and a great many mules and camels; he was also granted the house in al-Mukharram (1), where he took up residence. That very night he held a reception there and served forty-thousand ratls of ice.

In the summer (2) of that year a report spread through Baghdad that a creature called al-Zabzab roamed the city by night, snatching infants from their beds and leaping upon sleepers, at times severing a man’s hand or a woman’s breast while they slept. People therefore began beating copper on their rooftops—hawāwin (large mortars), ṭus (trays), and the like—to drive it off, until Baghdad trembled from east to west with the nightly din. Parents fashioned wicker covers of palm-fronds and other materials for their children, and thieves exploited the turmoil: house break-ins multiplied and property was stolen. The caliph ordered that one of the kilāb al-māʾ (otters) be captured and crucified on the bridge so that the populace might be calmed. This was done, the panic subsided, and the people regained their peace.

In the same year the physician-historian Thābit ibn Sinān (4) was appointed supervisor of the maristans (public hospitals) of Baghdad; they numbered five.

News arrived from Khurasan that the graves of martyrs slain in 70 AH had been discovered. Their names were written on slips of parchment tied to their ears, and their bodies were found fresh, just as they had been.

Among the notable deaths of the year:

• Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Haytham ibn Ṣāliḥ (5) ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥuṣayn ibn ʿAlqamah ibn Labīd ibn Naʿīm ibn ʿUṭārid ibn Ḥājib ibn Zurārah, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Tamīmī, known as Farrūjah (6). He came to Baghdad, related hadith there, and was a reliable ḥāfiẓ.

• Yūsuf ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī (7), Abū Yaʿqūb al-Rāzī. He heard hadith from Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, kept company with Dhū al-Nūn al-Miṣrī (8), and Abū Bakr al-Najjād transmitted from him.