That same year the acting governor of the Ḥijāz, Dāwūd b. ʿĪsā, led the people in pilgrimage; some, however, said it was ʿAlī b. al-Rashīd.

[Among the notable people who died that year were:]

Salm b. Sālim, Abū Baḥr al-Balkhī (1). He came to Baghdad and transmitted there from Ibrāhīm b. Ṭahmān and Sufyān al-Thawrī; al-Ḥasan b. ʿArafah narrated from him. A devout ascetic, he went forty years without having a mattress laid out for him, fasting the entire time except on the two festival days, and never raising his gaze to the sky. He promoted the Murjiʾ doctrine (irjāʾ) and was weak in hadith, yet he was a leading figure in commanding right and forbidding wrong.

He once entered Baghdad, censured Hārūn al-Rashīd, and spoke against him so sharply that the caliph imprisoned him and fastened twelve fetters to his legs. Abū Muʿāwiyah kept interceding until the fetters were reduced to four. Salm would pray that Allah return him to his family; when al-Rashīd died, Zubaydah set him free and he went back home.

He and his companions had come to Mecca for the pilgrimage. There he fell ill and one day craved ice; at that very moment hail of the very sort he desired fell, and he ate from it. He died in Dhū al-Ḥijjah of this year.

ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Thaqafī (2). His yearly revenue approached fifty thousand, all of which he spent on the people of hadith. He died at the age of eighty-four.

Abū al-Naṣr al-Juhanī al-Muṣāb (3). He lived in the Prophet’s City in the ṣuffah by the mosque’s northern wall. Long given to silence, he would, when asked, reply with sound answers—concise, beneficial words that were gathered and written down. On Fridays, before the prayer, he would go out, stand among the assemblies, and say:

“O mankind, fear your Lord and beware of a Day when no father shall avail his son, nor a son avail his father in the least” (Luqmān 31:33);

and, “Fear a Day when no soul shall avail another in the least, no intercession will be accepted from it, no ransom taken, and they shall not be helped” (al-Baqarah 2:48).

Then he would move on to another group, and then to another,