He also composed several books, one of which is a single-volume work entitled Aḥkām al-Murīdīn (Rules for Spiritual Aspirants).

It is said that he used to read the Qur’an, the Torah, the Gospel and the Psalms, and that he understood their exegesis.

When he was asked about tawḥīd (true monotheism), he replied, “It is that returning to your own self and looking at it should be more painful to you than having your neck struck.”

Jaʿfar al-Abharī stated: “Ṭāhir al-Jaṣṣāṣ had three hundred pupils, every one of them counted among the awtād (spiritual pillars).”

Makkī ibn ʿUmar al-Bayyiʿ reports: “I heard Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā say, ‘Ṭāhir fasted for forty days on forty separate occasions. During the last set of forty he subsisted on nothing but millet husks; their dryness caused the skin of his head to peel, his mind became disordered, and I have never seen anyone exert himself in spiritual struggle more than he did.’”

I say: performing these successive forty-day fasts is categorically forbidden, for their consequence is either death from extreme weakness, or madness and confusion, or such dehydration that a person begins to hear voices that have absolutely no reality outside himself, whereupon he imagines that they are a divine address to him(1)—certainly not, by Allah.

Shīrawayh said, “Ṭāhir followed the path of the ahl al-malāmah (those who conceal their devotion by courting blame).”

Ibn Zayrak remarked, “I attended a session in which al-Jaṣṣāṣ was mentioned; some attributed him to zandaqa (heresy), while others attributed him to maʿrifah (gnosis).”

It was also said that he had abandoned meat and bread. When questioned about this he replied, “If I eat them, my lower self urges me to kiss a handsome, beardless youth.”

(1) Footnote marker preserved as in the source.