They said:
He would sometimes recite Sūrah Ibrāhīm during his sermons, and every night, before he slept, he recited Sūrah al-Kahf. He read it from a tablet that he carried with him wherever he happened to be among the houses of his wives, reciting it once he had lain down in bed—may Allah be pleased with him.

His generosity was of an exceptional order. Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn said, “On occasion al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī would bestow one hundred thousand upon a single person.” Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz said, “Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī once heard a man beside him supplicating Allah to grant him ten thousand dirhams; he went home and sent the amount to him.”

They also related that al-Ḥasan saw a black servant boy eating a loaf of bread: with one bite he fed himself and with the next he fed a dog nearby. Al-Ḥasan asked, “Boy, what moved you to do that?” He replied, “I feel too shy before him to eat and not feed him.” Al-Ḥasan said, “Stay where you are until I return.” He went to the boy’s master, bought him along with the garden in which he worked, set him free, and made the garden his property. The boy said, “My master, I have given the garden as a gift to the One to whom you have given me.”

They said further that he was much given to marriage: no fewer than four free women were ever with him, and he was quick to divorce yet liberal in dowry. It is said that he safeguarded seventy women—others said seven hundred, still others one thousand—and he might contract marriage with four women in one sitting and divorce four. (1)

They narrated that he once divorced two wives in a single day, one from Banū Asad and the other a Fazāriyyah. He sent each of them ten thousand dirhams and a skin-full (2) of honey, and told a servant, “Listen to what each of them says.” The Fazāriyyah said, “May Allah reward him well,” and prayed for him. The Asadiyyah, however, recited:
“A trifling gift from a beloved who departs.”
When the servant reported this, al-Ḥasan took the Asadiyyah back and left the Fazāriyyah. (3)

ʿAlī used to say to the people of Kūfah, “Do not marry your women to him, for he divorces often.” They would reply, “By Allah, O Commander of the Believers, were he to seek our daughters’ hands every day we would marry them to him as he wished, out of love for being connected by marriage to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.”

They also said that he once slept with his wife Khawlah bint Manẓūr al-Fazari—others say Hind bint Suhayl—on the roof of a house (4). The woman tied his leg with her head-veil to the anklet on her own leg. When he awoke and saw this he asked, “What made you do that?” She replied: