So we opened the sails, and Allah commanded the wind to change, and the sails were filled so suddenly that the crew had no time to untie the rope from the stake and had to chop it off instead and we set off with a goodly wind. The Shaykh said, ‘O blessed Mismar, unfurl the sails.’ He said, Are we going back to Cairo, sir?’ He replied, ‘We are continuing on our way, Allah willing.’ The captain said, ‘This wind will only bear us back to Cairo before the day is out, and in any case is too strong to sail in.’ The Shaykh said, ‘Unfurl the sails with the blessing of Allah.’ Then he asked for the captain of the ship, and asked him his name. The Shaykh slept through the middle of the day, and then rose and recited this Litany. One of the pilgrims with us said, ‘How could the Shaykh say he was commanded to perform the pilgrimage this year, when it is already too late? When is this journey going to end?’ We remained there for around a week, the hills of Cairo still within our sights. After two or three days the wind changed so that it was blowing against us, so we made berth on the Nile shore in an uninhabited place. He said, ‘We shall board it.’ So we boarded it and set out from Cairo. He said, ‘I have been commanded to perform the pilgrimage this year, so find me a vessel on the Nile to take me across Upper Egypt.’ They searched for a vessel and found only a ship belonging to Christians on which was an elderly Christian man and his sons. The Shaykh decided to set out from Cairo to perform the pilgrimage, a little while after the main pilgrimage party had set out.
The righteous Shaykh Abu al-Aza’im Madi ibn Sultan (may Allah have mercy on him) told us in the city of Tunis (may Allah watch over it), as did the righteous and blessed Shaykh Sharaf al-Din, the Shaykh’s son, in the city of Damanhur al-Wahsh in Egypt, in the year 715 AH:
Muhammad Ibn Abi Al-Qasim Ibn al-Sabbagh in Durrat al-Asrar wa Tuhfat al-Abrar relates how Hizbul Bahr came into existence:
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