The common people of Bagdad were circulating reports that Hallaj could raise the dead, and that the Jinn[21] were his slaves, and brought him whatever he desired. Hamid, the vizier of the Caliph Muqtadir, was much disturbed by this, and requested the Caliph to have Hallaj and his partizans arrested. But the grand chamberlain Nasir was strongly in his favour, and opposed this; his influence, however, being less than that of the vizier, Hallaj and some of his followers were arrested. When the latter were questioned, they admitted that they regarded their leader as God, since he raised the dead; but when he was questioned himself, he said, "God preserve me from claiming divinity or the dignity of a prophet; I am a mortal man who adores the Most High."
The vizier then summoned two cadis[22] and the principal theologians, and desired that they should give sentence against Hallaj. They answered that they could not pronounce sentence without proofs and without confession on the part of the accused. The vizier, foiled in his attempt, caused Hallaj to be brought several times before him, and tried by artfully devised questions to elicit from him some heretical utterance, but in vain. Finally he succeeded in finding in one of his books the assertion that if a man wished to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, but was hindered from doing so by some reason or other, he could perform the equivalent of it in the following way. He should go through all the prescribed circuits in a chamber carefully cleansed and closed. In this chamber also he should give a feast of the choicest food to thirty orphans, should wait upon them himself, make them a present of clothing, and give them each seven dirhems.[23] All this, he maintained, would be a work more meritorious than the pilgrimage itself.
The vizier showed to the cadi Abou Amr this passage which scandalised him. Abou Amr then asked Hallaj, "Whence did you derive this idea?" Hallaj quoted a work of Hassan of Basra, from which he said he had taken it. "It is a lie, O infidel, whose death is lawful," exclaimed the cadi; "the book you speak of was expounded to us at Mecca by one of the learned, but what you have written is not in it." The vizier eagerly caught up the expressions "O infidel," etc., which escaped the cadi in his excitement, and asked him to pronounce sentence of death. The cadi refused; that, he said, was not his intention; but the vizier insisted, and ended by obtaining the sentence of death, which was signed by all the maulvies present. In vain Hallaj sought to prove that the condemnation was unjust. "You have no right," he exclaimed, "to shed my blood. My religion is Islam; I believe in the traditions handed down from the Prophet, and I have written on this subject books which you can find everywhere. I have always acknowledged the four Imams[24] and the first four Caliphs. I invoke the help of God to save my life!"
He was taken to prison. The vizier despatched the sentence of death, signed by the maulvies, to the Caliph, who ordered that Hallaj should be handed to the Chief of Police and receive a thousand strokes of the rod, and then another thousand if he did not die from the effects of the first scourging, and finally be decapitated. The vizier, however, did not transmit the order accurately, but modified it as follows: "If Hallaj does not die under the blows of the rod, let him first have a hand cut off, then a foot, then the other hand and foot. Lastly let his head be cut off, and his body burnt."
Hallaj underwent the terrible punishment with admirable courage, and when his body had been burnt the ashes were cast into the Tigris. But his disciples did not believe in his death; they were persuaded that a person resembling him had been martyred in his place, and that he would show himself again after forty days. Some declared that they had met him mounted on an ass on the road leading to Nahrawan, and had heard him say, "Be not like those simpletons who think that I have been scourged and put to death."
Thus far the theologians' account. That given by Fariduddin Attar in his "Tazkirat-ul-Aulia" is as follows:
This is he who was a martyr in the way of truth, whose rank has become exalted, whose outer and inner man were pure, who has been a pattern of loyalty in love, whom an irresistible longing drew towards the contemplation of the face of God; this is the enthusiast Mansur Hallaj, may the mercy of God be upon him! He was intoxicated with a love whose flames consumed him. The miracles he worked were such that the learned were thunderstruck at them. He was a man whose range of vision was immense, whose words were riddles, and profoundly versed in the knowledge of mysteries. Born in the canton of Baida in the province of Shiraz, he grew up at Wasit.
Abd Allah Khafif used to say, "Mansur really possessed the knowledge of the truth." "I and Mansur," declared Shibli,[25] "followed the same path; they regarded me as mad, and my life was saved thereby, while Mansur perished because he was sane." If Mansur had been really astray in error, the two learned men we have just quoted would not have spoken of him in such terms. Many wise men, however, have reproached him for revealing the mysteries of truth to the vulgar herd.
When he had grown up, he was two years in the service of Abd Allah Teshtari. He made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and on his return became a disciple of the Sufi Junaid. One day, when Mansur was plying him with questions on certain obscure and difficult points, Junaid said, "O Mansur, before very long you will redden the head of the stake."[26] "The day when I redden the head of the stake," rejoined Mansur, "you will cast away the garment of the dervish and assume that of ordinary men." It is related that on the day when Mansur was taken to execution all the Ulama[27] signed the sentence of death. "Junaid also must sign," said the Caliph. Junaid accordingly repaired to the college of the Ulama, where, after putting on a mullah's robe and turban, he recorded in writing his opinion that "though apparently Mansur deserved death, inwardly he possessed the knowledge of the Most High."