thousand dirhams with a messenger. The man came in after the ʿAsr prayer while Ibn Rāfiʿ was eating bread with radish.
He set the purse down and said, “The governor has sent this money to you.”
Ibn Rāfiʿ replied, “Take it back, take it back! I have no need of it, for the sun has already touched the tops of the walls (1); it will set in an hour, and I have passed eighty—how much longer shall I live?” So he refused it (2).
Zakariyyā said: Then his son came in and said, “Father, we have no bread for tonight.”
So he sent one of his companions after the messenger to return the money to Ṭāhir, afraid that his son might follow the man and take it.
Zakariyyā added: Sometimes Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ would come out to us in winter wrapped in his quilt.
Aḥmad ibn Salamah said: Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ narrated to us:
“I saw Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal sitting before Yazīd ibn Hārūn in Baghdad with a book by Zuhayr from Jābir in his hand, copying it. I said, ‘Abū ʿAbd Allah, you forbid us to transmit from Jābir, yet you are writing his narrations?’
He answered, ‘We know what we are doing.’”
Al-Ḥākim said: Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar informed us; I heard Aḥmad ibn Salamah say, I heard Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ say:
“I was the one who took Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal to Yazīd ibn Muslim al-Ṣanʿānī—the narrator from Wahb. Both Aḥmad and I stayed with him; the shaykh died, having reached one hundred and thirty-five years.”
Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar ibn Yazīd said: Muḥammad ibn Rāfiʿ narrated to us; I heard ʿAbd al-Razzaq say, I heard Maʿmar say:
“I saw in Yemen a cluster of grapes that was the full load (3) of a grown mule.”