al-Khidr

Al-Khidr, the Green One, is the deathless prophet-saint of popular Islam who guards rivers and the sea and comes to the aid of those in danger on the water. Tradition holds that he drank from the Water of Life and became immortal, and that the barren ground turns green wherever he rests. Across the Nile lands his cult attaches him firmly to the river, and in the syncretic religion of the Nubians, in which Islamic saints and Nile cults overlie the older beliefs, he stands among the benevolent guardians of the water alongside the angels of the river. He is a borrowed and pan-Islamic figure rather than a purely Nubian one, but his assimilation into the Nubian river cult is characteristic of the layering that scholars such as Kennedy have described for the region.

Domains

• rivers and water
• protection
• wisdom

Powers

• guards rivers and rescues those in peril on the water
• carries the life of the green earth and undying water

Epithets

• al-Khadir — the Green One'al-Khidr,' Encyclopaedia Britannica (secondary)

Relations

• ally: Aman-nootiBoth are protective powers of the river.El Guindi (1978) and Wensinck, 'al-Khadir,' Encyclopaedia of Islam, on water-guardian figures within the Nubian river cult (secondary)

Sources

• Al-Khidr, the immortal Green One, is a saint and guardian of the waters in the popular Islam of Egypt and Sudan, and is drawn into the Nubian complex of river cults and river guardians.: A. J. Wensinck, 'al-Khadir (al-Khidr),' Encyclopaedia of Islam (secondary); 'al-Khidr,' Encyclopaedia Britannica (secondary)
• Kennedy frames Nubian religion as a syncretism in which such Islamic saintly figures overlie the older river beliefs.: J. G. Kennedy (ed.), Nubian Ceremonial Life: Studies in Islamic Syncretism and Cultural Change (1978) (secondary)