“If you are truthful in what you claim,
then name for us a forefather beyond the fourth.” (1)

“And if you wish to verify the words you have uttered,
trace your own lineage for us, as al-Ṭāʾiʿ did.

Otherwise, leave all pedigrees veiled
and join us in the all-embracing human ancestry;

for the lineages of the sons of Hāshim
are beyond the reach of any hopeful pretender.” (2)

He ascended the pulpit on another occasion and found a slip of paper that read:

“We have accepted oppression and tyranny,
but never unbelief and stupidity.

If you have indeed been given knowledge of the unseen,
then tell us who wrote this note.”

Ibn Khallikān then remarked: that was because they claimed knowledge of hidden matters, and there are many well-known reports about them in this regard. (3)

During al-ʿAzīz’s reign Aleppo, Hama, and Homs were opened to him.
Abū al-Dhawwād Muḥammad ibn al-Musayyab had the Friday sermon in Mosul delivered in his name and inscribed his name on the banners and the coinage in the year 383; the sermon was likewise given for him in Yemen, in Syria, and in the cities of the Maghrib. (4)

The realm of this Rāfiḍī was far larger than that of the Commander of the Believers, al-Ṭāʾiʿ ibn al-Muṭīʿ the ʿAbbāsid.

Al-Musbihī (5) said: “In the year eighty, the congregational mosque of Cairo was founded.” (6)