ordered a great urn to be brought and filled with live white lead which was then moistened; the head of Isma'il to the bottom of his neck with part of his chest was then hastily immersed therein and held there until the white lead dried and his spirit issued from his extremity until he died. He also informed me that Mu'tadid (77) ordered another man to have all the outlets of his body, mouth, eyes, ears, nostrils etc. tightly stopped with cotton; he was then left to swell and inflate until his skull flew off and he died.

I was informed by Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad b. Yūsuf b. Ya'kub Tanūkhi as follows: said my father: I was with the master whose secretary I was at Dar al-Lai in the camp of Muwaffaq, who was fighting the captain of the Zanj. A Zanji follower of the Traitor, named Qirtās, hit Muwaffaq with an arrow on the pap, crying out “ Take this from Qirtās !", a phrase which became proverbial with archers and still is. Muwaffaq was carried away prostrate and almost dying; the arrow was then extracted, but the head having been attached with cotton remained in the wound, causing a gathering and a swelling with an accumulation of pus, bringing Muwaffaq near death. This encouraged the forces of the Traitor, who called out to us every day: Salt him! meaning that Muwaffaq must be dead and should be embalmed (?). The physicians were agreed that the swelling should be lanced, only Muwaffaq would not allow them to do this; so they told Mu'tadid that if it were not lanced the pus would spread inwards and cause death. Mu'tadid told them to employ some stratagem, promising to secure them from his vengeance. One of the physicians let his right thumb-nail grow to a great length, and concealing the blade of a lancet beneath it came to Muwaffaq and asked leave to feel the ulcer and see how it was. Muwaffaq said: Perhaps you mean to lance it.-He showed him his hand and said, How can I lance it when I have no instrument in my hand?-Muwaffaq then permitted

him to feel it, and he lanced it with his instrument from end to end speedily, when the arrow-head fell out, followed by a quantity of matter and pus. Muwaffaq took fright owing to the suddenness of the operation, and with a blow beat off the physician; but when he felt the relief coming from the discharge and was refreshed, he decorated the physician and rewarded him, undergoing treatment until he was cured. Abu'l-'Abbas' began to look out for Qirtas and when he saw him in the battle-field flung himself upon him (78) hoping to take him prisoner; Qirtās however made a fierce resistance, and used to say to him in his barbarous Arabic O Abu'l'Abbas, if I fall into your hands, cut me up into bowstrings.-Mu'tadid continued to make the most strenuous efforts to catch him, and finally took him prisoner, after he had suffered several wounds. He was brought to Muwaffaq, who ordered him to be decapitated. Mu'tadid asked for the life of the man in order that he might do with him as he liked. Muwaffaq admitted the claim of Mu'tadid, who took him and made bowstrings from his five fingers. When I asked my father to describe the process, he replied that he had the nails pulled out and the skin of the fingers stripped from the ends, right over the shoulders and across the spine again over the shoulders to the ends of the fingers of the other hand, the human skin being so tough that this process was possible. It was then by his order wound into bowstring, and with it Qirtās was impaled.

The following is a curious device put in practice by a thief in our time. I was informed by Abu'l-Qasim 'Ubaidallah b. Mohammed the Shoemaker that he had seen a thief caught and charged with picking the locks of small tenements supposed to be occupied by unmarried persons. Entering the house he would dig a hole such as is called" the well " in the nard game, and throw some

1i.e. Mu'tadid,

nuts into it as though some one had been playing with him, and leave by the side a handkerchief containing some two hundred nuts. He would then proceed to wrap up as many of the goods in the house as he could carry, and if he passed unobserved, he would depart with his burden. If, however the master of the house came on the scene, he would abandon the booty and endeavour to fight his way out. If the master of the house proved doughty, sprung upon him, held him, tried to arrest him, and called out Thieves !, and the neighbours assembled, he would address the master of the house as follows: You are really wanting in humour. Here have I been playing nuts with you for months, and, (79) though you beggared me and took away all I possessed, I made no complaint, nor did I shame you before your neighbours; and now that I have won your goods, you begin to charge me with larceny, you mean and wretched creature! Between us is the gambling-house, the place where we became acquainted. State in the presence of the people there or of the people here that I have cheated, and I will leave you your goods. The man might continue to assert that the other was a thief, but the neighbours supposed that he was unwilling to be branded as a gambler, and in consequence charged the other with theft; whereas in reality he was a gambler and the other man was speaking the truth. They would endeavour to make peace between the two, presently the thief would walk away with his nuts, and the master of the house would be defamed.

