the enemy, and he advanced to the borderlands. The Franks then grew covetous—indeed, all of al-Andalus fell within their sights. They captured several fortresses until, in 478 AH, they wrested Toledo from the Muslims and made it the capital of their kingdom—surely to Allah we belong and to Him we return.

Al-Maʾmūn had wanted to enlist the help of the Franks in seizing the cities of al-Andalus, so he wrote to their tyrant: “Come with one hundred horsemen, and we shall meet at such-and-such a place.” He himself set out with two hundred, but the tyrant arrived with six thousand and placed them in ambush, ordering them, “When you see us draw together, encircle us.”

When the two kings met, the army surrounded them. Al-Maʾmūn regretted his folly and was bewildered, whereupon the Frank said, “Yaḥyā, by the Gospel, I once thought you intelligent, but you are a fool! You have come to me and surrendered your very life without pact or treaty; you will not escape me until you grant what I demand.”

“Then be reasonable,” Al-Maʾmūn replied.

The Frank thereupon listed the fortresses he wanted and imposed upon him an annual tribute. Al-Maʾmūn returned humiliated and defeated—such was the recompense for what his own hands had wrought.

He died in 460 AH (1).

107 – The Son of al-Maʾmūn: ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Hāshimī *

The shaykh, imām, trustworthy, eminent, long-lived scholar: Abū al-Ghanāʾim ʿAbd al-Ṣamad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Faḍl ibn al-Maʾmūn ibn al-Rashīd al-Hāshimī, the ʿAbbāsid from Baghdad and the leading hadith authority of that city.

Abū Saʿd al-Samʿānī said: “He was reliable and truthful, noble and imposing, a man of few words upon whom serenity and dignity rested. He was the chief and head of the descendants of al-Maʾmūn.

He reached an advanced age; people travelled to him, and his narrations spread throughout the lands.”