over the interpretation of Allah’s words, “It may be that your Lord will raise you to a Praiseworthy Station” ⦗al-Isrāʾ 17:79⦘.
The Ḥanbalīs said, “He will seat him beside Him upon the Throne.”
The others replied, “What is meant is the Supreme Intercession.”
They came to blows over this issue and some of them were killed—innā lillāhi wa-innā ilayhi rājiʿūn (surely to Allah we belong and to Him we return).
Yet it is established in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (1) that what is intended is the station of the greatest intercession, when he—may Allah exalt him—will intercede with Allah, exalted is He, to come and begin the judgment between His servants. It is a station for which all created beings, even Abraham the Friend, will yearn, and for which the first and the last will envy him.

That same year a disturbance erupted in Mosul among the common people over matters of livelihood. It spread, the evildoers (2) became numerous and gained the upper hand, wrongdoing passed between them, and then it subsided (3).

In that year strife also broke out in Khurasan between the Banū Sāmān (4) and their brother (5) Naṣr ibn Aḥmad, surnamed al-Saʿīd (6).

In Shaʿbān a Kharijite rebel appeared in Mosul, and another arose in al-Bawāzīj (7). The locals fought them until their mischief was stilled and their followers scattered (8).

That same year Mufliḥ al-Sājī encountered the Byzantine ruler al-Dumustuq, defeated him, pursued him into Byzantine territory, and killed a great many of them. Praise belongs to Allah.

Also that year a violent wind blew over Baghdad, carrying red ash that resembled the sand of the Ḥijāz, and the houses were filled with it.

Among the notable deaths of that year was Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan (9) [ibn al-ʿAbbās] (10) ibn al-Faraj (11) ibn Shuqayr (12), Abū Bakr the grammarian.