and asked him for something that would keep me alive, hoping I might one day meet Suwar—for he had been my father’s companion—so perhaps he would be in easy circumstances and show me some generosity.

I said to him, “And who is your father?” He named a man who had been the closest of friends to me. I responded, “I am Suwar, your father’s companion. On this very day Allah withheld from me sleep, repose, food, and comfort until He drove me out of my house to meet you and seated me before you.” I then ordered my steward, and he handed the blind man the two thousand dirhams he was carrying. I added, “Tomorrow come to my house at such-and-such a place.”

I mounted, rode to the palace of the Caliph, and said to myself, “I have nothing more astonishing to regale al-Mahdī with in tonight’s evening gathering than this.” When I related the story to him he was extremely amazed. He immediately ordered that the blind man be given two thousand dinars and then asked me, “Do you have any debts?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“How much?” he said.

“Fifty thousand dinars.”

He fell silent, chatted with me a while, and I then took my leave. When I reached my house I found that the porters had arrived ahead of me with fifty thousand dinars—and two thousand dinars for the blind man. I waited for the blind man to come that same day, but he was delayed; so when evening fell I went back to al-Mahdī. He said, “I have reflected on your case and realized that once you pay your debt nothing will remain with you, so I have ordered another fifty thousand dinars for you.”

On the third day the blind man came to me. I told him, “Allah has given me abundant good because of you,” and I handed him the two thousand dinars from the Caliph and added to them from my own wealth as well.

A woman approached al-Mahdī and said, “O clan of the Messenger of Allah, fulfill my need.” Al-Mahdī responded, “I have never heard anyone use that address but her. Grant her request and give her ten thousand dirhams.”

Ibn al-Khayyat entered upon al-Mahdī, praised him in verse, and the Caliph ordered fifty thousand dirhams for him. Ibn al-Khayyat distributed the money and began to recite:

“I clasped his hand in mine to seek prosperity,
Not knowing that generosity from his palm is catching.
So none of the wealth that the rich obtain from him reached me;
He only infected me, and I scattered all I possessed.”

When this reached al-Mahdī, he replaced every one of those dirhams with a dinar.

In short, al-Mahdī’s merits and noble deeds were many. He died in Māsabadhān (1). He had set out for that region to summon his son al-Hādī from Jurjān so that he might depose him from the succession and appoint Hārūn al-Rashīd after him. Al-Hādī refused, so al-Mahdī rode out intending to bring him, but when he reached Māsabadhān he died there. Earlier, while in his palace in Baghdad— I believe it was the one called the Palace of Safety—he had seen in a dream an old man standing at the gate of the palace, and it is said he heard a voice saying:

“It is as though I see this palace whose people have perished,
Whose courtyard and dwellings are now deserted.
The chieftain of the tribe, after splendour and sovereignty,
Has been borne to a grave over which heavy stones are piled.”