The Shaykh Tarqiyya As Hidden Saint

In his investigation of the history of the Jewish folk legend of the thirty-six hidden just men (zaddikim) upon whom rests the fate of the world, Gershom Scholem reviewed, naturally, Genesis 18:18. But he also referred to Rudolf Mach's mention of a similar legend among Muslim pietists (dating to the 10th-11th centuries, C.E.). In the Islamic tale, there are, at any given time, 4,000 friends of God upon the earth who do not know one another. Al-Hujwiri notes that these figures "are not even aware of the special distinction of their rank; invariably they are hidden from themselves and from mankind." Scholem writes: "Still older Islamic sources mention the number of forty [friends of God], who constitute a special category. They live unrecognized by their fellow men while contributing to the continued maintenance of the world through their good deeds. For the present we cannot determine whether this conception originated in a Jewish tradition which had already taken on new form when it penetrated Islamic circles or whether the metamorphosis occurred in Islam and then the tradition returned to Judaism in this new form at an as yet undetermined time. Precisely those Jewish oriental sources which would be most likely to reflect such influence on account of their proximity to Islam afford us no evidence for the presence of this idea. There are just men who conceal their mode of life but nowhere do we find that the continued maintenance of the world depends especially on them." G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, New York: Schocken Books (1971), 254.