and al-Ḥajjāj’s father greeted him and said, “He is on his way to the Commander of the Faithful; is there anything you would like him to do for you?”

He replied, “Yes—ask him to remove me from the office of judge.”

Al-Ḥajjāj’s father exclaimed, “Glory be to Allah! By Allah, I know of no judge today better than you.”

He then returned to his son, whereupon the latter said, “Father, do you rise for a man of Tujīb while you are a Thaqafī?”

He answered, “My son, by Allah, I believe that people obtain mercy through this man and those like him.”

Al-Ḥajjāj retorted, “By Allah, no one is more harmful to the Commander of the Faithful than this man and his ilk.”

His father asked, “Why is that, my son?”

He replied, “Because such men gather people to themselves and recount to them the conduct of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. The people then belittle the conduct of the Commander of the Faithful, deeming it worthless beside theirs; so they depose him, rise against him, detest him, and refuse to obey him. By Allah, if any share of authority ever falls to me, I will strike off the neck of this man and those like him.”

His father said, “My son, by Allah, I fear that Allah—exalted is He—has created you wretched.”

This shows that his father enjoyed standing with the Caliph (1) and that he possessed sound insight, for he foresaw what his son’s affair would eventually become.

They have said that al-Ḥajjāj was born in the year 39 AH; some say 40, and others 41 (2).

He was then raised in Labab (3), becoming articulate, eloquent, and a memoriser of the Quran. One of the early believers said, “Al-Ḥajjāj used to recite the Quran every night” (4).

Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ said, “I have never seen anyone more eloquent than he and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī—and al-Ḥasan was the more eloquent of the two” (5).

Al-Dāraqutnī (6) reports—citing Sulaymān ibn Abī Shaykh (7) on the authority of Ṣāliḥ ibn Sulaymān—that ʿUtbah ibn ʿAmr said, “I have found people’s intellects to be much the same, except for al-Ḥajjāj and Iyās ibn Muʿāwiyah; their intellects outweighed those of other people.”

As mentioned earlier, when ʿAbd al-Malik killed Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr in 73 AH, he sent al-Ḥajjāj against his brother ʿAbd Allāh in Mecca. Al-Ḥajjāj besieged him there and supervised the pilgrimage that year, yet neither he nor those with him were able to circumambulate the House, nor was Ibn—