A Well-Cooked Meal

A dervish came to pray in the mosque and remained there night and day. The Imam asked him, "Don't you eat?" "I do," he replied. "And where do you get your food?" "From the king of the heavens." "Does he send it down to you in a basket?" "Yes."

The Imam then took the dervish to his home, bound his hands and feet, lowered him into a dry well, and returned to his business in the bazaar.

Scene at a Well. Painted ceiling panel, Palermo, 12th century. Click for larger image.

Now, the Imam's wife had prepared an unusually good dinner that day. She was eating it with her maid-servant when visitors knocked at the door. Not wanting to share the food, she quickly hid it in a basket and lowered it by a rope into the well. There it swayed before the eyes of the dervish, and he cried,

"Alhamdulillah!"

Saiyed Ahmed Ibn Idris

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from Serving the Guest: A Sufi Cookbook
Copyright © 1999, 2000
Kathleen Seidel All Rights Reserved
Permission is explicitly granted for educational and non-profit purposes. Please use the credit: Serving the Guest. Copyright 1999, 2000 Kathleen Seidel. Copyright information for previously published material by other authors used by permission, and print sources for images, may be found at http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook.