Back in October I wrote about my Eid Visits, in which I went with my friend to visit the sahabi Abu Ubayda Amir ibn al-Jarrah and ended up visiting, by the grace of Allah Most Transcendent, five sahaba in total. Today I went out with the intention of visiting the Prophet Shu’ayb and, also by the limitless grace of Allah, ended up visiting many Prophets, walhamdu lillah. While in the “Eid Visits” post I could write at length about each sahabi we visited, I don’t have much information about many of the Prophets we visited, but I hope this will still be informative and inspire you to visit them when you can.

This time I went with two friends, and even though the sole reason of the trip was visiting the Prophet Shu’ayb- upon our Prophet and upon him may Allah shower endless blessings- he was actually the last one we got to visit. We headed for the city of Salt, very close to Amman, and as we were entering it we saw a sign that said, “The Tomb of the Prophet Gad (Gadur) (pbuh)” and we had never heard of him but decided to investigate. We parked our car in downtown Salt and walked around taking pictures of the ancient market and going up the stairs that go up Salt’s beautiful hills, and take you to roads that go between beautiful old houses. Downtown Salt is beautiful, full of old Ottoman-style houses, some of which belonged to prominent families that have been renovated and turned into museums. My friend will likely put up some pictures from the trip here.

There we met a religious man with his wife and daughter, and asked him how to get to the Prophet Gadur, and discovered that on the same street we were on was a church for Khidr, and were told by someone on the street that a miracle had happened there, “but it’s for Christians and definitely made up.” We decided to investigate….

1) The Church of Khidr. There is debate among Muslim scholars on whether or not al-Khidr was a Prophet or a wali. He’s usually associated with the Christian Saint George, the dragon slayer. There are two reasons for that connection:

a) Both St. George and al-Khidr wear green, and in fact al-Khidr is said to spread greenery where he walks, and is usually surrounded by plants when people see him in visions.

b) St. George slew dragons. Al-Khidr is usually the spiritual guide of Sufis- he appears in their dreams (or even in their waking) and helps them on their spiritual path, and helps them kill their false self, in order to arrive at knowledge of their innermost secret, their true self. The Sufis have long used the dragon as a symbol of the false self, which commands us to sin. Thus the Islamic tradition gives a more spiritual and esoteric understanding of the story of St. George the dragon slayer.

I don’t know how long that church had been known as the church of “Al-Khidr, alayhi assalam” as one Christian referred to him. But we went inside, and it was packed with Christians holding candles and taking pictures and buying posters of St. George slaying dragons. It seems that they did not mind calling him with the name from the Islamic traditions. The people there were taking pictures of a chipped wall, and the story goes that Al-Khidr appeared, on horseback, with sword in hand, and began smashing the walls. Someone said this only happened two weeks ago, and that it was “seen” by a blind woman who was worshiping in the church by herself. The Christians saw this as a great miracle and the Church has been packed with people taking pictures of the dents in the wall.

I don’t know how true the story is, but if it’s true, I would say that by smashing the walls of the church, Al-Khidr was trying to tell them that he does not approve of a church in his name because he’s Muslim.

For the sake of the reader’s benefit, I will translate a section from Al-Ibriz, in which sidi Abd al-Aziz al-Dabbagh answers al-Lamati’s questions about al-Khidr. In the Qur’an, the Prophet Moses (pbuh) found al-Khidr and asked him to teach him some of what Allah has revealed to him. So al-Khidr takes him along and does three things that appeared, according to what Moses saw, horrible acts. But when al-Khidr explained to him the reasoning behind them, and what Allah had taught him about these situations that was hidden from the normal eye, Moses apologized for what he said. This is why some scholars said that al-Khidr had to be a Prophet, otherwise he would not have known matters of the ghayb that Moses did not know, with others held that he was a righteous servant and a wali, not a Prophet.

Al-Dabbagh says that,

Generally, the (spiritually) great are strong in witnessing Al-Haqq, Most Transcendent, and weak in witnessing the creation, whereas the (spiritually) small are strong in witnessing the creation and weak in witnessing al-Haqq, Most Transcendent. And this is what happened in the story between sayyidna al-Khidr and sayyidna Musa- upon our Prophet and upon them be peace and blessings- in what was related to us by Allah Most High in his great Book, from the story of the ship, the young man, and the wall. For knowledge of these things was hidden from sayyidna Musa alayhi assalam because he was (absorbed) in the witnessing of that which is stronger than that, and that is Al-Haqq, Most Transcendent, and therefore Moses’s ignorance of these matters is utmost (spiritual) perfection.

