Al-Walid appointed him as his deputy over the Ḥijaz from the year 89 AH until al-Walid died; after him, Sulaymān retained him in the same office. In 106 AH Hishām placed him in charge of the two Iraqs, a post he held until 120 AH, after which Hishām delivered him to Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar, whom he had installed in his stead. Yūsuf punished him, confiscated his property, and then released him. He stayed in Damascus until Muḥarram of this year, when al-Walid ibn Yazīd handed him back to Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar to extract fifty million dirhams from him. He died beneath intense torture: they broke his feet, then his shins, then his thighs, and finally his chest. He passed away without uttering a single word, nor did he groan, until his soul departed. (May Allah have mercy upon him.)
Al-ʿUtbī (1) narrated from his father that Khālid al-Qasrī once mounted the pulpit, but words failed him, so he said:
“O people, speech comes at times and absents itself at times; when it arrives, the cause that brings it arrives with it, and when it departs, the means of obtaining it are beyond reach. At one moment its clarity inclines to the eloquent, and at another its words retreat to the tongue-tied (2). What you desire of it will soon return to us, and we shall return to you just as you wish.”
Al-Aṣmaʿī and others relate that Khālid al-Qasrī once preached in Wāsiṭ and said:
“O people! Compete in noble deeds and hasten toward the gains of virtue; purchase praise with generosity and do not earn blame through procrastination. Do not boast of a favour you have not yet hastened to perform. If any of you does a kindness for another whose gratitude has not yet reached its measure, let him know that Allah will grant him a better recompense and a richer reward. Be aware that people’s needs of you are blessings, so do not grow weary of them lest they turn into afflictions. The finest wealth is that which secures reward and bequeaths a good reputation. Were you to behold beneficence, you would see a handsome, radiant man who delights the onlookers and outshines all others; and were you to behold miserliness, you would see a deformed, repulsive man from whom hearts recoil and eyes turn away. Whoever is generous is honoured, and whoever is stingy is abased. The most noble of people is the one who gives to those who do not expect it, who pardons while able to punish, and who reconnects ties after they have been severed. He whose field is not wholesome will reap no wholesome crop; branches grow where they are planted, and by their roots they rise.”
Al-Aṣmaʿī reported from ʿUmar ibn al-Haytham that a Bedouin came to Khālid and recited a poem in his praise, saying:
To you, O son of Kurz, fountain of good, I have come in hope—
that you will mend what in me has weakened and dispersed.
To the noble, open-handed, forbearing one,
most honoured of Allah’s creation in branch and root.
When other folk fall short in their deeds, you stand—
leaving no vacant seat for hesitation.
You are a sea whose waves engulf mankind;
when bounty is sought, it surges and foams.
I have tried the son of ʿAbd Allah in every place,
only to find the best of souls and the most glorious.
If there be in this world a Khālid whose kindness grants immortality,
then you would surely be that immortal.
So do not deprive me of the favour I hope for from you—
lest my face grow scowling, dark of hue.
He (the narrator) said: Khālid memorised the poem, and when the people gathered around him the Bedouin rose to recite it, but Khālid forestalled him and recited it first.