and other historians. Among the explanations advanced are the following:

One report says that Hārūn al-Rashīd had entrusted Yaḥyā ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ḥasan to Jaʿfar al-Barmakī, instructing him to keep the man imprisoned. Yaḥyā kept coaxing him until Jaʿfar finally set him free. Al-Faḍl ibn al-Rabīʿ then carried this tale to al-Rashīd. The caliph said to him, “Woe to you! Do not interfere between me and Jaʿfar; perhaps he released him on my orders and I was unaware.” Later al-Rashīd questioned Jaʿfar, who admitted what he had done. The caliph grew furious, swore that he would kill him, came to loathe the Barmakids, and at length put them to death and disgraced them, though they had once been the most favored and beloved of people to him.

Jaʿfar’s and al-Faḍl’s mother had nursed al-Rashīd, and because of this kinship he elevated them in rank and wealth to a degree no vizier before them—and no grandee after them—ever enjoyed. Jaʿfar even built a residence that cost twenty million dirhams, a piece of extravagance that helped turn the caliph against him.

Another view holds that al-Rashīd executed them because, wherever he passed—through a town, a province, a farm, or an orchard—people would say, “This belongs to Jaʿfar.”

A second opinion claims that the Barmakids were plotting to depose al-Rashīd and to spread zandaqa (heresy).

Others say he slew them on account of al-ʿAbbāsah. Some scholars reject this, though Ibn Jarīr reports it.

Ibn al-Jawzī relates that when al-Rashīd was asked why he had killed the Barmakids he replied, “If I knew that even my shirt knew the reason, I would burn it.”

Jaʿfar used to enter upon al-Rashīd without permission, even while the caliph was in bed with his concubines—an extraordinary privilege and exalted station. He was also one of the caliph’s closest companions when drinking wine, for toward the end of his reign al-Rashīd did on occasion partake of intoxicants, though the reports differ.

Of all his family the dearest to him was his sister al-ʿAbbāsah bint al-Mahdī. Al-Rashīd would bring her to those gatherings at which Jaʿfar was present, and he married her to Jaʿfar so that the latter might lawfully look at her, stipulating that he must not consummate the marriage. Sometimes the caliph would rise and leave them while both were tipsy; on one such occasion Jaʿfar lay with her, she conceived, bore a child, and sent the infant with one of her maid-servants to Mecca, where he was raised.

Ibn Khallikān, in Wafayāt al-Aʿyān, records that after al-Rashīd married his sister al-ʿAbbāsah to Jaʿfar she fell passionately in love with him and tried to seduce him, but he firmly refused for fear of the caliph. She then devised a ruse: Jaʿfar’s mother used to present him every Thursday night with a beautiful virgin slave-girl. Al-ʿAbbāsah said, “Introduce me to him in the guise of a slave-girl.” The woman was reluctant, but al-ʿAbbāsah threatened her until she complied. When she entered, Jaʿfar did not recognize her and had relations with her. She then said, “How do you like the stratagem of royal maidens?” She conceived that very night.

Jaʿfar went to his mother and said, “By Allah, you have sold me cheaply!” Thereafter his father, Yaḥyā ibn Khālid, began to restrict the allowances of al-Rashīd’s household. Zubaydah complained to the caliph several times and eventually divulged al-ʿAbbāsah’s secret. Al-Rashīd flew into a rage. When she told him that the child had been sent to Mecca, he performed the pilgrimage that very year to verify the matter.

Another report says that a certain slave-girl informed against al-ʿAbbāsah, telling the caliph what had happened and that the child was in Mecca with slave-girls, money, and abundant jewelry. He did not believe her until he made the pilgrimage the previous year, investigated the affair, and found it exactly as she had described.