تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.96.8

13.96.8

In this town we saw no Muslim except one man from Khurāsān who had been left behind on account of his illness, and he travelled with us. We travelled on to the port of Salāwāt — its spelling: with a after the b (with one dot), an unvowelled n, a after the undotted d, an unvowelled r, a after the undotted s, the l and the w, then an alif and a t with two dots above — a small town. From there we travelled through rugged country with much water, where there are many elephants; but they do not harm pilgrims and foreigners, and this is through the blessing of Shaykh Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khafīf, may God have mercy on him, who was the first to open this road to the pilgrimage to the Foot. These infidels used to prevent Muslims from doing so and harm them, and would neither eat with them nor trade with them. But when there happened to Shaykh Abū ʿAbd Allāh what we related in the first journey — the elephants killing his companions, his escaping from among them, and the elephant carrying him on its back — from that time on the infidels came to honour the Muslims, to admit them into their houses and eat with them, and to trust them with their wives and children. To this day they venerate the said shaykh with the utmost veneration and call him 'the Great Shaykh'.