Miracle 119: The Story of the Custodian of the Shrine

In the year five hundred and one (of the lunar calendar), bread was being sold near the noble shrine of al-Ghary, each Ratl for two-thirds of a Dinar, for forty days. So, the custodians went away to their hometowns to save themselves from the difficulty of increases expenses. There was a man from the custodians called Abu Al-Baqa’a Bin Suweyqat, he was old man and aged one hundred and twenty years. There did not remain anyone from the custodians besides him.

The situation was harmful to him as well, so his wife and his daughters said to him, ‘You will get us killed! Go like the other custodians have gone. Perhaps Allah, will open something we can live by it’.

So, eventually he also agreed to leave. He entered the noble shrine, recited Ziyarat, and prayed Salat, and sat by his noble head.

He said, ‘O Ameerul Momineen (a.s.)! It has been one hundred years for me in your service. I have not separated from you, I have not even seen Hilla, and I have not seen tranquillity, and the hunger has harmed me and my children, and here I am separating from you, your separation is biting upon me. I hereby entrust you to Allah, the Almighty. This is now a separation between me and you’.

Then he went out the animal hirers until he crossed the bridge, and in his company were Wahban Al-Sulamy, and Abu Kurdan, and a group of hirers. They had come from the shrine at night. One of them said to the other, ‘there is a lot of time’. So, they got down, and Abu Al-Baqa’a also got down with them.

Abu Al-Baqa’a slept and saw Ameerul Momineen (a.s.) in his dream, and he (a.s.) said to him: ‘O Abu Al Baqa’a! You have separated from me after this long period? Return to where you were!’

He woke up crying. It was said to him, ‘What makes you cry?’ He narrated the story of the dream to them and returned. When his daughters saw him, they shouted in his face. So, he narrated the story and went and grabbed the keys of the shrine from the cabinet of Abu Abdullah Bin Shahryar Al-Qummi, and sat, as per his habit.

He remained so for three days. During the third day, a man came having a bag on his shoulders, as if he were a pedestrian, to the road of Makkah. He loosened it and extracted clothes from it. He wore these and entered to the noble shrine, and recited Ziyarat, and prayed Salat, and handed over a dinar to him, and said, ‘Get some bread we can have dinner’.

The custodian Abu Al Baqa’a went and came back with bread and milk and dates. He said to him, ‘This is not appropriate for me, but you go with it to your children, they will eat it, and take this other Dinar and buy a chicken and bread for us’. He acquired that for him.

When it was the time for Al-Zohr Salat, he prayed the two Salats and came to his house, and the man was with him. He presented the meal, and they ate, and the man washed his hands and said to me, ‘Bring to me the weights of the gold’. The custodian Abu Al-Baqa’a went to Zayd Bin Waqisa, who was a jeweller.

He took the tray from him which had the weights the gold and weights the silver. The man gather all the weights and placed them in the hand of the scale, even the barley, and rice, and the kernel, and brought out a bag filled with gold, and left from it parallel to the scale, and poured it in the room of the custodian, and he got up, and tightened what was left with him, and changed his clothes.

The custodian said to him, ‘O my master! What shall I do with this weighed foodstuff?’ He said to him, ‘It is for you from the one who said to you: ‘Return to where you were!’’ He said to me, ‘Give the weights back to him, and had you come with more than these weights, I would have given you more’.

The custodian fell down with unconsciousness upon him, and the man went away. The custodian got his daughters married, and built his house, and his state improved to be good’’.¹

Footnotes

1. Behar al-Anwaar, Vol. 42, Chp 129, Trad 8 ↩