is the Messenger of Allah?”

They both replied with a single voice: “By Allah, even if this man were to come to us with the sun on his right and the moon on his left, both declaring that he is the Messenger of Allah, we would never say so.”

He therefore ordered that the two of them be slaughtered.

119 – Ibn Khayrūn, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Khayrūn al-Maʿāfirī *

Imām Abū Jaʿfar, Muḥammad ibn Khayrūn al-Maʿāfirī, their client from Córdoba.

One narrator said: “I was sitting with Ibn Abī Khunzir when an elderly shaykh of dignified appearance and humility entered. Ibn Abī Khunzir wept and said, ‘The ruler—meaning ʿUbayd Allāh—has sent word instructing me to trample this man until he dies.’

“He then threw him down, and the black soldiers leapt upon him until he died—because of his jihad and his hatred for ʿUbayd Allāh and his troops.

“It was the accursed al-Marwadhī who had denounced him. When Ibn Abī Khunzir saw how much harm he caused the scholars, he plotted and informed against him, so that ʿUbayd Allāh killed him in the year 300 AH, or shortly thereafter. Oh, what Islam and its people suffered at the hands of ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī (1), the heretic!”

120 – Al-Ḥaṣīrī, Abū Muḥammad Jaʿfar ibn Aḥmad ibn Naṣr **

The authoritative ḥāfiẓ, the proof, the exemplar, Abū Muḥammad Jaʿfar ibn Aḥmad ibn Naṣr al-Naysābūrī, known as al-Ḥaṣīrī, one of the luminaries.

He heard hadith from Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh, Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī, Ismāʿīl ibn Mūsā al-Suddī, Abū Marwān al-ʿUthmānī, Abū Kurayb, and Ibn Abī ʿUmar