News of al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj

خبر الحسين بن منصور الحلاج

309 AH

In the year 309 news of al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj reached al-Muqtadir, who ordered him killed and burned with fire. Al-Tabari mentions that he was given a thousand lashes and that his hands and feet were cut off ¹. According to al-Suyuti he was killed in the year nine, on the legal opinion of the judge Abu Umar and the jurists and scholars that his blood was lawful; there are reports of his conduct and states that people have devoted separate works to ². According to Ibn al-Athir, the cause of his killing was that it was reported to the vizier Hamid ibn al-Abbas that he revived the dead and that jinn served him, that he had beguiled a group of the caliph's courtiers, and that the chamberlain Nasr inclined toward him. The vizier pressed al-Muqtadir to hand him over, and he was seized together with a man known as al-Sharqi and others. They confessed that the divinity had been established for them, that he revived the dead, and that they had met him on that basis; he denied it, saying God forbid that he claim lordship or prophethood, and that he was only a man who worships God. The vizier summoned the judge Abu Amr, the judge Abu Ja'far ibn al-Bahlul and the leading jurists and asked for their ruling. When his written statement was read to them, in which he said that whoever could not make the pilgrimage could build a house in his home, circle it, and feed and clothe thirty orphans, and would then be as one who had made the pilgrimage, and said he had taken this from the Kitab al-Ikhlas of al-Hasan al-Basri, Abu Amr said: 'You lie, O one whose blood is lawful; we heard it in Mecca and it does not contain this.' So the ruling declared his blood lawful. When al-Hallaj heard this he said: 'My blood is not lawful for you; my belief is Islam and my school is the Sunna, and there are books of mine on it that survive. God, God, concerning my blood.' He was given a thousand lashes and did not groan; then his hands and feet were cut off, and he was killed and burned with fire. When he had become ash he was thrown into the Tigris, and his head was displayed in Baghdad and sent to Khurasan. Some of his followers came to say that he had not been killed, but that his likeness had been cast onto an animal and that he would return after forty days; others said he had died on a donkey on the road to Tabaristan ³. According to Ibn al-Jawzi, he was crucified on the eastern bank on Wednesday and Thursday and on the western bank on Friday and Saturday, twelve nights before the end of Rabi' al-Akhir ⁴.