of the two blessings is greater: that He guided me to Islam, or that He kept me safe from these deviant impulses? (1)

I said: meaning such aberrations as Rafidism, Qadarism, and Jahmism.

Yahya ibn Sulaym reported: ʿAbd al-Wahhab ibn Mujahid said, “I was sitting with my father when his son Yaʿqub entered and said, ‘Dear father, some of our companions claim that the faith of the inhabitants of heaven and the inhabitants of earth is exactly the same.’

He replied, ‘My son, those are not my companions. May Allah never place someone who is immersed in sins on a par with one who has no sin.’ (2)

With a sound chain it is related from Mujahid that he said: “I was attending a man’s funeral when I heard a man say to the deceased’s wife, ‘Do not precede me with your soul.’ She answered, ‘You have already been outstripped.’

I add: Mujahid has statements and peculiarities in scholarship and Qurʾanic exegesis that are rejected. We have been informed that he travelled to Babylon and asked its governor to show him Harut and Marut.

He said, ‘So the governor sent a Jew with me. We reached a pit-furnace in the ground, and the Jew uncovered it for us; there they were, hanging upside-down. I declared, “I believe in the One who created you both—strike me!” We both lost consciousness, the Jew and I, and after a while we regained our senses. The Jew then reproached me, saying, “You nearly destroyed us.”’ (3)

Abu ʿUmar al-Dareer said: Mujahid died in 100 AH.

I say: This is an anomalous view, for Mujahid lived to see ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz die.

Abu Nuʿaym said: Mujahid died while in prostration, in 102 AH. (4)

The same date was recorded by al-Haytham ibn ʿAdī, al-Madaʾini, and others.

Hammad al-Khayyat, Abu ʿUbayd, and a number of scholars said: He died in 103 AH.