yet you refuse this. The argument in this matter is such and such.’

He said, ‘By Allah, I wish that, on the day I appeared before al-Ma’mūn, I had known this as you do, even at the cost of a third of the reports I transmit.’

He then looked at Yahyā ibn Ma‘īn, who was with him, and said to him, ‘I say the same as you.’

Zuhayr said to me, ‘Then teach my son, for he is young.’

I met with him privately in the mosque and taught him this, then left.”

Al-Hākim said:

“Al-Husayn ibn al-Fadl al-Bajalī, the companion of ‘Abd al-‘Azīz al-Makkī, was foremost in his knowledge of kalām (theological disputation).”
هـ) .

I say:

This account has undergone alteration, if its underlying story is authentic. Zuhayr ibn Harb, Yahyā ibn Ma‘īn, and others like them who were subjected to interrogation during the Inquisition did not meet al-Ma’mūn, nor did he debate with them. Rather, he went to the frontier at Tarsus and wrote to his deputy in Baghdad, Ishāq ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Mus‘ab, instructing him to interrogate the people. They refused to give the required answer, so he wrote him a second, more severe letter, ordering the execution of the two judges, Bishr ibn al-Walīd and ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn Ishāq, if they did not give the required answer, and ordering that any scholars who did not do so be put in chains. Seven refused to give the required answer, among them: