something. He then led them into the Holy Sepulcher and sat down among the deacons⦗1⦘. Because he was dressed in black, they assumed he was one of them. He asked, “When will the lamp be lit?”

They answered, “In four hours.”

“That is too long,” he said.

He pointed with his finger and pronounced, “Allah.” Fire sprang from his hand, igniting the lamp and a thousand others around it, after which the flame withdrew back into his finger.

They asked, “Who are you?”

He replied, “I am a ḥanīf, the least of the ḥanīfs. Would you like me to stay, or shall I leave?” They said, “Whatever you wish.”

He said, “Give these people something.”

So they produced a money-purse⦗2⦘ containing ten thousand dirhams for the poor.

Any tale of this sort—if any part of it is sound—can be explained only by saying that he is served by jinn.

Al-Tanūkhī⦗3⦘ said: Ahmad ibn Yūsuf al-Azraq told me, “I was informed that al-Ḥallāj could go an entire month without eating anything, and this astonished me. There was a bond of friendship between Abū’l-Faraj and Rūḥān the Sufi⦗4⦘, who was a righteous transmitter of hadith. Al-Qaṣrī, al-Ḥallāj’s servant, was married to his sister. I asked him about the matter, and he said, ‘As for what al-Ḥallāj himself did, I do not know how he managed it, but my brother-in-law al-Qaṣrī trained himself gradually until he could refrain from food for fifteen days, more or less.

‘He achieved that by a device that was unknown to me. When he was imprisoned together with the followers of al-Ḥallāj, he divulged it to me and said: “When surveillance (rasad) is placed upon a man and drags on without any of his stratagems being exposed, that surveillance weakens; it keeps on weakening every time his trick remains hidden, until it finally collapses altogether….”’