Ibn al-Kalbi (1) relates that al-Mukhtār asked the family of Jaʿdah ibn Hubayrah for the chair on which ʿAlī used to sit. They replied, “We have nothing of what the emir is speaking about.” He persisted with them until they realized that, were they to bring him any chair at all, he would accept it. So they carried him a chair taken from one of the houses and said, “This is it.” Shibām, Shākir, and the rest of the leading men among al-Mukhtār’s followers (2) then came out, after having wrapped it in silk and brocade.
Abū Mikhnaf reports that the first person to serve as custodian of this chair was Mūsā ibn Abī Mūsā al-Ashʿarī. When people reproached him for that, he handed it over to Hawshab al-Bursumī, who kept it until al-Mukhtār—may Allah disgrace him—was killed.
It is also related that al-Mukhtār pretended to be unaware of the veneration his followers accorded the chair. Concerning it, al-Aʿshā of Hamdān composed the following verses:
I testify against you that you are Sabaʾiyyah,
And that I, O squad of idolatry, know you well.
I swear your chair has no sakīnah within it,
Though many a covering has been wound around it.
It is no Ark among us—no matter how
Shibām, Nahd, and Khārif circle all about it.
I am a man who loves the House of Muḥammad
And follows the revelation preserved in the Qurʾān.
I followed ʿAbd Allāh when Quraysh advanced—
Its grey-haired elders and its youthful nobles. (3)
Al-Mutawakkil al-Laythī said:
Bear word to Abū Isḥāq, should you meet him, (4)
That I disbelieve in your vaunted chair.
Shibām leap round its wooden planks,
While Shākir bears “revelation” for it.
Their eyes grow blood-red round about it,
As though they were ripe red chickpeas. (5)
I say: This and similar reports prove the feebleness (6) of al-Mukhtār and his followers, the scantness of his knowledge, the abundance of his ignorance, the wretchedness of his understanding, and his peddling of falsehood to his partisans—likening falsehood to truth so as to mislead the rabble and gather to himself the ignorant riffraff (7) and common folk.