“I do not follow your doctrine, Father!”
He retorted, “By Allah, I lay with your mother before I bought her; that is why you speak as you do.” (1)

Qadi Ibn Khallikan (2) relates that after his father’s death Dulaf saw in a dream that someone came to him and said, “Answer the amir!”
“I rose and went with him,” Dulaf recounted. “He led me into a desolate, rugged house whose walls were black and whose ceilings and doors were shut fast. He took me up a staircase and into a room whose walls bore the marks of fire and whose floor was strewn with ashes. There I found my father, naked, his head between his knees. He looked up and, as though asking, said:
‘Dulaf?’
I answered, ‘Dulaf.’
He then recited:

‘Carry a message to our people—hide it not from them:
what we have met with in the choking barzakh.
We have been questioned about every deed we wrought;
have mercy on my loneliness and what I now endure.’

Then he asked, ‘Do you understand?’
I replied, ‘Yes.’
He continued:

‘If, when we died, we were simply left alone,
death would be the comfort of every living soul;
But when we die we shall be raised again,
and after that be asked about each and every thing.’

He asked once more, ‘Do you understand?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and then I awoke.

[Then came the year 227 AH.]

In that year a man from al-Ghawr in Syria, known as Abū Ḥarb al-Mubarraqaʿ al-Yamānī, renounced his allegiance and called people to himself—he was styled “the Sufyānī.” (3)

The cause of his revolt was that a soldier wished to lodge in his house during Abū Ḥarb’s absence. His wife resisted, and the soldier struck her on the wrist, leaving a mark. When her husband returned she told him what had happened. Abū Ḥarb went to the soldier while he was off his guard and struck him, killing him. He then fortified himself atop the mountains, veiling his face. Whoever approached him he exhorted to enjoin right and forbid wrong, while disparaging the ruler. A great multitude of peasants and others followed him, saying, “This is the Sufyānī who will rule Syria.” His movement swelled until about one hundred thousand fighting men rallied to him. Although mortally ill, the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim dispatched an army of roughly one thousand troops against him.

When the commander arrived, he found a vast host gathered around Abū Ḥarb. Fearing to engage him under those conditions, he waited until the time came for ploughing the fields, whereupon the people dispersed to their land. Abū Ḥarb was left with only a small band of followers; the commander then advanced, fought him, and captured him