His analogy, in relation to al-Khidr, is like two servants for a king. As for one of them, the king has chosen him for himself, and made him sit with him, having nothing to do but standing in front of the king, looking at his face, and if the king left he left with him, and if the king entered he entered with him, and if he ate he ate with him and if he drank he drank with him, and if he spoke he spoke with him. While the other servant has been appointed by the king to run the affairs of his subjects, so he goes out to them and does with them as the king commands, and speaks to them about their affairs and how to improve their state, and he might be away from the king for a long time in order to do these things. There is no doubt, then, that the first servant is closer to the king and more knowledgeable of his secrets from the second, even though, if he were asked about any of the affairs of the king’s subjects, he would not know about them as much as the second servant, especially if the subjects lived far away from the city of the king. And thus was the state of Moses with Allah Most High, for he is like the first servant, and sayyidna Al-Khidr is like the second servant, for sayyidna Musa is greater than him, without question, because he is the Messenger of Allah, and his kaleem (the one with whom he spoke) and his chosen one….

[Al-Khidr] is not a prophet, but a servant that Allah has ennobled by giving him knowledge of Himself…and there is nothing in his knowledge of the preceding matters that Moses did not know about, which necessitates that a non-prophet be more knowledgeable than a prophet, for what we have said earlier, that Moses- peace be upon him- was pre-occupied from these things with witnessing of Al-Haqq, which is something unparalleled, and therefore there is nothing that necessitates belief in (al-Khidr’s) prophethood.

There are in Jordan four Islamic mashhads for Al-Khidr (places where he was seen), but none in Salt. They are in Kerak, Ajlun, Bayt Ras (Irbid), and Mahis (which is the area between the Valley of Shu’ayb and Amman).

After that we decided to leave the car and take a taxi to show us a few places that were inside the city. He took us to:

2) The Cemetery of the Turks. There used to be a fort on the highest point in Salt, from which an Ottoman battalion was stationed to fight the British in WW1. Three hundred of them died in two days and were placed in a cave below the fort that was used for storage because there was no time to bury them. Then after time they were forgotten and the fort was removed and replaced with a mosque, until a Turkish journalist took a picture of the cave with the bones of three hundred soldiers, which prompted the Turkish and Jordanian governments to give them a proper burial and build them a monument. So the place is a beautiful little garden with a monument, and in the cave there is one sarcophagus, under which is a five-meter deep grave in which all the bones were places. We were told that the Turkish ambassador to Jordan comes every year to visit them, and we saw in a room pictures of all the Turkish soldiers and officers who have come to Jordan to visit the monument. I felt honored to read the Fatiha to these forgotten martyrs.

3) Gad. “The Prophet Gad”, as the locals call him, is the seventh son of Jacob (the Prophet Ya’qub), and therefore one of the brothers of Joseph (the Prophet Yusef). He is the father of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Islamic traditions do not rule out the possibility that Joseph’s brothers were prophets despite their negative treatment of him. Evidence of this comes from the Quranic verse that says to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), “We inspire thee as We inspired Noah and the Prophets after him, as We inspired Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Tribes, and Jesus and Jacob and Jonah…(4:163-4).” (Italics added). We couldn’t go inside to the tomb as it was locked, and only opened in times of prayer when the imam came to the mosque attached to it.

4) Asher (Hazir in Arabic). He was the eighth son of Jacob and a brother of Joseph and Gad. He is also the father of one of the twelve tribes, and might also be a prophet. He’s buried underground in a small cave, above which are a 600-yr old tree and the most beautiful almond trees that were in blossom. There are springs of water under the hills of both Gad and Asher.

