Anecdotes of Rabe’a

One night Rabe’a was praying in the hermitage when she was overcome by weariness and fell asleep. So deeply was she absorbed that, when a reed from the reed-mat she was lying on broke in her eye so that the blood flowed, she was quite unaware of the fact.
A thief entered and seized her chaddur. He then made to leave, but the way was barred to him. He dropped the chaddur and departed, finding the way now open. He seized the chaddur again and returned to discover the way blocked. Once more he dropped the chaddur. This he repeated seven times over; then he heard a voice proceeding from a corner of the her- mitage.

“Man, do not put yourself to such pains. It is so many years now that she has committed herself to Us. The Devil himself has not the boldness to slink round her. How should a thief have the boldness to slink round her chaddur? Be gone, scoundrel! Do not put yourself to such pains. If one friend has fallen asleep, one Friend is awake and keeping watch.”

Two notables of the Faith came to visit Rabe’a, and both were hungry. “It may be that she will give us food,” they said to each other. “Her food is bound to come from a lawful source.” When they sat down there was a napkin with two loaves laid before them. They were well content. A beg- gar arrived just then, and Rabe’a gave him the two loaves. The two men of religion were much upset, but said nothing. After a while a maidservant entered with a handful of warm bread.

“My mistress sent these,” she explained. Rabe’a counted the loaves. There were eighteen. “Perhaps it was not this that she sent me,” Rabe’a remarked. For all that the maidservant assured her, it profited nothing. So she took back the loaves and carried them away. Now it so happened that she had taken two of the loaves for herself. She asked her mistress, and she added the two to the pile and returned with them. Rabe’a counted again, and found there were twenty loaves. She now accepted them.

“This is what your mistress sent me,” she said. She set the loaves before the two men and they ate, marveling. “What is the secret behind this?” they asked her. “We had an appetite for your own bread, but you took it away from us and gave it to the beggar. Then you said that the eighteen loaves did not belong to you. When they were twenty, you accepted them.”

“I knew when you arrived that you were hungry,” Rabe’a replied. “I said to myself, How can I offer two loaves to two such notables? So when the beggar came to the door I gave them to him and said to Almighty God, ‘O God, Thou hast said that Thou repayest ten- fold, and this I firmly believed. Now I have given two loaves to please Thee, so that Thou mayest give twen- ty in return for them.’ When eighteen were brought me, I knew that either there had been some misappropria- tion, or that they were not meant for me.”
One day Rabe’a’s servant girl was making an onion stew; for it was some days since they had cooked any food. Finding that she needed some onions, she said,

“I will ask of next door.”
“Forty years now,” Rabe’a replied, “I have had a covenant with Almighty God not to ask for aught of any but He. Nevermind the onions.”
Immediately a bird swooped down from the air with peeled onions in its beak and dropped them into the pan.
“I am not sure this is not a trick,” Rabe’a comment- ed.

And she left the onion pulp alone, and ate nothing but bread.

Rabe’a had gone one day into the mountains. She was soon surrounded by a flock of deer and mountain goats, ibexes and wild asses which stared at her and made to approach her. Suddenly Hasan of Basra came on the scene and, seeing Rabe’a, moved in her direc- tion. As soon as the animals sighted Hasan, they made off all together, so that Rabe’a remained alone. This dismayed Hasan.

“Why did they run away from me, and associated so tamely with you?” he asked Rabe’a.
“What have you eaten today?” Rabe’a countered. “A little onion pulp.” “You eat their fat,” Rabe’a remarked. “Why then
should they not flee from you?”