—the vizier?’
I answered, ‘Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad.’
He replied, ‘Then we are finished, by Allah.’

Al-Ḥallāj was brought out, seated on a mule, and placed among a detachment of constables while Ḥāmid’s pages rode around him until they delivered him. He spent the night in the house of Ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, whose men stood guard around the chamber.

At dawn al-Ḥallāj was led into the spacious courtyard of the tribunal, and the executioner was ordered to flog him. A great crowd assembled. He received a full 1,000 lashes without so much as a groan—only when the count reached six hundred did he say to Ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, ‘Summon me to you, for I have advice equal in worth to the conquest of Constantinople.’

Muḥammad replied, ‘I have been warned that you will say things even graver than that, and there is no way to suspend the beating.’

His hand was then cut off, followed by his foot; next his head was severed, and his body was burned.

I was present at that moment, mounted on horseback, while the corpse was being turned over the embers. The head was displayed in Baghdad for two days, after which it was taken to Khurāsān and paraded about.

His followers continued to assure one another that he would return after forty days.

That same year the Tigris overflowed to an exceptional height, and his disciples claimed it was because his ashes had mingled with the water.

Some alleged that the man executed had been an enemy of al-Ḥallāj upon whom his likeness was cast.

Others maintained that on that very day, after his killing, they had seen him riding a donkey on the Nahrawān road, saying, ‘Perhaps you are like those cattle who imagined that I am the one who was beaten and killed.’

Still others asserted that an animal had been transformed into his form.

A group of booksellers was then summoned and made to swear that they would neither sell nor purchase any of al-Ḥallāj’s writings. (1)