- structible vital energy. The figure of the Wandering Jew
has undergone more literary elaboration than the figure of Faust, and nearly all of this work belongs to the last century. If the figure is not called Ahasver, still it is there under another name, perhaps as Count of St. Germain, the mysterious Rosicrucian, whose immortality was assured, and whose temporary residence (the land) was equally known.[26] Although the stories about Ahasver cannot be traced back any earlier than the thirteenth century, the oral tradition can reach back considerably further, and it is not an impossibility that a bridge to the Orient exists. There is the parallel figure of Chidr, or "al Chadir," the "ever-youthful Chidher" celebrated in song by Rueckert. The legend is purely Islamitic. The peculiar feature, however, is that Chidher is not only a saint, but in Sufic circles[27] rises even to divine significance. In view of the severe monotheism of Islam, one is inclined to think of Chidher as a pre-Islamitic Arabian divinity who would hardly be officially recognized by the new religion, but might have been tolerated on political grounds. But there is nothing to prove that. The first traces of Chidher are found in the commentaries of the Koran, Buchâri and Tabare and in a commentary to a noteworthy passage of the eighteenth sura of the Koran. The eighteenth sura is entitled "the cave," that is, after the cave of the seven sleepers, who, according to the legend, slept there for 309 years, and thus escaped persecution, and awoke in a new era. Their legend is recounted in the eighteenth sura, and divers reflections were associated with it. The wish-fulfilment idea of the legend
