For ten years (not including an interval of seven) from the time of Al-Rashid’s accession (A.D. 786) to the date of their fall, (A.D. 803), Yahya and his sons, Al-Fazl and Ja’afar, were virtually rulers of the great heterogeneous empire, which extended from Mauritania to Tartary, and they did notable service in arresting its disruption. Their downfall came sudden and terrible like “a thunderbolt from the blue.” As the Caliph and Ja’afar were halting in Al-’Umr (the convent) near Anbár-town on the Euphrates, after a convivial evening spent in different pavilions, Harun during the dead of the night called up his page Yásir al-Rikhlah[[268]] and bade him bring Ja’afar’s head. The messenger found Ja’afar still carousing with the blind poet Abú Zakkár and the Christian physician Gabriel ibn Bakhtiashú, and was persuaded to return to the Caliph and report his death; the Wazir adding, “An he express regret I shall owe thee my life; and, if not, whatso Allah will be done.” Ja’afar followed to listen and heard only the Caliph exclaim, “O sucker of thy mother’s clitoris, if thou answer me another word, I will send thee before him!” whereupon he at once bandaged his own eyes and received the fatal blow. Al-Asma’í, who was summoned to the presence shortly after, recounts that when the head was brought to Harun he gazed at it, and summoning two witnesses commanded them to decapitate Yasir, crying, “I cannot bear to look upon the slayer of Ja’afar!” His vengeance did not cease with the death: he ordered the head to be gibbetted at one end and the trunk at the other abutment of the Tigris bridge where the corpses of the vilest malefactors used to be exposed; and, some months afterwards, he insulted the remains by having them burned—the last and worst indignity which can be offered to a Moslem. There are indeed pity and terror in the difference between two such items in the Treasury-accounts as these: “Four hundred thousand dinars (£200,000) to a robe of honour for the Wazir Ja’afar bin Yahya;” and, “Ten kírát, (5 shill.) to naphtha and reeds for burning the body of Ja’afar the Barmecide.”
Meanwhile Yahya and Al-Fazl, seized by the Caliph Harun’s command at Baghdad, were significantly cast into the prison “Habs al-Zanádikah”—of the Guebres—and their immense wealth which, some opine, hastened their downfall, was confiscated. According to the historian, Al-Tabari, who, however, is not supported by all the annalists, the whole Barmecide family, men, women, and children, numbering over a thousand, were slaughtered with only three exceptions; Yahya, his brother Mohammed, and his son Al-Fazl. The Caliph’s foster-father, who lived to the age of seventy-four, was allowed to die in jail (A.H. 805) after two years’ imprisonment at Rukkah. Al-Fazl, after having been tortured with two hundred blows in order to make him produce concealed property, survived his father three years and died in Nov. A.H. 808, some four months before his terrible foster-brother. A pathetic tale is told of the son warming water for the old man’s use by pressing the copper ewer to his stomach.
The motives of this terrible massacre are variously recounted, but no sufficient explanation has yet been, or possibly ever will be, given. The popular idea is embodied in The Nights.[[269]] Harun, wishing Ja’afar to be his companion even in the Harem, had wedded him, pro formâ, to his eldest sister Abbásah, “the loveliest woman of her day,” and brilliant in mind as in body; but he had expressly said, “I will marry thee to her, that it may be lawful for thee to look upon her but thou shalt not touch her.” Ja’afar bound himself by a solemn oath; but his mother Attábah was mad enough to deceive him in his cups and the result was a boy (Ibn Khallikan) or, according to others, twins. The issue was sent under the charge of a confidential eunuch and a slave-girl to Meccah for concealment; but the secret was divulged to Zubaydah who had her own reasons for hating husband and wife and cherished an especial grievance against Yahya.[[270]] Thence it soon found its way to head-quarters. Harun’s treatment of Abbásah supports the general conviction: according to the most credible accounts she and her child were buried alive in a pit under the floor of her apartment.
