He said, “I shall draw you out from among them as effortlessly as a hair is drawn from dough, and I possess words that cut what no spear can pierce.” Then he stuck out his tongue and tapped it against his nose—like the tongue of a serpent with a black spot at its tip—after which he tapped it against his chin. (1)

Yaḥyā ibn Ayyūb narrated to us—ʿUmārah ibn Ghaziyyah, from Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Taymī, from Abū Salamah—that Ḥassān said, “By Him Who sent you with the truth, I shall tear them apart with this tongue of mine.” He then extended his tongue; it looked like the tongue of a snake. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “I have ties of kinship among them. Go to Abū Bakr, for he is the most knowledgeable of Quraysh about its genealogies; he will sift out my lineage for you.” Ḥassān replied, “By Him Who sent you with the truth, I shall separate you—and your lineage—from them as one pulls a hair from dough.” He then lampooned them, and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “You have brought healing and found healing. (2)”

Muḥammad ibn al-Sāʾib ibn Barakah, on the authority of his mother, related that she once circumambulated the Kaʿbah with ʿĀʾishah while other women were with them. They began to speak ill of Ḥassān, so she said, “Do not revile him. The sentence Allah pronounced—‘It is they for whom there is a painful punishment’—has already overtaken him, and he has gone blind. By Allah, I hope Allah will admit him to Paradise because of the lines he recited to Abū Sufyān ibn al-Ḥārith:

‘You lampooned Muhammad, and I replied on his behalf—
With Allah lies the recompense for that.

My father, his father, and my honour
Are a shield protecting Muhammad’s honour from you.

Do you satirize him when you are no equal to him?
The worst of you would ransom the better of you.’ (3)