Muhammad & Muezza

One day Muhammad was awoken by the sound of the muezzin calling the people to prayer. He arose and began to clothe himself, when at last he went to put on his robe he discovered his cat, Muezza, fast asleep on the sleeve. Rather than wake and disturb her, he found a pair of scissors and carefully cut off the sleeve, leaving the cat sleeping peacefully. He put on the robe with the missing sleeve and rushed off to join the others at the mosque. While at prayer, several people noticed the prophet with the missing sleeve and commented quietly among themselves about his attire, some regarding it shameful for him to appear in public looking so careless and disheveled. Upon returning from prayers, Muhammad was greeted by Muezza, who bowed in gratitude for his consideration in allowing her to rest undisturbed, and he then stroked his beloved cat three times.

Fatima the Spinner and the Tent

Once in a city in the Farthest West there lived a girl called Fatima. She was the daughter of a prosperous spinner. One day her father said to her: “Come, daughter; we are going on a journey, for I have business in the islands of the Middle Sea. Perhaps you may find some handsome youth in a good situation whom you could take as a husband.”

They set off and traveled from island to island, the father doing his trading while Fatima dreamt of the husband who might be hers. One day, however, they were on the way to Crete when a storm blew up, and the ship was wrecked. Fatima, only half-conscious, was cast up on the seashore near Alexandria. Her father was dead, and she was utterly destitute.

She could only remember dimly her life until then, for her experience of the shipwreck, and her exposure in the sea, had utterly exhausted her.

While she was wandering on the sands, a family of cloth-makers found her. Although they were poor, they took her into their humble home and taught her their craft. Thus it was that she made a second life for herself, and within a year or two she was happy and reconciled to her lot. But one day, when she was on the seashore for some reason, a band of slave-traders landed and carried her, along with other captives, away with them.

Although she bitterly lamented her lot, Fatima found no sympathy from the slavers, who took her to Istanbul and sold her as a slave.

Her world had collapsed for the second time. Now it chanced that there were few buyers at the market. One of them was a man who was looking for slaves to work in his wood yard, where he made masts for ships. When he saw the dejection of the unfortunate Fatima, he decided to buy her, thinking that in this way, at least, he might be able to give her a slightly better life than if she were bought by someone else.

He took Fatima to his home, intending to make her a serving maid for his wife. When he arrived at the house, however, he found that he had lost all his money in a cargo which had been captured by pirates. He could not afford workers, so he, Fatima and his wife were left alone to work at the heavy labor of making masts.

Fatima, grateful to her employer for rescuing her, worked so hard and so well that he gave her her freedom, and she became his trusted helper. Thus it was that she became comparatively happy in her third career.

One day he said to her: “Fatima, I want you to go with a cargo of shops’ masts to Java, as my agent, and be sure that you sell them at a profit.”


She set off, but when the ship was off the coast of China, a typhoon wrecked it, and Fatima found herself again cast up on the seashore of a strange land. Once again she wept bitterly, for she felt that nothing in her life was working in accordance with expectation. Whenever things seemed to be going well, something came and destroyed all her hopes.

“Why is it”, she cried out, for the third time, “that whenever I try to do something it comes to grief? Why should so many unfortunate things happen to me?” But there was no answer.
So she picked herself up from the sand, and started to walk inland.

Now it so happened that nobody in China had heard of Fatima, or knew anything about her troubles. But there was a legend that a certain stranger, a woman, would one day arrive there, and that she would be able to make a tent for the Emperor. And, since there was as yet nobody in China who could make tents, everyone looked upon the fulfillment of this prediction with the liveliest anticipation.

In order to make sure that this stranger, when she arrived, would not be missed, successive Emperors of China had followed the custom of sending heralds, once a year, to all the towns and villages of the land, asking for any foreign woman to be produced at Court.

When Fatima stumbled into a town by the Chinese seashore, it was one such occasion. The people spoke to her through an interpreter, and explained that she would have to go to see the Emperor.

“Lady,” said the Emperor, when Fatima was brought before him, “can you make a tent?”

“I think so,” said Fatima.

She asked for rope but there was none to be had. So, remembering her time as a spinner, she collected flax and made ropes. Then she asked for stout cloth, but the Chinese had none of the kind which she needed. So, drawing on her experience with the weavers of Alexandria, she made some stout tent cloth. Then she found that she needed tent-poles, but there were none in China. So Fatima, remembering how she had been trained by the wood-fashioner of Istanbul, cunningly made stout tent-poles. When these were ready, she racked her brains for the memory of all the tents she had seen in her travels: and lo, a tent was made.

When this wonder was revealed to the Emperor of Chine, he offered Fatima the fulfillment of any wish she cared to name. She chose to settle in China, where she married a handsome prince, and where she remained in happiness, surrounded by her children, until the end of her days.

It was through these adventures that Fatima realized that what had appeared to be an unpleasant experience at the time, turned out to be an essential part of the making of her ultimate happiness.

Fatima the Spinner and the Tent from Tales of the Dervishes by Idries Shah

The Flying Shoe

Every year the followers of the Ba’al Shem Tov celebrated Simhat Torah with wild dancing and singing. For on that day the reading of the Torah is begun anew, and Jews dance with the Torah in their arms.

Then one year his Hasidim noticed that the Ba’al Shem Tov did not join in the dancing, but stood off by himself. He seemed to be strangely somber on that joyful day. Suddenly a shoe flew off the foot of Rabbi Dov Baer as he whirled in the dance, and at that instant the Ba’al Shem Tov smiled.

A little later the Hasidim saw the Ba’al Shem Tov pull a handful of leaves out of his pocket, crush them, and scatter their powder in the air, filling the room with a wonderful scent, like that of Paradise. Then the Ba’al Shem Tov joined in the dancing with great abandon. The Hasidim had never seen him so happy, and they, too, felt possessed by a greater joy than ever before.

Afterward, when they had all caught their breath, one of the Hasidim asked the Ba’al Shem Tov what he had smiled about, after having been so solemn. He replied: “While you were dancing, I went into a trance, and my soul leaped from here into the Garden of Eden. I went there to bring back leaves from the Garden, so that I could scatter them among us, making this the happiest Simhat Torah of all time. I gathered fallen leaves with the greatest pleasure and put them in my pocket. As I did, I noticed that there were scattered fringes of prayer shawls in the Garden, as well as pieces of worn tefillin, from the straps Jews wrap around their arm when they pray. Not only that, but I saw heels and soles and shoelaces, and sometimes even whole shoes. And all of these objects were glowing like so many sparks, even the shoes — for as soon as they entered the Garden of Eden, they began to glow.

“Now I was not surprised to see the fringes and straps, for they come from sacred objects, but I wondered what the shoes were doing there.

“Just then a shoe flew into the Garden of Eden, and I recognized it at once as that of Rabbi Dov Baer.” The Ba’al Shem Tov turned to face him. “Dov, I realized that your love of God was so great that your shoe had flown all the way there. That is when I understood why there were shoes in the Garden of Eden. And that is why I smiled.

“I would have come back to join you at that very moment, but just then I saw two angels in the Garden. They had come to sweep and clean the Garden and to gather those precious, glowing objects.

“I asked the angels what they were going to do with the shoes, and one of them said: ‘These shoes have flown here from the feet of Jews dancing with the Torah. They are very precious to God, and soon the angel Gabriel will make a crown out of them for God to wear on His Throne of Glory.’”
The Ba’al Shem Tov stopped speaking, and all who heard this story that day were filled with awe. Nor was Rabbi Dov Baer’s shoe ever seen again, for it had truly flown to the Garden of Eden.

from Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism by Howard Schwartz