He reclined, saying:
“A matter the Prophet ﷺ, Abu Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān and ʿAlī never knew—yet you claim to have discovered it! Glory be to Allah! They supposedly knew it, yet never summoned the people to it. Could you not be satisfied with what sufficed them?”

He then ordered the shaykh’s fetters removed and awarded him 400 dinars. From that moment Ibn Abī Duʾād fell from his favour, and thereafter he put no one to the test.

Its chain of transmission contains unknown narrators, and Allah knows best how sound it is.

A similar account was related by Aḥmad ibn al-Sindī the smith, from Aḥmad ibn al-Mumtaniʿ, from Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAlī al-Hāshimī, from al-Muhtadī bi-Allah.

Ṣāliḥ said: I was present while he was seated and petitions were being read aloud to him; he would order them signed, and that pleased me. I kept looking at him until he noticed and looked back at me, so I lowered my gaze.

He said to me, “There is something on your mind that you would like to say.”

When the session dispersed I was ushered into his private audience. He asked, “Will you say what crossed your mind, or shall I say it for you?”

I replied, “Commander of the Believers, as you think best.”

He said, “Then I will say: you admired what you saw of us and said to yourself, ‘What sort of caliph is ours if he does not say, “The Quran is created”?’ ”

A grave thought confronted me, so I said to myself, “O soul, can you die before your appointed time?” and I answered, “Yes.”

He bowed his head and then said, “Listen: by Allah, you shall hear the truth.”

Relief came over me, and I said, “Who is more entitled to the truth than you, when you are the Caliph of the Lord of all worlds (1)?”

He said, “I went on declaring that the Quran is created for a time during the days of al-Wāthiq, until a shaykh from Adana was brought in, shackled. He was a handsome old man with a noble white beard. I saw al-Wāthiq become shy before him and soften toward him, drawing him ever closer until he had brought him near…"