and further finery. I asked, “Who are you?”
She replied, “I am the world (dunyā).”
I said, “I ask Allah to make you hateful to me.”
She answered, “Yes—if you come to hate dirhams (silver coins) (1).”

Al-Hārith ibn Nabhan narrated the same report from Hārūn ibn Riʿāb, from al-ʿAlāʾ, with similar wording.

Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān al-Ḍubaʿī said: Hishām ibn Ziyād—the brother of al-ʿAlāʾ—told us that al-ʿAlāʾ used to spend the eve of Friday in worship. One Thursday night he fell asleep, whereupon someone seized him by the forelock and said, “Rise, Ibn Ziyād, and remember Allah; He will remember you.” He rose, and the very hairs that had been grasped remained standing until he died (2).

Al-Bukhārī, in his commentary on Sūrah Ḥā Mīm al-Muʾmin regarding the verse, “Do not despair of the mercy of Allah” (Az-Zumar 53), related: Humayd ibn Hilāl narrated from al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Ziyād, who said, “In my sleep I saw the world as an ugly, toothless old woman, arrayed in every kind of ornament and jewel, and people were following her. I asked, ‘Who are you?’ She said, ‘The world…,’ and he recounted the rest of the story (3).”

Abū Ḥātim ibn Ḥibbān states that al-ʿAlāʾ ibn Ziyād died toward the end of al-Ḥajjāj’s governorship, in the year 94 AH.

I read to Isḥāq al-Asadī, who informed us: Yūsuf ibn Khalīl informed us; Abū al-Makārim al-Taymī informed us; Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād informed us; Abū Nuʿaym the ḥāfiẓ narrated to us—Fārūq and Ḥabīb ibn al-Ḥasan, together with others, said: Abū Muslim al-Kashshī informed us; he said: “ʿAmr …”