and fainted, whereupon a Kurdish follower leapt forward and slaughtered the preacher. When the shaykh regained consciousness and saw the preacher writhing in his own blood, he asked, “What is this?” They answered, “What sort of dog is this to make our master the shaykh weep?”

The shaykh’s authority continued to expand until Badr al-Dīn, the ruler of Mosul, grew afraid of him. He resorted to stratagem, captured him, and strangled him in Mosul, fearing the danger he might pose.

There are still ignorant people who believe that Shaykh Ḥasan must return to this world. In his poetry he hinted at heresy, claimed that he had seen the Lord of Might with his very eyes, and his creed was deviant.

He was killed in 644 AH, at the age of fifty-three.

144 – al-Ḥarīrī ʿAlī ibn Abī al-Ḥasan ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥawrānī *

The leading figure among the idle mendicants, Shaykh ʿAlī ibn Abī al-Ḥasan ibn Manṣūr, son of al-Ḥarīrī al-Ḥawrānī, belonged to a clan called Banū al-Rummān.

Birthplace: Busra, where he also died in 645 AH, in Ramadan, having nearly reached ninety.

He arrived in Damascus as a boy, learned to weave Marwazī cloth and mastered the craft; later a debt was claimed of him, and he was imprisoned.

His mother was a Damascene from the line of the emir Musayyab al-ʿUqaylī, and his maternal uncle was a goldsmith,