Sūrat al-Kahf · Āyāt 60–82

What the passage says

Moses tells his young companion that he will not stop travelling "until I reach the confluence of the two seas," even if it takes him years (v.60). When the two reach that meeting-point, they forget their fish, which slips away into the sea and is gone (v.61). Having pressed on, Moses asks for their meal, worn out by the journey (v.62); his companion then realises that back at the rock he had forgotten the fish, which had taken to the sea in an astonishing way (v.63). Moses recognises this as the sign he was seeking, so the two turn back and retrace their steps (v.64). There they find "a servant of Ours" to whom God had given a mercy from Himself and taught a knowledge from His own presence (v.65).

Moses asks, "May I follow you, so that you teach me some of the right guidance you have been taught?" (v.66). The man warns him, "You cannot bear with me" (v.67) — "and how can you be patient about what you do not encompass in knowledge?" (v.68). Moses promises, God willing, to be patient and to disobey in nothing (v.69), and the man sets one condition: ask me about nothing until I myself mention it to you (v.70).

The first trial follows: as they board a boat, the man bores a hole in it, and Moses bursts out, "Did you make a hole to drown its people? You have done a monstrous thing!" (v.71). The man answers, "Did I not say you could not bear with me?" (v.72). Moses begs not to be blamed for forgetting and asks not to be pressed too hard (v.73). Next they meet a boy, and the man slays him; Moses protests still more sharply, "Did you slay a pure soul who had killed no one? You have done a dire thing!" (v.74). Again the man replies, "Did I not tell you that you could not bear with me?" (v.75), and Moses now stakes their companionship on it: if he questions anything more, they part (v.76). Coming to a town whose people refuse them any hospitality, they find a wall about to collapse, and the man sets it straight; Moses remarks, "Had you wished, you could have taken a wage for it" (v.77).

At this the man declares the parting and promises the interpretation of what Moses could not endure (v.78). The boat, he explains, belonged to poor men working the sea; he marred it on purpose, for a king ahead was seizing every sound ship by force (v.79). The boy's parents were believers, and it was feared he would burden them with rebellion and unbelief (v.80), so God willed to give them in exchange a child better in purity and nearer in mercy (v.81). The wall belonged to two orphan boys of the city, with a treasure buried beneath it; their father had been righteous, and God willed that they reach maturity and recover their treasure — "a mercy from your Lord. I did not do it of my own accord. That is the interpretation of what you could not bear" (v.82).

Convergence — where the six agree

• All four Arabic sources tell a single, continuous story and identify its figures the same way: the companion is Joshua (Yūshaʿ b. Nūn), called Moses's "lad" because he accompanied and served him, and the "servant of Ours" is al-Khiḍr — points made plainly by Ṭabarsī (Majmaʿ al-Bayān), Ṭūsī (al-Tibyān), al-Qummī, and Ṭabāṭabāʾī (al-Mīzān), and followed by the Enlightening Commentary.
• Ṭabarsī, al-Qummī, and the Enlightening Commentary all root the episode in the same occasion: Moses had thought no one more learned than himself, and God sent him to the confluence to learn from one who knew more — a humbling that Ṭabarsī and the Enlightening Commentary sharpen with the Prophet's image of a bird dipping its beak in the sea, showing that all human knowledge beside God's is no more than that drop.
• On al-Khiḍr's standing they reach one settled balance: his was an inward (bāṭin) knowledge of the hidden meaning of events, while Moses remained the greater in the law he carried. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Mīzān, and al-Burhān (al-Burhān citing Hishām b. Sālim, who compares Moses to Solomon and al-Khiḍr to Solomon's helper Āṣaf), all hold this, and the Enlightening Commentary cites Imam al-Ṣādiq to the same effect.
• The lesson of the three trials is shared across all six: the outward act may look wrong while its inner reality is a mercy. The Enlightening Commentary draws this out at length, and Ṭabāṭabāʾī frames the whole passage as proof that events running to the world's liking carry a hidden taʾwīl that only appears in time.
• On the interpretations the sources agree closely: the boat was deliberately damaged to keep a confiscating king from seizing it; the boy was slain to spare his believing parents a future of unbelief, and they were granted a better child (Ṭabarsī, al-Qummī, al-Burhān, and the Enlightening Commentary all preserve the report of a daughter who bore seventy prophets); and the wall hid a treasure for two orphans, kept safe for the sake of their righteous father.

Divergence — where they differ

• On the fish, Ṭabāṭabāʾī stands apart. Where Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, al-Qummī, and the Enlightening Commentary take the popular reading that the salted fish came back to life and leapt into the sea (Ṭabarsī and the Enlightening Commentary attaching this to a narration from Imams al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq), al-Mīzān cautions that the verses never actually say the fish revived — its apparent sense is only that the fish slipped into the sea and vanished, and one report makes the sign its loss, not its return.
• On the slain boy two readings sit side by side. Ṭabarsī, Ṭūsī, and al-Mīzān read "a pure soul" as a sinless child below the age of accountability. Alongside this, al-Qummī and al-Burhān transmit the narration that al-Khiḍr found written on the boy "imprinted a disbeliever," and Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī note this as the reading of Ubayy, Ibn ʿAbbās, and al-Ṣādiq — that the boy himself was the unbeliever and his parents the believers.
• The treasure's contents are reported variously within the same sources: scrolls of knowledge, or gold and silver, or — most often in the Imāmī reports of al-Qummī, al-Burhān, Ṭabarsī, and Ṭūsī — a golden tablet of wisdom-sayings closing with the testimony that there is no god but God and Muḥammad is His Messenger.
• The most distinctly Imāmī reading comes through al-Burhān and al-Qummī, who transmit (al-Qummī via a letter of Imam al-Riḍā) that Moses and al-Khiḍr stand as a parable for ʿAlī and the Imams: just as al-Khiḍr acted on a God-pleasing knowledge the ignorant resented, so ʿAlī acted only where God was pleased. The Enlightening Commentary carries the same theme through Imam al-Ḥasan's words on his peace with Muʿāwiya. These are presented as what those sources narrate, not as the verse's plain sense.
• Two further single-source contributions stand out. Ṭabāṭabāʾī uniquely reads the three episodes as one story of Moses's three objections, and dwells on al-Khiḍr's courtesy before God — ascribing the flawed act to himself ("I wished to mar it"), the shared acts to "we," and what belongs to God alone to "your Lord." Ṭabarsī and Ṭūsī uniquely press the legal point that the boy's killing proves the obligation of God's protective grace (luṭf): when God knows a person will cause corruption, wisdom requires removing its cause.

Each scholar's full text is in the source panels below.