Allah! A man unanimously acclaimed for his asceticism—yet this is how he lives! I yearn to see him.”

He therefore went to the Harbiyya quarter, saw him, and the shaykh said, “Glory be to Allah! A man whom people hold up as an exemplar of renunciation objects to Allah’s workings, when nothing here is forbidden or blameworthy.”

The man let out a sob and wept (1).

Abū Naṣr ibn al-Ṣabbāgh, the jurist, said: “I was in the company of Ibn al-Qazwīnī when Abū Bakr ibn al-Raḥabī entered and asked, ‘Master, which impulse of my soul should I contradict?’

He replied, ‘If you are a murīd (spiritual aspirant), then yes; but if you are an ʿārif (realized knower), then no.’

I left deep in thought, feeling I had not endorsed his answer. That night I saw in a dream—as a matter that alarmed me weighed upon me—someone saying, ‘This is because of Ibn al-Qazwīnī.’ (2)”

Abū al-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Samīʿ al-Hāshimī narrated to me from ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Ṣaḥrāwī, the ascetic: “I was reciting to al-Qazwīnī when a man arrived with his face covered. The shaykh sprang up, shook his hand, and sat before him for a while. I asked my companion, ‘Who is that?’ He said, ‘Do you recognize him? That is the Commander of the Faithful, al-Qādir billah.’”

ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Amīn told us: “I saw the king Abū Kālijār (3) standing, while Abū al-Ḥasan motioned to him to sit, but he would not.”

ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭarrāḥ, the agent, related: “I saw the king Abū Ṭāhir ibn Būyah standing before the shaykh Abū al-Ḥasan. He signalled him to sit, yet he refused.”

Ibn al-Mujallī then listed some of his karāmāt (miraculous favors): among them, that he was present at ʿArafah while in Baghdad, and that he went to Mecca, performed the circumambulation, and returned the very same night.

Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Khallāl narrated to us; Jaʿfar al-Hamdānī narrated to us; al-Silafī narrated