A number of people related to me that the vizier al-Sāmirī sent him off by night, mounted on a mule with a packsaddle, to the citadel of Baalbek. From there he was taken on to the Cave of Afqah (1) and finished off inside it: he was left for several days without food and was forced to testify that he had sold all his properties to al-Sāmirī. When he saw death approaching he said, “Let me pray.” He prayed, and Dāwud kicked him from the summit of Shaqīf; he had not reached the ground before his body was in pieces. Another report says that the tail of his robe caught on a crag of the mountain, so they stoned him until he died.
The chief of al-Nayrab (2) said: “Al-Rafīʿ was handed over to me and to the ‘Sword of Vengeance’, Dāwud (3). We brought him to Shaqīf, where there is a spring, and he said, ‘Let me bathe.’ He bathed, prayed, and supplicated, then Dāwud pushed him off, and before he reached the bottom he was already dead. That was at the beginning of the year 642 AH (4).”
85 – Ibn Salām, al-Ḥasan ibn Sālim ibn Salām, the scribe—governor of the city, Najm al-Dīn al-Ḥasan ibn Sālim ibn Salām (5), the scribe. He heard hadith from Yaḥyā al-Thaqafī, Ibn Ṣadaqah, and others.