Muḥammad ibn Saʿd (1) said: ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad related to us, from Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad, from Zayd ibn Aslam, who said:

A man entered upon al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī in Madīnah while holding a parchment. Al-Ḥasan asked him, “What is that parchment?”

He answered, “It is from Muʿāwiyah; in it he makes promises and issues threats.”

The man said, “Were you not once his equal in power?”

Al-Ḥasan replied, “Indeed. But I feared that the Day of Resurrection might come with seventy thousand, or eighty thousand, or more or less, every one of them with jugular veins spraying blood, all of them pleading before Allah, ‘For what reason was our blood shed?’”

Al-Aṣmaʿī reported, through Sallām ibn Miskīn, from ʿImrān ibn ʿAbd Allāh, who said:

Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī saw in a dream that between his eyes was written, “Say: He is Allah, One” (Qur’an 112:1). He rejoiced at this. When the report reached Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, he remarked, “If he truly saw that vision, then but little of his lifespan remains.” It was only a few days later that al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī died (5).

Abū Bakr ibn Abī al-Dunyā said: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-ʿAtakī and Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān al-ʿIjlī told us, saying: Abū Usāmah narrated to us, from Ibn ʿAwn, from ʿUmayr ibn Isḥāq, who said:

I and another man from Quraysh entered upon al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī. He rose, went into the latrine (makhraj), and then returned, saying, “Just now I spat out a piece of my liver and am turning it over with this stick. I have been given poison many times, yet never have I been given a dose more painful than this.”

He kept saying to that man, “Ask me before you are no longer able to ask.”

The man replied, “I will ask you nothing—may Allah grant you well-being.”

We left him and returned the next day, by which time he had entered the death-throes (sawq) (6).

Then Ḥusayn came and sat by his head and said, “Brother, who is your assailant?”

Al-Ḥasan asked, “Do you intend to kill him?”

Ḥusayn said, “Yes.”

Al-Ḥasan replied, “If the person I suspect is indeed the one responsible, then Allah will be far more severe in vengeance and punishment—in another version: ‘far more powerful and more stringent in chastisement.’ And if it is not he, I would not like you to kill an innocent man on my account.” (7)

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd (8) transmitted the same report from Ibn ʿUlayyah, from Ibn ʿAwn.

Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Wāqidī (9) said: ʿAbd Allāh ibn Jaʿfar narrated to me, from Umm Bakr bint al-Miswar, who said:

Al-Ḥasan had been poisoned several times, and each time he recovered, until the final occasion on which he died—his liver was disintegrating. When he passed away, the women of Banū Hāshim wailed over him for a full month (10).