Amazing Story of a Bird and A Scholar

Imām al-Dhahabī mentions the following story in his entry for Sufyān ath-Thawrī: ”ʻAlī b. ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz said, Arim narrated to us saying, I went to Abū Manṣūr to visit him, he said to me,

‘Sufyān resided in this house, and there was here a nightingale belonging to my son. He (Sufyān) said, ‘Why is this locked up (in a cage)? It should be freed.’ I said, ‘It belongs to my son, and he gives it to you as a gift.’ Sufyān said, ‘No, I will give him a dinar for it.’ He said, ‘He then took it and freed it, and it would go out and return in the evening, and would be at the far end of the house. When Sufyān died, it followed his funeral procession and was flying over his grave. After this on some nights it would go to his grave, and sometimes would spend the night there, and sometimes would return back home. They then found it dead by his grave and it was buried alongside Sufyān.”’

[al-Fawāʼid al-Gharrah, 3/281]