The Koran says a servant of God holed a poor family's ship and rebuilt a stranger's wall for free, to save the ship from a king and two orphans' treasure from a town

Surah 18 of the Koran says Moses travelled with "a servant from among Our servants," whom commentators name al-Khidr. They boarded a ship, and the servant made a hole in it. They met a boy, and he killed him. They reached a town whose people refused them food, and he rebuilt a wall that was about to collapse. Moses objected each time, the last time that he could at least have asked for payment. Then the servant explained. "As for the ship, it belonged to some poor people, working at sea," and a king ahead "seizes every good ship by force," so a damaged ship would be left to them. The boy would have burdened his believing parents with transgression. The wall "belonged to two orphan boys in the city, and under the wall was a treasure that belonged to them." Their father had been righteous, and God willed that they reach maturity and recover it. Ibn Kathir cites Ikrimah and Qatadah that the buried treasure was wealth, the view Ibn Jarir chose, and Ibn Abbas that the boys were protected for their father's sake. A. J. Wensinck argued the story came from a Jewish legend of Elijah and Rabbi Joshua ben Levi. Brannon Wheeler and others note that legend is not found in Jewish sources before an 11th-century Hebrew version of an Arabic book by Nissim ibn Shahin of Kairouan.