Then came the year 309 AH.

During it many fires broke out in the districts surrounding Baghdad. The cause was a zindīq who had been put to death; some of his partisans set fires in numerous places, and a great number of people perished as a result.

That same year, in Jumādā al-Ūlā, al-Muqtadir bi-llāh invested Muʾnis al-Khadim with authority over Egypt and Syria, granted him the honorific al-Muẓaffar, and recorded this (1) in all the letters dispatched to the provinces.

In Dhū al-Qaʿdah of that year (2), Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (may Allah have mercy on him) was summoned to the residence of the vizier ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī for a debate with the Ḥanbalites about certain issues for which they had reproached him, but not a single one of them appeared.

The vizier Ḥāmid ibn al-ʿAbbās also presented the caliph with a garden he had laid out and named al-Nāʿūrah, valued at one hundred thousand dinars, and he furnished its buildings with every kind of luxurious covering.

During this year al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj was put to death. We shall give a brief account of his biography and conduct, and of how he was killed, sufficient for the intended purpose (3); what follows is a short selection from his life and circumstances, exposing his inner condition and his statements (4).

Al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr (5) ibn Maḥmī, known as al-Ḥallāj, Abū Mughīth—some say Abū ʿAbd Allāh—was the grandson of a Zoroastrian named Maḥmī from the land of Fars (6). He grew up in Wāsiṭ, and it is also said in Tustar. He entered Baghdad and travelled to Mecca many times for the pilgrimage, residing there (7) during several separate years. He used to discipline and struggle against his own soul: he would sit only under the open sky, in the middle of the mosque, whether in freezing cold or extreme heat; he would eat nothing but a small piece of bread and drink only a little water with it—and that only at the time of breaking the fast—for an entire year. To withstand (8) the fierce heat he would sit on a rock on Mount Abū Qubays.