and that you declare us free of any liability for what we have done.’ The owner of the bridge was Ḥumayd ibn al-Akhdar al-Farabrī.

He said to me, ‘Convey my greetings to Abū ʿAbd Allāh and tell him: You are absolved of whatever occurred. All that I possess is a ransom for you. If I were to claim that the matter touched my own person I would be lying; I only wished that you should not feel awkward with me over a single stake or any part of my property.’

I delivered his message, whereupon Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s face lit up and shone with happiness. That very day he read for the visiting students nearly five hundred hadiths and gave three hundred dirhams in charity.

He (the narrator) said: I also heard him say to Abū Maʿshar the Blind, ‘Put me in the clear, Abū Maʿshar.’

Abū Maʿshar asked, ‘Concerning what?’

He replied, ‘One day I narrated a hadith, and when I looked at you I saw that you were pleased with it—you were nodding your head and moving your hand—so I smiled at that.’

Abū Maʿshar said, ‘You are absolved; may Allah have mercy on you, Abū ʿAbd Allāh.’

He (the narrator) said: I once saw him lying on his back in Farabr while he was composing the Book of Tafsīr. He had tired himself that day by producing a large number of hadiths. So I said to him, ‘I hear you say: “I have never recorded (1) anything without knowledge since I first became aware,” so what benefit is there in lying down?’

He answered, ‘We have worn ourselves out today, and this is a frontier post. I feared something might arise from the enemy, so I wanted to rest and gather my strength; for if the enemy should attack us suddenly (2), we would still have some mobility (3).’

He added: He used to go out on horseback to practice archery very often, and to the best of my knowledge, in all the time I was with him I saw his arrow miss the target only twice. On every other occasion he struck the mark and was never outshot.