But, possibly, Ja’afar’s perjury was only “the last straw.” Already Al-Fazl bin Rabí’a, the deadliest enemy of the Barmecides, had been entrusted (A.D. 786) with the Wazirate which he kept seven years. Ja’afar had also acted generously but imprudently in abetting the escape of Yahya bin Abdillah, Sayyid and Alide, for whom the Caliph had commanded confinement in a close dark dungeon: when charged with disobedience the Wazir had made full confession and Harun had (they say) exclaimed, “Thou hast done well!” but was heard to mutter, “Allah slay me an I slay thee not.”[[271]] The great house seems at times to have abused its powers by being too peremptory with Harun and Zubaydah, especially in money matters;[[272]] and its very greatness would have created for it many and powerful enemies and detractors who plied the Caliph with anonymous verse and prose. Nor was it forgotten that, before the spread of Al-Islam, they had presided over the Naubehár or Pyræthrum of Balkh; and Harun is said to have remarked anent Yahya, “The zeal for magianism, rooted in his heart, induces him to save all the monuments connected with his faith.”[[273]] Hence the charge that they were “Zanádakah,” a term properly applied to those who study the Zend scripture, but popularly meaning Mundanists, Positivists, Reprobates, Atheists; and it may be noted that, immediately after Al-Rashid’s death, violent religious troubles broke out in Baghdad. Ibn Khallikan[[274]] quotes Sa’íd ibn Sálim, a well-known grammarian and traditionist who philosophically remarked, “Of a truth the Barmecides did nothing to deserve Al-Rashid’s severity, but the day (of their power and prosperity) had been long and whatso endureth long waxeth longsome.” Fakhr al-Din says (p. [27]), “On attribue encore leur ruine aux manières fières et orgueilleuses de Djafar (Ja’afar) et de Fadhl (Al-Fazl), manières que les rois ne sauroient supporter.” According to Ibn Badrún, the poet, when the Caliph’s sister ’Olayyah[[275]] asked him, “O my lord, I have not seen thee enjoy one happy day since putting Ja’afar to death: wherefore didst thou slay him?” he answered, “My dear life, an I thought that my shirt knew the reason I would rend it in pieces!” I therefore hold with Al-Mas’udi, “As regards the intimate cause (of the catastrophe) it is unknown and Allah is Omniscient.”
Aaron the Orthodox appears sincerely to have repented his enormous crime. From that date he never enjoyed refreshing sleep: he would have given his whole realm to recall Ja’afar to life; and, if any spoke slightingly of the Barmecides in his presence, he would exclaim, “God damn your fathers! Cease to blame them or fill the void they have left.” And he had ample reason to mourn the loss. After the extermination of the wise and enlightened family, the affairs of the Caliphate never prospered: Fazl bin Rabí’a, though a man of intelligence and devoted to letters, proved a poor substitute for Yahya and Ja’afar; and the Caliph is reported to have applied to him the couplet:—
No sire to your sire,[[276]] I bid you spare ✿ Your calumnies or their place replace.
His unwise elevation of his two rival sons filled him with fear of poison, and, lastly, the violence and recklessness of the popular mourning for the Barmecides,[[277]] whose echo has not yet died away, must have added poignancy to his tardy penitence. The crime still “sticks fiery off” from the rest of Harun’s career: it stands out in ghastly prominence as one of the most terrible tragedies recorded by history, and its horrible details make men write passionately on the subject to this our day.[[278]]
As of Harun so of Zubaydah it may be said that she was far superior in most things to contemporary royalties, and she was not worse at her worst than the normal despot-queen of the Morning-land. We must not take seriously the tales of her jealousy in The Nights, which mostly end in her selling off or burying alive her rivals; but, even were all true, she acted after the recognised fashion of her exalted sisterhood. The secret history of Cairo, during the last generation, tells of many a viceregal dame who committed all the crimes, without any of the virtues which characterised Harun’s cousin-spouse. And the difference between the manners of the Caliphate and the “respectability” of the nineteenth century may be measured by the Tale called, “Al-Maamun and Zubaydah.”[[279]] The lady, having won a game of forfeits from her husband, and being vexed with him for imposing unseemly conditions when he had been the winner, condemned him to lie with the foulest and filthiest kitchen-wench in the palace; and thus was begotten the Caliph who succeeded and destroyed her son.
