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