item after item, wherever he happened to be, so that he might subsist on it. I once heard him say, “My father’s allowance was slow in reaching me, and I was driven to rip the two cuffs off my shirt and sell them.”

I (the narrator) add: He gathered the various chains of transmission for the ḥadith of Ghadir Khumm in four sizeable volumes. I saw half of that work and was amazed at the breadth of its reports, to the point that I became certain of the event’s historical reality.

Someone said to Ibn Jarir, “Abu Bakr ibn Abi Dawud is dictating traditions on the merits of ʿAli.” He replied, “That is just a watchman’s cry of ‘Allāhu Akbar.’ ”

A dispute had broken out between Ibn Jarir and Ibn Abi Dawud, and each of the two failed to treat the other with justice. The Ḥanbalīs rallied behind Abu Bakr ibn Abi Dawud, so they grew numerous and heckled Ibn Jarir, harming him, until he confined himself to his house. We seek refuge in Allah from the sway of passion.

Ibn Jarir was a man of consummate excellence. He was censured for what was said to be a slight leaning toward Shīʿism, yet we have seen nothing from him but good. Some have reported that he allowed wiping over the feet in wudūʾ, but we have not found this opinion in his writings.

Abu Jaʿfar’s compositions are marked by eloquence and fine expression. In his book The Precious Etiquettes and Commendable Character he writes:

“Regarding the clarification of the state that every servant must keep in view when performing any act for Allah: there is no circumstance in which a believer finds himself but that the enemy assigned to him is actively calling him to his own path and lying in wait for him along the straight paths of his Lord, turning him away from them, just as he said to his Lord—exalted be His remembrance—when he was granted respite: ‘I will surely sit in ambush for them on Your straight path; then I will come at them from before them and from behind them’ (Q 7:16–17). He hopes thereby that his conjecture about them will prove true, for he also said to his Lord: ‘If You defer me until the Day of Resurrection, I will surely seize most of their descendants, except a few’ (Q 17:62).

“It is therefore incumbent on every intelligent person to exert himself in proving that assumption false, in disappointing the enemy’s hope and frustrating his effort to subjugate him. Nothing that a servant can do is more hateful to Satan than obeying his Lord and disobeying him; and nothing is more pleasing to him than the servant’s disobedience to his Lord and compliance with Satan’s command.”