safe (1); so where is that safety?”

One of the onlookers said, “So I submitted and declared, ‘Allah has decreed: And whoever enters it—then grant him security.’ He thereupon pulled his horse aside and did not utter a word to me (2).”

Al-Simnani was mistaken (3); in his Chronicle he wrote that the man who tore out the Stone was Abū Saʿīd al-Jannānī the Qarmaṭian, whereas it was actually his son Abū Ṭāhir.

It so happened that the amir Ibn Abī l-Sāj once lodged with Abū Saʿīd al-Jannābī (4), who treated him generously. Later, when Ibn Abī l-Sāj marched out to fight him, he sent word: “I owe you a favor, yet you have only five hundred men while I have thirty thousand.”

Ibn Abī l-Sāj then withdrew and asked the envoy, “How many horsemen are with your master?” “Thirty thousand,” the envoy replied. “Not even three,” he answered, and then he summoned a black slave and ordered, “Rip open your belly with this knife.” The man slit himself and his entrails gushed out. He told another, “Drown yourself in the river,” and he did so. To a third he said, “Climb that wall and drop head-first,” and the man died. He then said to the envoy, “If he has followers like these, well and good; otherwise, he has no one with him.”

Al-Qaylawī reports that, when people asked how the Black Stone could be recognized, Ibn ʿUlaym the hadith scholar said, “It will float (5) on water, and fire will not heat it.” They tested it accordingly, after which Ibn ʿUlaym kissed it. Al-Jannābī was astonished, but this report is not sound.

It was also said that a Qarmaṭian climbed up to uproot the waterspout, fell, and died (6).

And that was