of Ardashīr. He caught her fancy and she fell in love with him, so she sent him a message proposing that he marry her and that she would, in return, open the fortress for him. It was said, however, that a talisman protected the gate and it could not be opened unless a pigeon were taken, its feet dyed with the first menstrual blood of a blue-eyed virgin, and then released so that it alighted on the ramparts, at which point the spell would be broken.

This was carried out; the stronghold was taken. When Ardashīr saw that she had surrendered her father—despite the great honour he had shown her—he said, “You will be all the quicker to betray me.” He bound her braids to a horse’s tail, urged the animal forward, and she was killed (1).

Al-Battānī died in 317 AH.

290 – Muḥammad ibn Zabbān ibn Ḥabīb, Abū Bakr al-Ḥaḍramī *
An imam, exemplar, and authoritative scholar, Abū Bakr al-Ḥaḍramī was the chief hadith transmitter of Egypt.

He studied under: his father, Muḥammad ibn Rumḥ, Abū al-Ṭāhir ibn al-Sarraḥ, Zakariyyā ibn Yaḥyā—the secretary of al-ʿUmari—al-Ḥārith ibn Miskīn, and their contemporaries.

Those who transmitted from him include: Abū Saʿīd ibn Yūnus, Ṭāhir ibn Aḥmad al-Khallāl, Abū Bakr ibn al-Muqriʾ, Ibrāhīm ibn Aḥmad—the chief of the muezzins—Abū ʿAdī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Imām, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAmmār al-Dimyāṭī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Ikhmīmī, and many others.

Ibn Yūnus relates that he told him, “I was born in the year 225 AH.”