Ibn Nuqṭah (1) said: [ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Fahmī informed us, saying: ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ibn Abī al-Wafāʾ al-Ḥājī in Isfahān narrated to us, saying:] (2) I heard Muḥammad ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī say: I heard Abū Ismāʿīl ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad al-Anṣārī remark, “In my estimation, al-Tirmidhī’s book is more beneficial (3) than the two collections of al-Bukhārī and Muslim.” I asked, “Why is that?” He replied, “Because no one can draw benefit from those two unless he already possesses complete expertise, whereas this book explains and clarifies its aḥadith, so it is accessible to everyone—jurists, ḥadith scholars, and others alike.”

I say: What appears from his circumstances is that blindness overtook him only after he had travelled, listened, written, discussed, debated, and authored works; then, according to the soundest and best-known report—and Allah knows best—he died in his hometown in the month of Rajab of this very year.

Then the year 280 AH [of the Prophetic Hijra] began. (4) During Muḥarram of that year al-Muʿtaḍid put to death one of the Zanj leaders who had sought asylum with him under a pledge of safety and was known as Shaylama (5). It had reached the caliph that the man was calling people to rally around someone whose identity was unknown and that he had led many astray. Al-Muʿtaḍid summoned him, interrogated him, but he would not confess, saying, “Even if the man were beneath my own two feet, I would not name him.” (6) The caliph therefore ordered that he be lashed to a tent-pole, then roasted over a fire until his skin fell from his bones; after that he commanded that the man be beheaded and crucified. The execution took place when seven nights of Muḥarram had passed.

At the beginning of Ṣafar the caliph al-Muʿtaḍid Billah rode out from Baghdad toward the Banū Shaybān in the district of Mosul, and he struck them with a harsh blow near a mountain called Nūbād. (7) Accompanying al-Muʿtaḍid was a camel driver gifted with a fine singing voice, and on one of those nights he chanted before the caliph (8):