and the man stood up, healthy and clear-sighted; the whole town was thrown into turmoil and they crowded round al-Hallāj. He slipped away and departed, while the man who had been cured remained for several months. Then he said to them, “It is a duty I owe to God—now that He has restored my limbs—that I devote myself exclusively to worship and take up residence on the frontier. I place you in God’s care.”

So one person gave him 1,000 dirhams, saying, “Wage jihad with these on my behalf.” Another handed him 100 dinars and said, “Use these on a campaign.” This one gave him money and that one gave him money, until he had amassed thousands of dinars and dirhams. He then caught up with al-Hallāj and divided the proceeds with him.

Al-Tanūkhī said: My father told us: “Among al-Hallāj’s impostures was that, whenever he planned a journey and knew that informers would be tailing him and stirring up trouble, he would first send on ahead some of his followers who were in on the secret. They would go into the desert and bury cakes, sugar, roasted barley flour, and dried fruit, marking each cache with a stone. When the party later set out and fatigue overtook them, his companions would say, ‘At such-and-such an hour we shall need provisions.’ Al-Hallāj would withdraw, make a show of praying, then go straight to the spot and produce the very stores that had been buried.”

A great many people related this to me. They also said that he would sometimes go out to the orchards of the town, having first sent someone to bury hot falūdhaj (a pudding) wrapped in thin bread and hot fish likewise wrapped in thin bread. When he went out, the very person who had buried the food would immediately request it of him, and al-Hallāj would bring it forth.

Ibn Bākūyah relates: I heard Muḥammad ibn Khafīf say: I heard Abū Yaʿqūb al-Nahrjūrī say: “Al-Hallāj entered Mecca with four hundred men. Each of the Sufi shaykhs took charge of a group of them. At sunset I came to him and said, ‘Come, let us break the fast.’ He replied, ‘We shall eat on the summit of Abū Qubays.’ So we climbed the mountain, and when we had eaten al-Ḥusayn said, ‘We have eaten nothing sweet!’ I said, ‘Have we not just eaten dates?’ He answered (1), ‘I want something that fire has touched,’ whereupon he wandered off and took