Ibn Tāhir said: “One day I was reciting a fascicle to Abū Isḥāq al-Ḥabbāl when a man from my hometown came up and whispered, ‘Your brother has arrived from Syria.’ This was after the Turks had entered Jerusalem and massacred its people. I tried to go on reading, but the lines blurred before me and I could not continue. Abū Isḥāq asked, ‘What is the matter with you?’ I replied, ‘Nothing.’ He insisted, ‘You must tell me,’ so I related the news. He then asked, ‘How long has it been since you last saw your brother?’ I answered, ‘Years.’ ‘Why do you not go to him?’ he said. I replied, ‘Not until I finish this fascicle.’ He exclaimed, ‘How extraordinary is your diligence, people of hadith! The session is concluded—may Allah bless Muhammad,’ and he dismissed the gathering.

“I stayed for a time in Tinnīs with Abū Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥaddād and his peers, and hardship overtook me until nothing remained with me but a single dirham. I needed ink and paper (kāghad) and kept vacillating whether to spend it on ink, on paper, or on bread. Three days passed like this and I had not eaten. At dawn on the fourth day I said to myself, ‘Even if I had paper today, hunger would keep me from writing.’ I therefore put the dirham in my mouth and went out to buy bread—then I swallowed it, and burst out laughing. A friend met me while I was laughing and asked, ‘What makes you laugh?’ I said, ‘Nothing.’ He pressed me, and when I refused to tell him he swore by divorce that I must speak the truth, so I told him. He took me into his house and went to the trouble of preparing food. When we went out for the ẓuhr prayer, some agents of the governor of Tinnīs, Ibn Qādūs, encountered him and asked about me. He said, ‘This is the man.’ One of them said, ‘My master ordered me a month ago to deliver to him every day ten dirhams—worth a quarter dinar—but I forgot.’ He thereupon withdrew three hundred and brought them to me.

He also said: “I was in Baghdad in 467 AH when al-Qāʾim bi-Amr Allāh died and allegiance was given to al-Muqtadī bi-Amr Allāh. Later that same evening we entered the presence of Abū…"