and ʿUthmān ibn ʿAṭāʾ; Misʿar ibn Kidām; and Ḥammād al-Rāwiyah ⦗1⦘—the son of Abū Laylā Maysarah, though some say his name was Sābūr ibn al-Mubārak ibn ʿUbayd, a Daylamī from Kūfah and the client of Bukayr ibn Zayd al-Khayl al-Ṭāʾī. He was among the most learned of people regarding the battles, lore, poetry, and dialects of the Arabs, and he is the one who collected the seven lengthy Muʿallaqāt. He was called al-Rāwiyah (“the great reciter”) because of the vast amount of poetry he transmitted. The Commander of the Faithful al-Walīd ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik once tested him: Ḥammād recited twenty-nine odes arranged by the letters of the alphabet, each of about one hundred verses. He then boasted that there was not a single Arab poet whose verse he could not produce in lines unknown to anyone else, whereupon the caliph granted him one hundred thousand dirhams.

Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥarīrī relates in his book Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ that Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik summoned him from Iraq through his governor Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar. When he entered, he found himself in a vast mansion ⦗2⦘ faced with marble and gold, and two exceedingly beautiful slave-girls stood beside the caliph. Hishām asked him to recite, and he obliged. The caliph then said, “Ask for whatever you wish.” Ḥammād replied, “Whatever it may be, O Commander of the Faithful?” “And what is that?” asked the caliph. He said, “Grant me a divorce from one of these two slave-girls.” The caliph answered, “Both of them, and all that pertains to them, are yours,” then lodged him in part of the palace and bestowed on him one hundred thousand dirhams.

This is a concise version of the story. It would appear, however, that the caliph in question was really al-Walīd ibn Yazīd, for the narrative mentions that he drank wine with him, whereas Hishām did not drink; moreover, Hishām’s governor over Iraq was not Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar but Khālid ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī, followed only later by Yūsuf ibn ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.

Ḥammād died in this same year at the age of sixty. Ibn Khallikān ⦗3⦘ reports that some claim he lived to witness the beginning of al-Mahdī’s caliphate in 158 AH—Allah knows best.

In this year there was also executed for zandaqah: Ḥammād ʿAjrad ⦗4⦘—that is, Ḥammād ibn ʿUmar ibn Yūnus ibn Kulayb al-Kūfī, though some say he was from Wāsiṭ,