The mustamli (dictation attendant) said: “I saw Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad—may Allah have mercy on him—in a dream, so I asked, ‘What has Allah done with you?’ He answered, ‘He has forgiven me.’ I then asked, ‘And what of al-Khujistānī?’ He replied, ‘He is in a casket of fire, and the key is in my hand.’

I heard Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Hānī say: “After Ḥaykān was killed, Abū ʿAmr the mustamli abandoned cotton garments. In winter he would wear a fur cloak without a shirt, and in summer a coarse mantle. He held his study sessions and even spent the night in the ʿĀdamiyyīn Mosque at the head of the alley of al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā in Naysabūr. One day he heard the people saying, ‘Aḥmad al-Khujistānī is approaching.’ The mustamli went out wearing his fur cloak, advanced, seized Aḥmad’s bridle and said, ‘O tyrant! You have slain the Imām, son of an Imām, the scholar, son of a scholar!’ Al-Khujistānī trembled and his mount shied. The foot-soldiers moved forward to strike the mustamli, but al-Khujistānī shouted, ‘Leave him, leave him!’ So the mustamli withdrew and entered the mosque.

Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ added: “I was informed by Abū Ḥātim Nūḥ that al-Khujistānī said, ‘By Allah, I have never feared anyone as I feared the man in the fur cloak, and the moment I looked at him I regretted having set out to kill Ḥaykān.’

I also heard Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ say: ‘We attended the last dictation session of Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad the martyr in the month of Ramaḍān of the year 267 AH—some said (1): it was in Shawwāl. After that, all hadith gatherings were abandoned, inkwells were hidden, so that no one in the city dared walk about carrying an inkwell or even a few hadith folios in his sleeve until the year 270 AH. Then Abū ʿUthmān Saʿīd ibn Ismāʿīl contrived to bring al-Sarī Khuzaymah to Naysabūr and arranged a dictation circle for him in Khān Maḥmish, and he