3.7.13 - Meeting His Companion Abdullah Badr al-Habashi

In al-Durrah al-Fakhirah, Shaykh Muhyiddin says: He was my companion for twenty-three years, and he died while I was with him at Malatya. He had also been a companion to Abu Zakariya al-Bajai at Maarrah, Abu al-Hasan Ibn al-Shakkal al-Fasi at Aleppo, Rabii Ibn Mahmud al-Maridini al-Khattab, Abu Abdullah Ibn Hasan, and in the Maghreb: Ismail al-Raqraqi, a great man who lived near the Sanctuary at Mecca and was hurt in its collapse. He had been my companion in Fez.

When death came to him at my house, he was quite willing and ready to meet his Lord. He died in the night. I myself had intended to wash his body. However, in the morning the people came to pay their respects, and among them was the righteous jurist Kamal al-Din Mudhffar, a man of the town and one of the Folk. When I explained about the washing he exclaimed, God is the greatest, and was overcome by a spiritual state. When I asked him about it he told me: Yesterday, when I was in my garden a voice told me to wash myself, to which I replied that I had no need to do so. The request was made three times and after the third time I was told to be ready to wash the body of one of God’s servants on the morrow. Then I went to wash myself in the brook which runs through the garden. Indeed I had no idea who had died until you summoned me here and told me to wash him. Then he began to wash al-Habashi’s body. When he had completed his task I asked him to lead the prayer. When we had finished the prayer he told me that when he was beginning to wash the body and thinking how unworthy he was to wash such a man, the eyes of al-Habashi opened, looked up at him, smiled and then closed again.

I myself went to his grave during the afternoon and complained to him of something which had befallen me after his death. He answered me from his grave and gave praise to God. I heard his voice clearly as he expressed concern for what I had told him, may God rest his soul.

The preacher Bader al-Din told me at Malatya on the authority of some of his household that they had looked down by night from the rooftop on to the grave of al-Habashi and had seen a great light reaching to it from the sky. The light had persisted until dawn.