He would pour out money whenever some fearful calamity loomed—above all when Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥasan (1) rebelled against him in Madinah and Muhammad’s brother Ibrāhīm rose in Basrah.

Abū Isḥāq al-Thaʿālibī said: In spite of al-Manṣūr’s fame for parsimony, Muḥammad ibn Salām related that no caliph before al-Manṣūr had ever granted ten thousand thousand dirhams—so large a sum that payment orders passed from hand to hand and the figure was entered in the state registers; yet on a single day al-Manṣūr gave each of his paternal relatives ten thousand thousand dirhams.

It is also said that on the day he died he left in the public treasuries nine hundred thousand thousand and some dirhams—i.e. a little more than nine hundred million.

Zuhayr ibn Muʿāwiyah narrated: “Maysarah ibn Ḥabīb told us, from al-Minhāl ibn ʿAmr, from Saʿīd ibn Jubayr, that he heard Ibn ʿAbbās say: ‘From us will come al-Saffāḥ, from us al-Manṣūr, and from us al-Mahdī.’ Its chain of transmission is sound (2).”

Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-Hāshimī narrated, from his father, from his grandfather, that his father said: al-Manṣūr told us, “I saw in a dream that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ wound a turban around my head whose coils numbered twenty-three and said, ‘Take it,’ and he charged me with the care of his community.”

Al-Manṣūr also said, “The kings are four: Muʿāwiyah, ʿAbd al-Malik, Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, and I.”

Al-Manṣūr performed the pilgrimage several times—twice during his caliphate—and on the third journey he died at Biʾr Maymūn (3) before reaching Mecca.

Abū al-ʿAynāʾ reported to us, quoting al-Aṣmaʿī: “Al-Manṣūr mounted the pulpit and began to speak. A man stood up and said, ‘Commander of the Faithful! Remember the One Whom you are mentioning.’ He replied, ‘Welcome; indeed…’ ”