the letter reached Ibn Tahir, he ordered that you and your companions be released.”
He said, “Yes.”
Ahmad ibn Salamah stated, “Ibn Aslam narrated to us; I heard the Reciter say, ‘Complaint and warning do not constitute backbiting.’ ”
Muhammad ibn al-ʿAbbas al-Sultī said, “I heard Ibn Aslam recite:
Indeed the physician, with all his skill and drugs,
Cannot avert a doom once it draws near;
Why then does the doctor die of the very disease
He used to cure in others, year after year?
The healer is gone, the patient is gone, and likewise
The importer, the seller, and the one who would buy. (1)
Ahmad ibn Salamah related: “Muhammad ibn Aslam fell ill while staying in the house of a man from Ṭūs. He said to him, ‘Do not leave me tonight, for Allah’s decree will reach me before dawn. When I die, wait for no one; wash me at once and make the necessary preparations.’
He died halfway through the night.
Then the deputy of the governor, Ṭāhir ibn ʿAbd Allah, arrived and ordered that he be carried to the Sādhiyākh cemetery so that Ṭāhir himself could perform the funeral prayer over him.
The bier was set down as the people were giving the call to the dawn prayer. No one had announced his funeral, nor had any messenger been sent to report his death, yet the crowds gathered in numbers seldom witnessed.
Ṭāhir led the prayer, and he was buried beside Ishaq ibn Rāhawayh.
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Bashānī said, “Muhammad ibn Aslam died with three days remaining of Muharram in the year 242 AH, in Nishapur.”
Al-Hakim said, “I heard Abu al-Naḍr the jurist say, ‘I heard Ibrahim ibn Ismail al-Anbari say…’