a cucumber. He said to me, “In a place and at a time like this?” I answered, “It was just a passing fancy.” An hour later he asked, “Are you still craving it?” “Yes,” I replied. We then walked to a snow-covered hill; he plunged his hand into it and brought out a fresh green cucumber, which I ate.

Ḥāmid shouted, “You lie, you son of a hundred thousand adulteresses! Smash his jaw.” The pages rushed at him while he cried, “Isn’t this what we feared?” He was taken away, and Ḥāmid the vizier went on to speak about a group of practitioners of the nīrangāt (1)—illusionist tricks—who would bring forth figs and similar fruit of a morning, but when someone held the fruit and tried to eat it, it would turn into dung (2).

I said, “Ḥāmid is right; this is the work of the masters of magic and sīmiyāʾ (occult arts). Their power can even reach the point where a man eats dung without sensing its taste.”

Ibn Bākūyah said: Abū ʿAbd Allāh ibn Mufliḥ narrated to us; Ṭāhir ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Tustarī narrated: “I was amazed by al-Hallāj’s affair, so I kept looking for stratagems, learning the nīrangiyyāt in order to discover what he was really about. One day I entered his presence, greeted him, and sat for a while. He said, ‘O Ṭāhir, do not weary yourself. What you see and hear is the action of certain beings, not my own doing. Do not suppose it to be a saintly miracle or sleight-of-hand.’”

‘The action of certain beings’—he meant the jinn.

Al-Tanūkhī said: My father related to us; I heard Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Azraq say: When al-Hallāj arrived in Baghdad he beguiled a host of commoners and notables alike. His hopes rested most strongly with the Rāfiḍīs, for he had entered upon their path, and he began corresponding with Abū Sahl ibn Nūbakht