—is a fortress for the ruler, a buttress for both religion and worldly life, and the source of their honor, I would not pass a single night hoarding from it even a dinar or a dirham. (1) The pleasure I taste in giving and the vast reward I know to lie in generosity forbid it.

On another occasion a reciter chanted before him: “Do not keep your hand shackled to your neck, nor spread it out wide open” (Qur’an 17:29). Al-Manṣūr exclaimed, “How excellent is the discipline with which our Lord—exalted is He!—has trained us!”

He also said, “I heard ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh say, ‘The masters of this world are the generous, and the masters of the Hereafter are the God-fearing.’”

When al-Manṣūr resolved to perform the pilgrimage in that year—158 AH—he summoned his son al-Mahdī. He advised him concerning his own personal conduct, the welfare of his household, and the good of all the Muslims, teaching him how affairs should be managed and the frontiers secured. He left him many other counsels too long to set down here. He made him swear not to open any of the Muslims’ treasuries until he was sure of his father’s death, for, he said, they contained enough wealth to suffice the community for ten years even if not a single dirham of revenue should reach them. He further charged him to pay the debt that lay upon him—three hundred thousand dinars—for he would not have it cleared from the public treasury. Al-Mahdī carried out all of this.

Al-Manṣūr then entered the state of iḥrām for both ḥajj and ʿumrah at al-Ruṣāfa, driving with him a badanah (sacrificial camel), and said, “My son, I was born in Dhū al-Ḥijjah, and it has occurred to me that I shall die in Dhū al-Ḥijjah; that is what has impelled me to perform the pilgrimage this year.” (2) He bade him farewell and set out. The illness that would end his life struck him on the road, and he reached Mecca in a state of great weakness.

At the last stopping-place before the city he found written at the head of his lodging:

In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful (3)

Abū Jaʿfar, the moment of your death has arrived,
your years are spent, and the decree of Allah must come to pass.
Abū Jaʿfar, can any soothsayer or astrologer today
shield you from the anguish of death?

He summoned the chamberlains and had them read it, but they saw nothing; then he knew that the announcement of his end had reached him.

They relate that al-Manṣūr saw in a dream—or, some say, a voice cried out to him—reciting:

By the Lord of stillness and of motion,
indeed, death sets many snares.
O soul, whether you do evil or good,
that shall return to you.
Not once have night and day alternated,
nor have the stars of heaven revolved in their orbits,
except to transfer sovereignty from one king to another
whenever one reign comes to its appointed end.