He then said to her:
“I have married you to my son Sulayman—the dearest of my children to me—who is now residing in Naysabur. It is only natural that some disagreement may arise between a wife and her husband, or that she might find fault with something he does. I have already advised him to look after you, but whenever anything of that sort befalls you, fast for the day, go up to the roof, stand upon ashes, take your evening meal there with a little salt, face my direction, and mention whatever you find objectionable, for I both hear and see.”

She related: “One night I was asleep and suddenly he was upon me. I woke up in fright, protesting, and he said, ‘I only came to wake you for the prayer.’

“When morning came—and his daughter was with me—he came downstairs. His daughter said, ‘Prostrate to him.’ I replied, ‘Is anyone to be prostrated to other than Allah?!’ He overheard me and said, ‘Yes: a god in heaven and a god on earth.’

“He then summoned me, put his hand inside his sleeve and brought it out filled with musk. He gave it to me, saying, ‘This is but dust; keep it among your perfumes.’

“On another occasion he said, ‘Lift up the mat and take whatever you like.’ I lifted it and found gold dinars spread beneath it, filling the entire house; what I saw left me astonished. (1)”

When al-Hallaj came into Hamid’s custody, Hamid zealously set about tracking down his followers. He arrested Haydara, al-Simmari, Muhammad ibn ʿAli al-Qunnaʾi, Abu al-Mughith al-Hashimi, and Ibn Hammad. He also raided al-Hallaj’s house and seized numerous notebooks, some written in gold ink and lined with silk.

Hamid said to him, “Did I not once apprehend you in Wasit, where on one occasion you claimed to be the Mahdi and on another that you were merely calling people to the worship of Allah? How then have you now gone on to claim divinity?”

Those books contained astonishing letters he had sent to his emissaries in the various regions—