mawdudi (1903-79), the founder of the Jama'at-i Islami in Pakistan, one of the early Islamist movements, and Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), the leading thinker of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, addressed the question of Khidr in their commentaries on the Quran. While Mawdudi was satisfied with reinterpreting Khidr as an angel, thus eliminating the problems of both lawlessness and eternal life, Qutb took a more radical step. He rejected outright the hadiths-bound, century-old identification of Khidr with the nameless servant of God in Sura 18: 60-82. Instead he insisted on keeping the servant nameless, thus severing the central link of Khidr with the Quran. 'Muslims who follow his quranic interpretation will no longer see Khidr as a religious figure with a place in the Islamic salvation-history [Heilsgeschichte] but only a chimera [Hirngespinst], which is to be consigned to the realm of superstition.' (my translation, p. 369) Franke thus closes his excellent study with what might come to be the swansong for Khidr.
Source: Book review by Claudia Liebeskind in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 6513 (2002)
