—by order of the caliph al-Mustaḍīʾ (1). He was interrogated (2) and proved to be a malicious Rāfiḍī agitator (3), hard-hearted and defiant. The jurists therefore issued a fatwa that his tongue and hand should be cut off (4), which was duly carried out. The populace then pounced on him and kept pelting him with bricks until he threw himself into the Tigris. They dragged him out, beat him until he died, tied a rope to his legs (5), and paraded him around the city, hauling him through its quarters. At length they tossed him into one of the lime-and-brick kilns (6), and the police were powerless to rescue him from them.

Among the notable deaths recorded this year:

• Asʿad b. Yaldarik, Abu Ahmad al-Jibrīlī (7). He had studied hadith and was an affable shaykh, delightful in conversation, witty in anecdote, and quick with a response (8). He died this year at the age of one hundred and four; may Allah Most High have mercy on him.

• Muhammad b. Nasīm b. ʿAbd Allah, Abu ʿAbd Allah the tailor, a freedman of the amir Abu al-Faḍl b. ʿAyshūn (9). He had heard hadith and was nearly eighty when he fell from a stairway and died. He said: “My father’s client—meaning Ibn Aʿlā the sage, Abu al-Faḍl b. ʿAyshūn—recited to me (10):

[from the kāmil meter]
The student of anatomy (11) is worthier of godliness
than a monk, bent double in his cloister;
And he who keeps watch on the heavenly spheres (12)—
if his soul is devoted to worshipping the All-Merciful—
is the most deserving of all souls.”