for indeed the townspeople have become unsettled.

So I conveyed the message, but he rebuked me (1).

Al-Ḥākim said: I heard Abū Saʿīd ibn Abī Bakr relate:

When the controversy over the Kullabiyyah flared up in Nīshāpūr, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj would test the youngsters and would not transmit hadith to the children of the Kullabiyyah. On one occasion he made me stand up in the session and said, “Say: I declare before Allah — Exalted is He — that I disavow the Kullabiyyah.” I replied, “If I say that, my father will not even give me bread to eat.” He laughed and said, “Leave this one be.”

Abū Zakariyyā al-ʿAnbarī reports: I heard Abū ʿAmr al-Khaffāf say to Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj, “If only you would visit the amir and advise him.”

So he went, with Abū ʿAmr present. Abū ʿAmr introduced him, saying, “This is our shaykh and senior; the amir can benefit from his words.”

Al-Sarrāj said, “O amir! The iqāmah used to be pronounced once, and it is still so in the Two Sanctuaries, yet in our grand mosque each phrase is said twice (2) — while the religion itself issued forth from the Two Sanctuaries.”

The amir, Abū ʿAmr, and those present were embarrassed, for they had summoned him about civic affairs. When he left they reproached him, and he replied, “I was ashamed before Allah to ask about worldly matters and neglect matters of religion.”

Abū al-Walīd Ḥassān ibn Muḥammad said: I heard Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Sarrāj exclaim, “Oh, how I grieve for Baghdad!”

He was asked, “What made you leave it?”

He answered, “My brother Ismāʿīl lived there for fifty years. When he died and his bier was raised, I heard a man at the gate …”