and they lay down to sleep, while Ṭāwūs stood and prayed. A man said to him, “Will you not sleep?” He answered, “Does anyone sleep in the pre-dawn hours?”
Ishāq ibn Abī Bakr informed us, saying: Yūsuf ibn Khalīl informed us; Abū al-Makārim al-Labbān informed us; Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād informed us; Abū Nuʿaym the ḥāfiẓ informed us; Muḥammad ibn Badr narrated to us; Ḥammād ibn Mudrik narrated to us; ʿUthmān ibn Ṭālūt narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Salām ibn Hāshim—on the authority of al-Ḥurr ibn Abī al-Ḥuṣayn al-ʿAnbarī—said:
“Ṭāwūs passed by a butcher who had just set out a roasted head, and he fainted (1).”
ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bishr al-Raqqī related: “Whenever Ṭāwūs saw those roasted heads, he would skip supper that night.” Maʿmar ibn Sulaymān heard this from him.
Through the same chain to Abū Nuʿaym: al-Ṭabarānī narrated to us, Isḥāq narrated to us, ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us, from Maʿmar, from the son of Ṭāwūs—or someone else—that:
A man was walking with Ṭāwūs when he heard a crow caw and said, “A good omen.” Ṭāwūs replied, “What good—or evil—could there be in that? Do not accompany me,” or he said, “Do not walk with me.”
And—through the chain to ʿAbd al-Razzāq—I heard al-Nuʿmān ibn al-Zubayr al-Ṣanʿānī relate:
Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf, or Ayyūb ibn Yaḥyā, sent Ṭāwūs seven hundred dinars—or perhaps five hundred—and said to the courier, “If the shaykh accepts it from you, the governor will reward you handsomely and clothe you.”
The courier reached Ṭāwūs at al-Janad and pressed him to take the money, but he refused. When Ṭāwūs was momentarily inattentive, the man tossed the purse through a window in the house and left, telling the governor’s people, “He has taken it.”
Later something about Ṭāwūs displeased them, so the governor said, “Send for him and have him return our money.” The messenger came and said, “The money the governor sent you.” He replied, “I have not taken a single coin of it.” The messenger returned, and they realized he was telling the truth. They therefore sent the first courier back again, saying, “The money—”