to Ḥammād ibn Salamah; summon him for me, for I would like him to be here.’

Then he said, ‘Prompt me with the words: la ilaha illa Allah (there is no deity but Allah).’ So I began prompting him.

Ḥammād arrived in haste, barefoot, wearing nothing but a waist-wrapper. He entered while Sufyān was unconscious, kissed him between the eyes, and said, ‘May Allah bless you, Abū ʿAbd Allah.’

Sufyān opened his eyes and said, ‘Welcome, my brother.’ He then added, ‘O Ḥammād, be on your guard and beware of this peril…,’ and he spoke at length—a passage so long that my failing eyesight can no longer read it.

Al-Ḥākim transmitted this report from Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd al-Rāzī, from his own autograph. He said: ‘Abū Saʿīd Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shaybānī narrated to us; Muḥammad ibn Ḥassān al-Samtī narrated to us; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī…’ and he mentioned the story. This chain of transmission is obscure.

Among the accounts is that the ruler entered upon Sufyān, kissed him between the eyes, and said, ‘Allow me to shroud him.’ We replied, ‘He instructed that he be wrapped in the very clothes he was wearing.’ Even so, the ruler later shrouded him in a winding-sheet worth sixty dinars—some assessed it at eighty.

Muḥammad ibn Sahl ibn ʿAskar reported: ʿAbd al-Razzāq told us that when Abū Jaʿfar set out for Mecca he dispatched the carpenters, saying, ‘If you see Sufyān al-Thawrī, crucify him.’ The carpenters came, erected the timber, and a proclamation was made, while Sufyān’s head lay in the lap of al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ and his feet in the lap of Ibn ʿUyaynah. They said to him, ‘Abū ʿAbd Allah, fear Allah; do not give our enemies cause to rejoice.’ He stepped up to the curtains of the Kaʿbah, grasped them, and said, ‘I disavow him if Abū Jaʿfar ever enters here.’ Abū Jaʿfar died before reaching Mecca. When Sufyān was informed of this, he said nothing.

This is an established mark of divine honor. Al-Ḥākim heard it from Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Muzakkī, who said, ‘I heard al-Sarrāj relate it from him.’