al-ʿAlāʾ: “I am more eloquent than Maʿadd ibn ʿAdnān.”

Abū ʿAmr replied, “How do you recite this line of poetry?

‘They used to hide their faces out of modesty,
but today—when they have ____ before the gazers…’

Is it “badaʾn” or “badayn”?”

He answered, “badayn.”

Abū ʿAmr said, “You are wrong; and had you said ‘badaʾn’ you would have been wrong as well. I only wished to expose your error. The correct reading is ‘badawna,’ from bada yabdu, meaning ‘to become visible.’ Badaʾa yabdaʾu, on the other hand, is used when one begins an action.

Then came the year 150 AH.

In that year an unbeliever named Ustādhīsīs rose up in Khurasan, seized most of the province, and some three hundred thousand men rallied to him. They killed great numbers of Muslims there, routed the local armies, carried off many captives, and rampant corruption followed so that their affair became grave indeed. Al-Manṣūr therefore sent Khāzim ibn Khuzaymah to his son al-Mahdī, commissioning the latter to conduct the war in that region and to place under his command whatever troops were needed to match the enemy. Al-Mahdī answered the call with the determination of the House of Hāshim, appointed Khāzim ibn Khuzaymah commander over those lands and their armies, and dispatched him with roughly forty thousand soldiers.

Khāzim advanced, continually outmaneuvering and deceiving the enemy until he suddenly engaged them in open battle, meeting them with spear and sword. About seventy thousand of them were killed and fourteen thousand captured. Their king, Ustādhīsīs, fled and fortified himself in a mountain stronghold. Khāzim encamped at its foot and put all the prisoners to death. He then maintained the siege until Ustādhīsīs surrendered under terms set by one of the commanders: that he and his household be fettered in iron, while the soldiers with him—thirty thousand men—be set free. Khāzim carried out these terms, gave each of Ustādhīsīs’s followers two garments, and wrote of the victory to al-Mahdī, who in turn informed his father al-Manṣūr.

During the same year the Caliph dismissed Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān from the governorship of Medina and appointed al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib in his place.

That year the people were led in the pilgrimage by ʿAbd al-Ṣamad, the Caliph’s cousin.

Also in this year Jaʿfar, son of the Commander of the Faithful al-Manṣūr, died. He was buried by night in the Banū Hāshim cemetery of Baghdad and was later moved to another location.

In the same year there died ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Jurayj—one of the foremost Imams of the people of the Hijaz and, it is said, the first to compile the Sunan—together with ʿUthmān ibn al-Aswad and ʿUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Zayd.