and you have gathered within my heart a love once shared among many.
Will you not pity one so sorrowful,
Who weeps when the carefree laugh?

He said: Then Dhū al-Nūn rose and fell upon his face, blood dripping from his forehead without falling to the ground. Then one of those present rose, displaying ecstasy. Dhū al-Nūn said to him:

“He Who sees you when you stand”
[Surah al-Shuʿarāʾ 218]

The man sat down.’

He said: “I heard Abū ʿAlī al-Daqqāq say: ‘Dhū al-Nūn was excessive in his treatment of that man when he alerted him that this was not his spiritual station. The man, however, showed fairness by accepting this from him, desisting, and sitting down.’”

This and similar practices are what the imams referred to, as in al-Shāfiʿī’s statement: “I left behind in Baghdad something introduced by the heretics, which they call taghbīr, by which they divert people from the Quran.” Thus, Dhū al-Nūn would have been among those who attended the taghbīr gatherings denounced by the imams and the shaykhs of the early generations, and among those who justified this through an interpretive judgment. His position on it would be comparable to that of the shaykhs and scholars of Kufa who deemed nabīdh lawful, such as Sufyān al-Thawrī, Sharīk ibn ʿAbd Allāh, Abū Hanīfa, Misʿar ibn Kidām, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Rahmān ibn Abī Laylā, and other scholars. It would likewise be comparable to the position of the scholars and shaykhs of Mecca concerning what they deemed lawful in matters of temporary marriage and currency exchange, such as the position of ʿAtāʾ ibn Abī Rabāh, Ibn Jurayj, and others; to the position of some of the shaykhs and scholars of Medina concerning what they deemed lawful regarding al-hushūsh; and to the position of a group of