under a single blanket, engaged in that obscenity, so I ordered that their necks be struck. I then had the heads carried away from before me and returned to our earlier conversation as though nothing had happened. He was a bold man, well versed in the business of rule, and open-handed.

Among his sayings:
“Nothing rectifies kingship better than swift punishment of the criminal and forgiveness of inadvertent slips; that lessens people’s covetousness for the throne.”

On one occasion he became angry with a man. The man sought his good pleasure and he was satisfied, but when the fellow began to excuse himself al-Hādī said, “My being pleased with you spares you the burden of an apology.”

He once offered condolences to a man on the death of his child, saying, “He delighted you while he was an enemy and a trial, yet he grieves you now that he has become a prayer and a mercy?”

Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār relates that Marwān ibn Abī Ḥafṣah recited to al-Hādī some verses, among them:

His might and his bounty were equal one day;
No one can tell which of the two deserves the praise.

Al-Hādī asked him, “Which would you prefer: 30,000 paid at once, or 100,000 that must make the rounds of the bureaus?”

He replied, “O Commander of the Faithful, is there not something better than that?”

“What is it?” asked the Caliph.

“Thirty thousand immediately, and 100,000 that go through the bureaus.”

Al-Hādī said, “Even better than that: we shall advance the whole sum.” He therefore ordered that 130,000 be paid to him on the spot.

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (1) reports: Al-Azhari told me, Sahl ibn Aḥmad al-Dībājī told us, al-Ṣūlī told us, [Ibn] al-Ghalābī told us, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Taymī al-Makkī told me, al-Muṭṭalib ibn ʿUkāshah al-Muzanī said:

“We appeared before Abū Muḥammad al-Hādī to testify against one of our number who had reviled Quraysh and even dared to speak of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him. The Caliph convened a session for us in which he gathered the jurists of his day and all who were in attendance at his gate. The man was brought in, and we were brought in, and we testified to what we had heard from him. Al-Hādī’s face changed color; he lowered his head, then raised it and said:

‘I heard my father al-Mahdī narrate from his father al-Manṣūr, from his father Muḥammad, from his father ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn ʿAbbās: “Whoever demeans Quraysh, Allah will demean him.” And you, enemy of Allah, were not content with wishing that upon Quraysh until you overstepped to speak of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him! Strike off his neck.’

“We had not left before he was executed.”

Al-Hādī died in Rabiʿ al-Awwal of that same year. His brother Hārūn offered the funeral prayer over him, and he was buried in a palace he had built, called al-Abyad, at ʿĪsābādh on the eastern side of Baghdad.

He left nine children: seven sons and two daughters. The sons were Jaʿfar, ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allah, Isḥāq, Ismāʿīl, Sulaymān, and Mūsā the Blind—born after his father’s death and therefore named for him.

The daughters were Umm ʿĪsā, whom al-Maʾmūn married, and Umm al-ʿAbbās, known by the epithet Tawbah.