Naṣr.’
Ibn al-Zayyāt answered, “O Commander of the Faithful, may Allah burn me in the Fire if the Commander of the Faithful al-Wāthiq executed him for anything other than outright disbelief!”
Harthamah then entered, and when asked the same question he replied, “O Commander of the Faithful, may Allah cut me to pieces, limb by limb, if al-Wāthiq killed him for anything other than disbelief!”
Next the chief judge Aḥmad ibn Abī Duʿād was admitted. He likewise said, “May Allah strike me with al-falaj (paralysis) if al-Wāthiq killed him for anything other than disbelief!”
al-Mutawakkil remarked: “As for Ibn al-Zayyāt, I myself burned him alive. Harthamah fled and went off to live as a Bedouin; while passing the tribe of Khuzāʿah a man recognized him and cried out, ‘People of Khuzāʿah, this is the man who killed your kinsman Aḥmad ibn Naṣr—hack him to pieces, limb by limb!’ As for Ibn Abī Duʿād, Allah imprisoned him within his own skin—that is, with paralysis. Allah afflicted him with it four years before his death, and a very large sum was confiscated from his personal estate, as will be explained in its proper place (1).
Abū Dāwūd relates in his book al-Masāʾil, through Aḥmad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dawraqī, from Aḥmad ibn Naṣr, who said: “I asked Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah about the ḥadith, ‘The hearts are between two fingers [of the All-Merciful]’ (2) and ‘Allah laughs at the one who remembers Him in the marketplaces’ (3). He replied, ‘Transmit them exactly as they have come, without asking how.’” (4)
That same year al-Wāthiq had resolved to perform the ḥajj and had made preparations for it, but when he was told that water was scarce along the route he abandoned the pilgrimage for that year.
During that year (5) Jaʿfar ibn Dīnār (6) assumed the governorship of Yemen and set out for it with four thousand cavalry.
In that year a group of commoners attacked the public treasury, seized some of its gold and silver, but they were captured and imprisoned.
That same year a Khārijite rebel appeared in the land of Rabīʿah. The deputy governor of Mosul fought him, defeated him, and the rest of his followers scattered.