He informed me that he knew of another whose plan was to enter the residences of families, especially those in which there were women whose husbands were out. If he succeeded in getting anything he would go away; if he were perceived and the master of the house came, he would suggest that he was a friend of the wife, and some officer's retainer; and ask the master to keep the matter quiet from his employer for the sake of both; displaying

a uniform, and suggesting that if the master chose to dishonour his household, he could not bring him before the Sultan on a charge of adultery. However much the master might shout Thief!, he would repeat his story, and when the neighbours assembled, they would advise the master of the house to hush the matter up. When the master objected, they would attribute his conduct to marital affection and help the thief to escape from his hand. Sometimes they would compel the master to let the thief go. Likewise the more the wife denied and swore with tears that the man was a thief, the more inclined would they be to let him go; so he would get off, and the master would afterwards divorce his wife, and part from his children's mother. This thief thus ruined more than one home and impoverished others, until he went into a house where there was an old woman aged more than ninety years; he not knowing of this. Caught by the master of the house he tried to make his usual insinuation; the master said to him: Scoundrel, there is no one in the house but my mother, who is ninety years old and for more than fifty of them she has (80) spent her nights in prayer and her days in fasting; do you maintain that she is carrying on an amour with you or you with her? So he hit him on the jaw and when the neighbours came together and the thief told them the same story they told him he lied, they knowing the old lady's piety and devoutness. Finally he confessed the facts and was taken off to the magistrate.

I was informed by Abu'l-Hasan Ahmad b. Yusuf alAzraq as follows. I had heard, he said, how Husain b. Mansur al-Hallaj would eat nothing for a month or so though he was under close inspection. I was amazed thereat, and since there was a friendship between me and Abu'l-Faraj Ibn Rauhan the Sufi, who was a pious and devout traditionalist, and whose sister was married to Qasri, attendant of Hallāj, I asked him about this; he replied: I do not know how Hallaj managed, but my

brother-in-law Qasri, his attendant, practised abstinence from food for years and by degrees got to be able to fast for fifteen days, more or less. He used to manage this by a device which had escaped me, but which he divulged when he was imprisoned with the other followers of Hallāj. If a man, he said, be strictly watched for some length of time, and no trickery be discovered, the scrutiny becomes less strict, and continues to slacken as fraud fails to appear, until it is quite neglected, and the person watched can do what he likes. These people have been watching me for fifteen days wherein they have seen me eat nothing, and that is the limit of my endurance of famine; if I continue to fast for one day more I shall perish. Do you take a ratl of raisins of Khorasan and another of almonds and pound them into the consistency of oil-dregs, then make them into thin leaf. When you come to me to-morrow place it between two leaves of a note-book, which you are to carry openly in your hand, so rolled up that its contents may not break nor yet be seen. (81) When you are alone with me and see that noone is watching, then put it under my coat-tails and leave me; then I shall eat the cake secretly, and drink the water with which I rinse my mouth for the ceremonial washing, and this will suffice me for another fifteen days, when you will bring me a second supply in the same style. If these people watch me during the third fortnight, they will find that I eat nothing in reality until you pay your periodical visit with supplies, when I shall again escape their notice when I eat them, and this will keep me alive. The narrator added that he followed these instructions the whole time the man was in prison.

I was informed by Abu'l-Hasan b. al-Azraq: When Hallāj came to Baghdad to preach, he led astray many of the people and of the leading men, and was most hopeful of winning over the Rafidis because their system was the avenue to his. He sent to Abū Sahl Ibn Naubakht, hoping to seduce him. This person was a member