Abu Bakr ibn Abi Sa'dan

Summary

Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Sa'dan was of Baghdadi origin. Abu Nu'aym gives him notice 650 of Hilyat al-Awliya, among the gnostics whose days he says he reached. He describes him as eloquent and clear in speech, a leading figure in the sciences of the law who followed the school of al-Shafi'i, and a clear voice on the knowledge of those devoted to practice and worship. He records that Ibn Abi Sa'dan lived for a time in Tarsus and was sent as an envoy to the Byzantines because of his standing and his eloquence. ¹

Sayings

Abu al-Qasim al-Razi relates his saying that whoever acts on the knowledge of transmission inherits the knowledge of understanding, whoever acts on the knowledge of understanding inherits the knowledge of observance, and whoever acts on the knowledge of observance is guided to the way of truth. Muhammad ibn Ibrahim heard him say that one who hears with his ear repeats, one who hears with his heart takes heed, and one who acts on what he knows is guided and guides. He also said that the first good allotted to the self is the spirit, then knowledge to show it its right course, then intellect to direct both knowledge and the self. ¹

The Building of Tarsus

In al-Baladhuri from al-Waqidi: al-Hasan ibn Qahtaba al-Ta'i raided Byzantine lands in year 162 with the men of Khurasan, Mosul and Syria, Yemenite reinforcements and the volunteers of Iraq and the Hijaz, setting out by way of Tarsus, and reported to al-Mahdi the great benefit for Islam in building, fortifying and manning it and the check and vexation it would give the enemy — al-Hasan having fought so well on that raid and harried the Byzantine land that they named him the Shaytan; coming out of Byzantine territory he camped at Tarsus's meadow and rode to the ruined city, circling it on every side and reckoning its capacity at a hundred thousand; he described it to al-Mahdi and likewise told him of al-Hadath, rousing him to build it, so al-Mahdi ordered him to build Tarsus beginning with al-Hadath city, which was built, and charged him with Tarsus; in year 171 al-Rashid heard the Byzantines had conspired to go to Tarsus to fortify and man it, so he sent the summer raid of year 171 under Harthama ibn A'yan ordering him to settle, build and fortify it, putting the work in the hands of Faraj ibn Sulaym the eunuch at his command, and Abu Sulaym marched him to Madinat al-Salam whence he mustered the first levy of Khurasanis — three thousand men — who entered Tarsus, then a second levy of two thousand — a thousand of Masisa's people and a thousand of Antioch's, each man on a ten-dinar increase over his pay — who camped with the first levy at al-Mada'in at the Jihad gate at the opening of Muharram year 172 until Tarsus's building, fortification and mosque were complete; Faraj surveyed from river to river four thousand lots, each twenty cubits square, granted the Tarsusis their lots, and the two levies settled it in Rabi' II year 172; Abd al-Malik ibn Salih had appointed Yazid ibn Makhlad al-Fazari over it, whom the Khurasanis expelled in resentment for the Hubayriyya, and Abu al-Fawaris replaced him, confirmed in 170-and-odd.

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The Building of Tarsus