Zubaydah was the grand-daughter of the second Abbaside Al-Mansur, by his son Ja’afar whom The Nights persistently term Al-Kasim: her name was Amat al-Azíz or Handmaid of the Almighty; her cognomen was Umm Ja’afar as her husband’s was Abú Ja’afar; and her popular name “Creamkin” derives from Zubdah,[[280]] cream or fresh butter, on account of her plumpness and freshness. She was as majestic and munificent as her husband; and the hum of prayer was never hushed in her palace. Al-Mas’udi[[281]] makes a historian say to the dangerous Caliph Al-Káhir, “The nobleness and generosity of this Princess, in serious matters as in her diversions, place her in the highest rank”; and he proceeds to give ample proof. Al-Siyuti relates how she once filled a poet’s mouth with jewels which he sold for twenty thousand dinars. Ibn Khallikan (i. [523]) affirms of her, “Her charity was ample, her conduct virtuous, and the history of her pilgrimage to Meccah and of what she undertook to execute on the way is so well-known that it were useless to repeat it.” I have noted (Pilgrimage iii. 2) how the Darb al-Sharki or Eastern road from Meccah to Al-Medinah was due to the piety of Zubaydah who dug wells from Baghdad to the Prophet’s burial place and built not only cisterns and caravanserais, but even a wall to direct pilgrims over the shifting sands. She also supplied Meccah, which suffered severely from want of water, with the chief requisite for public hygiene by connecting it, through levelled hills and hewn rocks, with the Ayn al-Mushásh in the Arafat subrange; and the fine aqueduct, some ten miles long, was erected at a cost of 1,700,000 to 2,000,000 of gold pieces.[[282]] We cannot wonder that her name is still famous among the Badawin and the “Sons of the Holy Cities.” She died at Baghdad, after a protracted widowhood, in A.H. 216 and her tomb, which still exists, was long visited by the friends and dependents who mourned the loss of a devout and most liberal woman.
The reader will bear with me while I run through the tales and add a few remarks to the notices given in the notes: the glance must necessarily be brief, however extensive be the theme. The admirable introduction follows, in all the texts and MSS. known to me, the same main lines but differs greatly in minor details as will be seen by comparing Mr. Payne’s translation with Lane’s and mine. In the Tale of the Sage Dúbán appears the speaking head which is found in the Kámil, in Mirkhond and in the Kitáb al-Uyún: M. C. Barbier de Meynard (v. 503) traces it back to an abbreviated text of Al-Mas’udi. I would especially recommend to students The Porter and the Three Ladies of Baghdad (i. [82]), whose mighty orgie ends so innocently in general marriage. Lane (iii. 746) blames it “because it represents Arab ladies as acting like Arab courtesans”; but he must have known that during his day the indecent frolic was quite possible in some of the highest circles of his beloved Cairo. To judge by the style and changes of person, some of the most “archaic” expressions suggest the hand of the Ráwi or professional tale-teller; yet as they are in all the texts they cannot be omitted in a loyal translation. The following story of The Three Apples perfectly justifies my notes concerning which certain carpers complain. What Englishman would be jealous enough to kill his cousin-wife because a blackamoor in the streets boasted of her favours? But after reading what is annotated in vol. i. [6], and purposely placed there to give the key-note of the book, he will understand the reasonable nature of the suspicion; and I may add that the same cause has commended these “skunks of the human race” to debauched women in England.