ABSTRACT
In addition to demonstrating his knowledge of political affairs and literary skills by working as a secretary for two regional governors, Hashim ibn Hakim had also worked as a fuller, the medieval profession treating cloth made from wool with chemicals to make it soft and lustrous. The sources mention he had studied many books in the Pahlavi and Sogdian languages of his forefathers. He demonstrated knowledge of physics and chemistry in ways that people around him, especially his enemies, described as sorcery and trickery. Narshakhi describes him as a man of importance for his clan (naqib) and a commander of a group of soldiers, who was jailed for his preaching by the second Abbasid caliph Abu Jafar. After he escaped, he wore a veil to disguise his appearance while preaching and recruiting followers, so he became known as Muqanna, the veiled prophet. He rejected Islam, Arabs, and Zoroastrianism but instead asserted his own claims to prophethood. He ordered his followers to wear white clothes instead of the black symbolic color of the Abbasids.
