It is said of this ʿIsa the pharmacist that one day while he was sitting in his shop a woman arrived from the caliph's court with a bottle containing a urine sample.
ʿIsa, who had no knowledge or experience of the physician's art, studied the urine and said, purely by way of a guess and with downcast eyes, 'This is not the water of a sick man, but belongs to a woman who carries a male child in her womb who will one day rule this kingdom.'
Now this woman was the maidservant of Kaizaran, the concubine of the caliph al-Mahdi, and she immediately ran to her mistress and told her what she had just heard.
And so ʿIsa spent all his time in churches and monasteries, in the company of holy men and miracle-workers, and in fasting and praying, until his prediction came true.
[1] Hnanishoʿ is named in both Syriac and Chinese in a conventional dating formula at the end of the main inscription on the Nestorian Stele erected in Chang'an by the metropolitan Adam of Beth Sinaye in February 781.