by urging the people to admonish one another, to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and by taking the signatures of all those present in approval of what they had heard.

On Monday, the first day of Dhu al-Qaʿdah, the entire assembly was convened once more and a second, lengthy epistle was read aloud. It clarified the sunnah, refuted the innovators, recounted the debate between Bishr al-Marisi and al-Kinani, stressed the duty of commanding right and forbidding wrong, extolled the Companions, and listed the virtues of Abu Bakr and ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them). The reading did not finish until well after the late-night ʿIshaʾ prayer, and their signatures were again taken in affirmation of what they had heard. The Shiʿite preachers were dismissed and replaced with Sunni khutabah. A great disturbance then broke out in the Biratha Mosque: the Sunni preacher was struck with bricks until his nose was broken and his shoulder dislocated. The caliph championed his cause, humiliated the Shiʿites, and compelled them to apologize, claiming that only their worthless riff-raff had perpetrated the outrage. That year no one from Iraq or Khurasan was able to perform the pilgrimage—Allah knows best.

Among the notable deaths of the year:

1. al-Hasan ibn Abi al-ʿIs, Abu ʿAli the Ascetic—one of the devout worshippers endowed with spiritual states. He once entered the court of a certain vizier, who rose and kissed his hand. The vizier was reproached for this, whereupon he replied, “How could I not kiss a hand that has never been stretched out except toward Allah Most High?”

2. ʿAli ibn ʿIsa ibn al-Faraj ibn Salih, Abu al-Hasan al-Rabbaʿi. He studied Arabic grammar first with Abu Saʿid al-Sirafi and then with Abu ʿAli al-Farsi, accompanying the latter for twenty years, so that people would say, “Tell him: were he to travel from the East to the West, he would not find anyone more erudite in grammar than he.”

One day he was strolling along the bank of the Tigris when he caught sight of the two Sharifs, al-Radi and al-Murtada, in a boat with ʿUthman ibn Jinni. In playful banter he called out to them, “One of the strangest things is that ʿUthman is with you while ʿAli is far from you, walking along the bank of the Tigris!” They laughed and replied, “In the name of Allah.”

He passed away in Muharram of this year at the age of ninety-two and was buried at Bab al-Dayr. It is said that only three persons followed his funeral bier.