from Khurasan, on the authority of his father, who said:
“I was pursuing knowledge, and wherever I went I always found that Abu Muslim had preceded me there. I became attached to him, and he invited me to his house, serving whatever provisions were available. Afterwards I played chess with him while he kept himself amused, chanting these two lines:
‘Leave me—leave me to the course I have embraced; for whenever I am roused to war, my land will grow too tight for you.
And clad in black iron I shall dispatch against you black battalions that have long awaited my rise.’
Ruʾbah ibn al-ʿAjāj remarked: “Abu Muslim was knowledgeable in poetry.”
Abū Aḥmad al-Julūdī said: Muḥammad ibn Zakawayh narrated to us:
“It has reached us that Abu Muslim, the founder of the dynasty, declared: ‘I donned the cloak of patience, preferred secrecy, allied myself with sorrows and heart-aches, and submitted to destiny and decree until I achieved my aim.’
He then recited:
‘With resolve and concealment I attained what the kings of the Marwānids, though mustered, could not attain.
I kept striking them with the sword till they awoke from a slumber none before them had slept.
I went on pursuing them in their own lands while the people of their realm in Syria lay fast asleep.
Who lets his sheep graze in a land of beasts and falls asleep will find the lion tending his flock.’ (1)
This poem is also transmitted by al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAqīl al-Tabiʿī, from his father.
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Farrāʾ said: I heard ʿAlī ibn ʿAththām say:
Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāʾigh observed: “When I saw the Arabs and their doings, I feared that Allah had no further purpose for them; but when He set Abu Muslim upon them, I hoped that Allah still had a purpose for them.”
The author comments: Abu Muslim was a tremendous scourge upon the Arabs of Khurasan, for he destroyed them by the sword.
Aḥmad ibn Sayyār states in his History of Marw: al-Ḥasan ibn Rashīd al-ʿAnbarī narrated to us: I heard Yazīd the Grammarian say:
“Ibrāhīm ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṣāʾigh came to me and said …”