and all that wealth—have we come to this?!’

He answered, ‘My son, it was a prayer uttered by someone we had wronged; we forgot it, but Allah did not.’

Yaḥyā died a prisoner in ar-Raqqa in the year 190 AH, at the age of seventy.

As for Jaʿfar, he was one of the most strikingly handsome men of his age—tall, fair-skinned, good-looking, eloquent, silver-tongued, cultivated, sweet of phrase, and as open-handed as Ḥātim. Yet he was playful and steeped in worldly pleasures. He was appointed governor-deputy of Damascus and entered the city in 180 AH; he would leave others to administer it while he stayed close to Hārūn. He was wont to say, ‘When the world turns toward you, give—its stores will not be exhausted; and when it turns away, give—nothing in it endures.’

Ibn Jarīr (1) said: ‘Factional zeal flared up in Syria and the situation became grave, so al-Rashīd grew anxious. He entrusted the command to Jaʿfar, saying, “Either you go out, or I shall.” Jaʿfar set off, killed many of them, disciplined the rest, and left them neither spear nor bow. The revolt was quelled (2); he appointed ʿĪsā ibn al-Muʿallā over Damascus and returned (3).’

Al-Khaṭīb said: ‘Jaʿfar enjoyed with al-Rashīd a standing that no one else shared. His generosity is too famous to require mention, and he was among the masters of speech and eloquence.

‘It is said that on one night, in the presence of al-Rashīd, he endorsed more than a thousand documents, reviewing each of them, and did not permit a single one (4) to depart from what the law required. His father had placed him under the tutelage of the judge Abū…’