to bring him back. On the way he spurred (1) his mount after a piece of game; the animal bolted into a deserted ruin, and al-Maḥdī pursued it. As he galloped through the doorway of the ruin he smashed his back against the lintel, and his spine snapped.

Others say he was actually poisoned: a concubine, having prepared a poison for her co-wife, unwittingly served it to him. He reached for the tainted dish; the girl panicked but did not warn him. Being a voracious eater, he swallowed it and cried out, “My belly!”

He died a day later (2). They then sent the seal-ring (3) and the staff to al-Hādī, who mounted at once and made for Baghdad.

Like his father, he was relentless in rooting out the zanādiqa (heretics) and tracking them down. He executed a number of them, among them Yaʿqūb ibn al-Faḍl ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn Rabīʿa ibn al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim. His own daughter was discovered to be pregnant by him—he had forced her (4).

Husayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Ḥasan ibn Ḥasan, the Ḥasanid (5), rose against al-Hādī in Medina; he was killed at the battle of Fakh outside Mecca. He was of little merit, and his army was a rabble. Al-Hādī himself, it is said, died from an ulcer.

Another report claims that his mother, al-Khayzurān, poisoned him when he resolved to kill his brother al-Rashīd. She was deeply involved in the affairs of state and was among