Another related: the man who shut the door of the bathhouse on him was its keeper. He locked it and went off on some errand; when he returned and opened the bathhouse he found him dead, his right hand tucked beneath his cheek and his face turned toward the qiblah. May Allah have mercy on him.

I say: There is no disagreement that he died in Beirut while serving as a murābiṭ (a sentinel on the frontier), but they differed over the year of his death. Yaʿqūb ibn Sufyān transmitted from Salamah that Aḥmad said: “I met al-Awzāʿī, and he died in the year 150 AH.”

Al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Walīd al-Bayrūtī said: “He passed away on Sunday at the start of the day, with two nights remaining of Ṣafar in the year 157 AH. This is the view of the majority and the soundest opinion; it is also the position of Abū Mus-hir, Hishām ibn ʿAmmār, al-Walīd ibn Muslim (in his most reliable narrations), Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, Duḥaym, Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ, Abū ʿUbayd, Saʿīd ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and many others.”

Al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Walīd also said: “He did not reach seventy years of age.” Someone else maintained that he surpassed seventy, but the correct figure is sixty-seven, for he was born in 88 AH according to the sound view. It has also been said that he was born in 73 AH, and this is weak.

One of them saw him in a dream and asked, “Show me a deed that will draw me close to Allah.” He replied, “I have seen no rank in Paradise higher than that of the scholars who act on their knowledge, followed by those whose hearts are grieved.”

[Then came the year 158 AH]
In that year the construction of al-Manṣūr’s palace known as al-Khuld was completed. He stayed in it only a few days, then died and left it behind. In the same year the tyrant of the Byzantines died. That year, too, al-Manṣūr dispatched his son al-Mahdī to al-Raqqah, ordering him to dismiss Mūsā ibn Kaʿb from Mosul and appoint Khālid ibn Barmak in his place. This occurred after a curious incident involving Yaḥyā ibn Khālid.

Al-Manṣūr had become angry with Khālid ibn Barmak and had charged him with paying three million. Khālid was overwhelmed, for he had neither wealth nor resources left and was unable to meet most of what had been demanded of him. The caliph granted him a respite of three days, stipulating that if he did not produce the money within that time his blood would be licit. Khālid therefore kept sending his son Yaḥyā to the amirs who were his associates, asking to borrow from them. Some gave a hundred thousand, others more, others less.

Yaḥyā ibn Khālid recounted: “During those three days I was one day standing on the bridge of Baghdad, weighed down with worry over securing what had been imposed on us—something beyond our power—when a zājir, one of the ṭuruqiyyah (street-side augurs) who loiter about the bridge, sprang toward me and said, ‘Rejoice!’ I paid him no heed. He advanced, seized my horse’s bridle and said, ‘You are distressed; Allah will surely lift your distress. Tomorrow you will pass this very spot with the banner borne before you. If what I tell you proves true, you owe me five thousand.’ I answered, ‘Yes—and had he asked fifty thousand I would have said yes, so impossible did it seem to me.’ I went about my business while three hundred thousand still remained of the sum we had to pay.

“Just then news reached al-Manṣūr that Mosul had rebelled and that the Kurds had overrun it. The caliph consulted the amirs, asking who was suited for Mosul. Some of them suggested Khālid ibn Barmak. Al-Manṣūr said, ‘Is he fit for that after what we have done to him?’ They replied, ‘Yes, and I guarantee he is suited to it.’ So he ordered that he be brought in …”