heard, while still a disbeliever, from a number of the shaykhs, for he used to frequent them in search of knowledge and refined conduct. When he embraced Islam that learning proved useful to him, and, as Ibn al-Jawzī relates in his al-Muntaẓam (1) with a lengthy chain of transmission, it was indeed the very cause of his conversion. Ibn al-Jawzī narrates that he saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ repeatedly in his dreams, summoning him to Allah, Exalted is He, and commanding him to enter Islam, saying to him, “You are an intelligent man; why do you turn away from the religion for which the proofs are established?” In those dreams the Prophet showed him signs that he later witnessed while awake. Among them he told him, “Your wife is pregnant with a male child; name him Muḥammad.” She did bear a son, and he named him Muḥammad and gave him the teknonym Abūʾl-Ḥasan. Ibn al-Jawzī recounts many such incidents at length. Hilāl therefore embraced Islam, his Islam was excellent, and he was a truthful man. May Allah Most High have mercy on him. He died this very year at the age of ninety, of which a little over forty were spent as a Muslim. May Allah envelop him in His mercy.

Then came the year 449 AH.

In this year famine and mass death continued in Baghdad and elsewhere, to the point that most houses were emptied; their doors were shut with the dead lying inside. One who walked the streets would meet no one save a solitary passer-by here and there. Because of the dearth of food people ate carrion and putrefied flesh. A woman was found with the thigh of a dog that had turned green and rancid. A man roasted a little girl in a kiln (2) and ate her, whereupon he was executed. It is also related that a dead bird fell from a rooftop; five people seized it, divided it among themselves, and ate it.

A letter arrived from Bukhara reporting that in a single day eighteen thousand people had died there and in its environs. The total number of those who had perished in this plague up to the date of that letter—sent from Bukhara—was one million six hundred and fifty thousand. Travellers passing through those regions saw nothing but deserted markets, empty roads, and locked doors. So reports Ibn al-Jawzī (3). News likewise came from Azerbaijan and the surrounding lands of a devastating plague, from which only a very small number survived.

He adds: plague also struck Ahwaz and its districts, Wāsiṭ, al-Nīl, and Kūfa, indeed it spread across the earth. Hunger was the chief cause, to the extent that the poor were roasting dogs, digging up graves, roasting the dead, and eating them. People had no occupation day or night except washing the corpses, preparing them, and burying them. A single pit would be dug and twenty or thirty bodies laid in it. A man might be sitting when his heart would suddenly split; blood from its very core would rise to his mouth, a drop would appear, and he would die. The people repented and gave away most of their wealth—but found no one willing to accept it—and the destitute would approach