64 – Zubayda Umm Jaʿfar bint Jaʿfar ibn al-Manṣūr *

The Lady, the Veiled One, “Servant of the Mighty.” Her kunya was Umm Jaʿfar. She was Zubayda daughter of Jaʿfar ibn al-Manṣūr Abū Jaʿfar, an ʿAbbāsid princess and the mother of the caliph al-Amīn, Muḥammad ibn al-Rashīd.

It was said that no other ʿAbbāsid woman ever bore a caliph besides her.

Endowed with enormous prestige and wealth, she sponsored praiseworthy works along the pilgrimage route. Her grandfather al-Manṣūr himself was the one who nicknamed her “Zubayda.” (1)

So lavish was her state that, when she performed the ḥajj, the expenses came to a little over fifty million dirhams. (2)

In her palace there were nearly one hundred songstresses, every one of whom had memorised the Qur’an. (3)

The caliph al-Maʾmūn went to great lengths to honour her. On one occasion she said to him, “Though I have lost a son who was caliph, I have been compensated with a son who is caliph whom I did not bear. Whoever receives someone like you in exchange has lost nothing.” (4)

She died in 216 AH.