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 sai