5) Job (Ayyub in Arabic). The story of Job’s patience is famous so there’s no need introducing him, peace be upon our Prophet and upon him. The area he is in is called Job’s Ruins (Khirbet Ayyub), and it is a hill on which are the ruins of an ancient building. There is a well and several mounds of rock and you can see the basic layout of some rooms, but we couldn’t tell which one had the tomb. There is a picture of it in the book The Holy Sites of Jordan, but we had forgotten it in the car in downtown Salt so we couldn’t make it out, but we just read the Fatiha while standing among the ruins. Since it’s spring time the whole of Salt was beautifully green but the Ruins of Job in particular were covered with Red Poppies.

6) The Prophet Joshua (Yoosha’ in Arabic). He is mentioned in the Qur’an as Moses’ ward and apprentice, but not in name; however the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) named him as the one referred to in Surat al-Kahf. He was still young when the Prophet Moses took him along in search for al-Khidr. That is because Moses had claimed to be the most knowledgeable man on earth so Allah wanted to humble him by sending him to acquire knowledge from one of his servants, who was not even a Prophet. Moses had prepared his army to conquer Palestine (namely the cities of Jericho and Jerusalem) from the Canaanites (yes, Arabs are the original inhabitants of Palestine), but he died before he could do it, so he left Joshua (pbuh) in charge of the army.

The complex built for him is new and beautiful. There was a shaykh there, who on Fridays gives the khutba in a local mosque, and then spends the rest of the day visiting the Prophet, and telling visitors about him (or I think he does it every Friday because it sounded like he did this before). He told us many of the stories told about the Prophet, probably taken from Jewish sources by the early Muslim scholars. It is said that he surrounded Jericho for six months before its walls crumbled before him, and then marched on to Jerusalem.

The story goes that he arrived before the gates of Jerusalem, only a short time before the Friday sunset, and since the day in Islamic and Jewish calendars begins from sunset, it meant that the Sabbath was just about to start, and they couldn’t wage war on the day of the Sabbath. So Joshua pointed at the sun and said, “I am commanded by God, and you are commanded by God” and then asked God to stop the sun in its place, and so it stayed in its place until Joshua’s army conquered Jerusalem. (See the Book of Joshua, chapter 10, in the Old Testament). There is a hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) confirms this story and says, “The sun was never halted for a human being except for Yoosha’ (pbuh) on the night he left for Jerusalem.”

The shaykh told us that the spot where the mosque-tomb complex is built is where Joshua’s house was, and that he died in it and was buried in it, like the Prophet Muhammad who was also buried in his house and said that Prophets are buried where they die.

After that we had the taxi driver take us back to our car, and we headed out of Salt to the Valley of Sh’uayb (Wadi Shu’ayb), which is near Salt, on the way back to Amman.

7) The Prophet Shu’ayb. He, may Allah whelm our Prophet and him with peace and blessings, was one of the four Arab prophets mentioned in the Qur’an (the other three being Hud, Salih, and sayyidna Muhammad, peace be upon them). He is a descendant of the Prophet Abraham and some say that he is the one who is called Jethro in the Bible, who married his daughter to Moses, but this is debated between Muslim scholars and I am of the opinion that he came much earlier than Moses.

What can I tell you about the tomb of Prophet Shu’ayb? All I can say is go there yourselves and smell the scents there, the like of which I have never smelled before. A friend of mine who goes there a lot told me that if you lift the green cloth on the sarcophagus you will find a little hole in it from which the smell comes really strongly, but I didn’t want to lift it and look for it in front of all the people. You see, since it was Friday, the area around his mosque was covered in people who had come to camp near him and BBQ and play and enjoy the day. In the words of my companions, the whole atmosphere of it was “surreal”.

The two most impressive and awe-inspiring tombs which everyone should visit if they can are the last two. Hopefully the Jordanian government will eventually fix up the area where the Prophet Job is buried, so that it joins them in greatness and importance.

And may Allah whelm Prophet Muhammad and all the Messengers and Prophets with peace and blessings, and may He raise us with them on the Day of Judgment.

And all thanks and praise are due to Allah who blessed us with a chance to visit His chosen servants, and may He bless us with a visit to His Beloved, the Imam of the Messengers, the Seal of the Prophets, sayyidna wa mawlana Muhammad, salla Allahu alayhi wa ala aalihi wa sallam.

نورك الكل والورى أجزاء * يا نبيًّا من جنده الأنبياء