Shaykh begged leave and took his departure, saying to me: ‘Go, for thou art blest.’ On our return to Tirmidh, I asked him what was that place and who was that man. He told me that the place was the Desert of the Israelites (_tíh-i Baní Isrá´íl_) and that the man was the _Quṭb_ on whom the order of the universe depends. ‘O Shaykh,’ I said, ‘how did we reach the Desert of the Israelites from Tirmidh in such a brief time?’ He answered: ‘O Abú Bakr, it is thy business to arrive (_rasídan_), not to ask questions (_pursídan_).’“ This is a mark, not of intoxication, but of sanity. Now I will mention some miracles and stories of the Ṣúfís, and link thereto certain evidence which is to be found in the Book (the Koran). _Discourse concerning their Miracles._ The reality of miracles having been established by logical argument, you must now become acquainted with the evidence of the Koran and the genuine Traditions of the Apostle. Both Koran and Tradition proclaim the reality of miracles and extraordinary acts wrought by saints. To deny this is to deny the authority of the sacred texts. One example is the text, ”_And We caused the clouds to overshadow you and the manna and the quails to descend upon you_” (Kor. ii, 54). If any sceptic should assert that this was an evidentiary miracle (_mu`jizat_) of Moses, I raise no objection, because all the miracles of the saints are an evidentiary miracle of Muḥammad; and if he says that this miracle was wrought in the absence of Moses, although it occurred in his time, and that therefore it was not necessarily wrought by him, I reply that the same principle holds good in the case of Moses, when he quitted his people and went to Mount Sinai, as in the case of Muḥammad; for there is no difference between being absent in time and being absent in space. We are also told of the miracle of Áṣaf b. Barkhiyá, who brought the throne of Bilqís to Solomon in the twinkling of an eye (Kor. xxvii, 40). This cannot have been a _mu`jizat_, for Áṣaf was not an apostle; had it been a _mu`jizat_, it must have been wrought by Solomon: therefore it was a _karámat_. We are told also of Mary that whenever Zacharias went into her chamber he found winter fruits in summer and summer fruits in winter, so that he said: “_‘Whence hadst thou this?’ She answered, ‘It is from God’_” (Kor. iii, 32). Everyone admits that Mary was not an apostle. Furthermore, we have the story of the men of the cave (_aṣḥáb al-kahf_), how their dog spoke to them, and how they slept and turned about in the cave (Kor. xviii, 17). All these were extraordinary acts, and since they certainly were not a _mu`jizat_, they must have been a _karámat_. Such miracles (_karámat_) may be, for example, the answering of prayers through the accomplishment of wishes conceived by one who is subject to the religious law (_ba-ḥuṣúl-i umúr-i mawhúm andar zamán-i taklíf_), or the traversing of great distances in a short time, or the