The historical Buhlūl appears to have been a contemporary of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mahdī (r. 158–169/775–785), with the first accounts on him being found in the first half of the 3rd/9th century, i.e., within fifty years of his reported death. In his report on Buhlūl, al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/869) relates a telling conversation (1/182) that took place between Buhlūl and Isḥāq b. Ṣabbāḥ, the ruler of the Ḥijāz during al-Mahdī’s reign, which reveals his Shiʿi sympathies. Al-Jāḥiẓ’s other two reports (1/1…