and four thousand from the tribes of Reuben and Levi, together with twelve thousand from the rest of the Children of Israel. He then set out until he reached the land of Babylon.

Ishaq ibn Bishr said: Wahb ibn Munabbih related that when Nebuchadnezzar had done what he had done, people said to him, “They had a man who used to warn them of the calamity that has now befallen them. He described you and your affair to them, telling them that you would slay their fighting men, carry off their children, demolish their mosques, and burn their synagogues. Yet they rejected him, accused him of lying, beat him, fettered him, and cast him into prison.”

Nebuchadnezzar therefore ordered that Jeremiah be brought out of the dungeon. He said to him, “Were you the one who warned these people of what has overtaken them?”
“Yes,” Jeremiah replied.
“I already knew that,” Nebuchadnezzar said.
“God sent me to them,” Jeremiah went on, “but they denied me.”
“So they rejected you, struck you, and jailed you?” asked Nebuchadnezzar.
“Yes,” he answered.
“What an evil people,” Nebuchadnezzar exclaimed, “a people who deny their prophet and the message of their Lord! Would you like to accompany me so that I may honor you and share my provisions with you? If you prefer to remain in your land, I grant you safety.”
Jeremiah replied, “I have never ceased to be in the safety of God; never for a single moment have I stepped outside it. Had the Children of Israel remained within that safety, they would have feared neither you nor anyone else, and you would have had no power over them.”
When Nebuchadnezzar heard this, he left him be, and Jeremiah stayed where he was in the land of Aelia (Jerusalem).

This account is unusual; it contains wisdom, admonitions, and fine lessons, yet it is, in terms of provenance, singular.

Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Saʿib al-Kalbi said: Nebuchadnezzar was the ispahbadh—that is, the military governor—over the region stretching from Ahwaz to the borders of Rome, ruling on behalf of the Persian king Luhrasp. He built the city of Balkh, known as al-Khansā’, fought the Turks and drove them into the narrowest of retreats, and Luhrasp dispatched him to fight the Children of Israel in greater Syria. When he arrived, he treated the people of Damascus well. It is also said that the one who sent Nebuchadnezzar was Bahman, king of Persia after Bishtasb son of Luhrasp, because the Children of Israel had wronged the envoys he had sent to them.

Ibn Jarir transmitted—through Yunus ibn ʿAbd al-Aʿla, from Ibn Wahb, from Sulayman ibn Bilal, from Yahya ibn Saʿid al-Ansari, from Saʿid ibn al-Musayyib—that when Nebuchadnezzar entered Damascus he found a pool of blood bubbling on a rubbish heap. He asked, “What is this blood?” They replied, “We found our forefathers upon this practice; whenever we heap refuse upon it, the blood comes back to the surface.” Nebuchadnezzar thereupon had seventy thousand people—Muslims and others—put to death, after which the blood subsided.