I say:
He married her in Mecca; she was Umm al-Husayn, the daughter of Abu Yaʿqub al-Aqtaʿ. She bore him his son Ḥamd (1) ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣur, who later narrated his father’s life story, as al-Khaṭib has transmitted on his authority (2).

Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri relates in his book Al-Risalah, in the chapter on guarding the hearts of the shaykhs, that ʿAmr ibn ʿUthman once entered upon al-Hallaj in Mecca while he was writing something on loose pages. He asked, “What is this?” Al-Hallaj answered, “I intend to compose something to rival the Quran.” ʿAmr thereupon invoked Allah against him, and thereafter he never prospered (3).

ʿAmr also denounced Abu Yaʿqub al-Aqtaʿ for marrying his daughter to al-Hallaj, and he wrote (4) numerous letters to distant regions cursing al-Hallaj and warning the people about him. Al-Hallaj therefore fled from land to land, spreading corruption to the right and to the left while pretending that he was calling people to Allah—Mighty and Majestic—relying on every sort of trick and deceit. He persisted in that way until Allah unleashed upon him His punishment, which is never averted from the criminal folk, and he was slain by the sword of the Shariʿah, a sword that falls only between the shoulders of a zindiq (heretic). Allah is far too noble (5) to let such a sword strike a ṣiddīq (a truly righteous man)—all the more so after al-Hallaj had brazenly (6) assaulted the Mighty Quran and sought to challenge it within the noble Sacred Precinct (7).

Allah, Exalted is He, says: “Whoever seeks therein deviation by wrongdoing, We shall cause him to taste a painful punishment” (Al-Hajj 25). No deviation is greater than this.

In this conduct he resembled the unbelievers of Quraysh and their obstinate deniers about whom Allah says: “And when Our verses are recited to them they say, ‘We have heard; if we wished, we could say the like of this. This is nothing but fables of the ancients’” (Al-Anfal 31).

Some of al-Hallaj’s Ruses
Al-Khaṭib al-Baghdadi reports that al-Hallaj sent a man ahead of him to a certain mountainous region. The man stayed in that town displaying piety and devotion, teaching the Quran. After some time he pretended to have gone blind and remained so for a while; then he claimed to be crippled. At first he was led to the mosque, then he had to be carried, and he spent a year in that state. He then said to the people, “I saw the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, in a dream, and he told me, ‘A righteous man will soon arrive in this town, and your cure will be at his hands.’” Not long after, at the very time al-Hallaj had arranged, al-Hallaj himself entered the town in disguise, wearing white woollen garments. He attached himself to a pillar in the mosque, worshipping there without turning to anyone, and the people hastened to