The Shaykh thereupon lowered his head and moved his lips in supplication to Allah—exalted is He—for the boy’s release. The woman left, and only a short while passed before she returned with her son beside her. She said, “Listen to his tale, may Allah have mercy on you!” He asked, “What happened?” The young man said, “I was among those who served the king while we were in shackles. One day, as I was walking, the fetter on my leg fell off. The guard in charge of us came up, reviled me, and said, ‘Did you unfasten the chain from your legs (1)?’ I replied, ‘By Allah, no; it simply fell without my noticing.’ They brought the blacksmith, who put it back on, hammered in the rivet, and reinforced it. Then I stood up and it fell again. They re-attached it and tightened it, but it fell once more. They then consulted their monks, who asked, ‘Does he have a mother?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, ‘Her supplication for him has been answered; release him.’ So they set me free and escorted me until I reached the lands of Islam.” Baqiyy asked him about the exact hour at which the shackle had fallen from his legs, and it was the very hour in which he had called upon Allah on his behalf (2).

Ṣāʿid ibn Makhlad (3), the secretary, was given to abundant charity and prayer. Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī praised him in al-Muntaẓam (4), whereas Ibn al-Athīr criticized him in al-Kāmil (5), stating that he was marked by arrogance and foolishness. Both reports can be reconciled, for a person may well combine those two traits.

Ibn Qutaybah (6): ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim ibn Qutaybah, Abū Muḥammad al-Dīnawarī—later al-Baghdādī—was one of the scholars, men of letters, and brilliant ḥuffāẓ. He narrated from Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh and many others, and produced elegant and widely celebrated beneficial works such as Gharīb al-Qurʾān, Mushkil al-Qurʾān, al-Maʿārif, Adab al-Kātib, ʿUyūn al-Akhbār, and more. He was trustworthy, eminent, and noble; the people of [knowledge] (7) used to suspect the merit of anyone whose house contained none of Ibn Qutaybah’s writings.

The cause of his death was that he ate a mouthful of ḥarīsa; it was scalding hot, and he let out a loud cry and fell unconscious until midday. When he revived, he continued to recite the testimony of faith until he died at the time of suḥūr, on the first night of Rajab of this year. Some said he died in 270 AH, but the sound view is that it occurred in this very year.