“…show us due respect before the public, and instruct us when we are in private.”

Abu Ḥātim heard this maxim from al-Aṣmaʿī.⦗1⦘

Al-Thaʿālibī relates in al-Laṭāʾif that al-Ṣūlī said: “Al-Rashīd left behind one hundred million dinars.”

Al-Masʿūdī records in Murūj al-Dhahab: “Al-Rashīd wished to join the Mediterranean with the Sea of Qulzum at the point near al-Farama,⦗2⦘ but Yaḥyā al-Barmakī said to him, ‘The Byzantines are already abducting people from the Sacred Precinct, and their ships reach into the Ḥijāz.’”

Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī reports that al-Rashīd once rewarded him with two hundred thousand dirhams.

ʿAbd al-Razzāq said: “I was with al-Fuḍayl in Mecca when Hārūn passed by. Al-Fuḍayl remarked, ‘People dislike this man, yet nothing on earth is dearer to me than he. Were he to die, you would witness momentous events.’⦗3⦘”

Yaḥyā ibn Abī Ṭālib narrated: ʿAmmār ibn Layth al-Wāsiṭī told us, “I heard al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ say, ‘No death would grieve me more than that of the Commander of the Believers Hārūn; I would gladly see Allah take from my lifespan and add it to his.’

“That struck us as an overstatement, but when Hārūn died, turmoil erupted, and al-Maʾmūn forced people to declare that the Qur’an was created, we said, ‘The shaykh knew better what he meant.’”⦗4⦘

Al-Jāḥiẓ observed: “Al-Rashīd possessed what none other had amassed; his viziers were: …”