so he refused. Some people reproached him for doing so, and he replied, “I declined because it contains the verses of Allah, Exalted is He.”

Not long afterwards a singing-girl performed in the presence of the Caliph al-Wāthiq, chanting:

aẓ-ẓalūmu inna muṣābakum rajulan … radd as-salām taḥiyyatan ẓulmu
(O unjust one! Truly your calamity is a man … to return a greeting as a token of peace is injustice.)

Those in al-Wāthiq’s audience then disputed over the grammatical case of the word rajulan: should it be nominative or accusative, and, if accusative, by what was it governed? Was it the subject (ism) of inna, or something else? The singer insisted that al-Māzinī had taught her the verse exactly as she recited it.

He said: The Caliph therefore sent for al-Māzinī. When he stood before him, the Caliph asked, “Are you al-Māzinī?” “Yes,” he replied. “From the Māzin of Tamīm, the Māzin of Rabīʿah, or the Māzin of Qays?” I answered, “From the Māzin of Rabīʿah.” He then began speaking to me in my tribal dialect and said, “basmuk? (what is your name?)” — they pronounce the letter bāʾ as mīm and the mīm as bāʾ (1) — so I disliked responding “makr” (deceit) and instead said “Bakr.” This pleased him; he appreciated my avoidance of the word makr and understood my intent.

He then asked, “(2) On what basis is rajulan in the accusative?” I replied, “Because it is governed by the verbal noun muṣābakum (‘your being afflicted’).” Al-Yazīdī tried to refute him, but al-Māzinī prevailed with evidence. The Caliph thereupon granted him one thousand dinars, sent him home with honor, and Allah compensated him for the hundred dinars he had foregone.

Al-Mubarrad also relates: “I once taught a man Sībawayh’s Kitāb from beginning to end. When we finished he said to me, ‘As for you, may Allah reward you with good; as for me, by Allah, I did not understand a single letter of it.’”

Al-Māzinī died this very year. Others say it was in 248 AH, and the strangest report is 236 AH; Allah knows best (3).

Then the year 248 AH began. In it al-Muntaṣir sent Wāṣif the Turk on the summer expedition (ṣāʾifah) against the Byzantines, for their emperor had advanced on the lands of Syria. He equipped him with a large force of men and materiel, allotted him abundant funds, and ordered him, when he had finished combating the Byzantines, to remain on the frontier for four years. He also addressed a lengthy letter (4) to Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṭāhir, the governor of Iraq, filled with many Qurʾānic verses urging and encouraging the believers to fight.

On Saturday night, with seven days of Ṣafar remaining in that blessed year, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Muʿtazz and al-Muʾayyad Ibrāhīm, the brothers of the Commander of the Faithful and heirs apparent, renounced their claim to the caliphate, had testimony taken to that effect, and declared themselves incapable of