The Shaykh Who Gasped for Breath

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Shaykh Muhammad ibn Yahya at-Tadhifi al-Hanbali (q.s.) reported that Shaykh Lu’lu’ al-Armani (q.s.) used to speak while having to gasp for breath.  Shaykh Lu’lu’ (q.s.) once said, “When Shaykh Abu al-Khayr ‘Atha’ al-Miswri noticed the intense effort I was making, he thought to himself, ‘To which of the shuyukh is he affiliated with, I wonder?’ 

I knew what he was thinking, so I told him, ‘O ‘Atha’, my own shaykh is Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir, the one who declared, ‘This foot of mine is upon the neck of every awliya’Allah,’ and to whom three hundred and thirteen awliya’ of Allah bowed their heads, on all the horizons of the earth.  At that very moment, seventeen of them were at the Haramayn, while sixty were in Iraq, forty in Persia, thirty in Syria, twenty in Egypt, twenty-seven in the Far West, eleven in Ethiopia, seven at the Dam of Gog and Magog, seven in the Valley of Sri Lanka, forty-seven on Mount Qaf, and twenty-four on the islands of the great encircling ocean.’’”