—at a time when the Muslims had grown weary of securing their release,
—and people used to say, “The idolaters’ prisons are graves.” (1)

That same year al-Qāsim ibn al-Rashīd took up frontier duty at Marj Dābiq, besieging the Byzantines.

That year the pilgrimage was led on behalf of the people by al-ʿAbbās ibn Mūsā ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ʿAbbās.

Deaths of leading figures in this year

ʿAlī ibn Ḥamzah ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Fayrūz (2), Abū l-Ḥasan al-Asadī, their client, from Kufah, better known as al-Kisāʾī—so called, it is said, because he entered the state of iḥrām wearing a kisāʾ (cloak); others say it was because he kept himself wrapped in a kisāʾ while studying with Ḥamzah al-Zayyāt.

He was a grammarian, a philologist, and one of the foremost imams of Qur’an recitation. Originally from Kufah, he later settled in Baghdad, where he tutored Hārūn al-Rashīd and his son al-Amīn. He had mastered the reading of Ḥamzah ibn Ḥabīb al-Zayyāt, which he first taught, and later he chose a variant reading of his own.

He related hadith from Abū Bakr ibn ʿAyyāsh, Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, and others, and in turn was cited by Yaḥyā ibn Ziyād al-Farrāʾ and Abū ʿUbayd.

Al-Shāfiʿī said, “Whoever seeks grammar is dependent on al-Kisāʾī.”

Al-Kisāʾī learned the craft of grammar from al-Khalīl. One day he asked him, “From whom did you acquire this knowledge?” Al-Khalīl replied, “From the Bedouin of the Ḥijāz.” Al-Kisāʾī therefore traveled there, gathered a vast store of linguistic material from the Arabs, and then returned to al-Khalīl—only to find that he had died and that Yūnus had taken his place. Debates ensued, and Yūnus acknowledged his superiority, seating him in the master’s chair.

Al-Kisāʾī related: “I once led Hārūn al-Rashīd in prayer. I was so pleased with my own recitation that I committed a blunder no child would make: I intended to say, ‘laʿallahum yarjiʿūn’ (‘so that they might return’), but instead said, ‘laʿallahum yarjiʿīna.’ Al-Rashīd did not dare correct me. When I finished he asked, ‘What dialect is that?’ I replied, ‘Even the noblest steed can stumble.’ He said, ‘That, at least, is true.’”

Someone said: “I met al-Kisāʾī and found him worried. I asked, ‘What troubles you?’ He answered, ‘Yaḥyā ibn Khālid has summoned me to question me about certain matters, and I fear making a mistake.’ I said, ‘Say whatever you wish; you are al-Kisāʾī!’ He replied, ‘May Allah sever it—meaning my tongue—if I speak of what I do not know.’”

Al-Kisāʾī also recounted: “I once asked a carpenter, ‘How much are these two doors?’ He replied, ‘For two salḥahs, O maṣfaʿān!’ (3)