a vast amount of wealth; he devastated the land and set it ablaze. Naqfūr thereupon asked him for a truce on condition that he would pay an annual tribute. Al-Rashīd accepted, but when the caliph turned back from the campaign and reached al-Raqqah, the unbeliever broke the covenant and betrayed the pact. The cold was then so intense that no one dared travel to inform al-Rashīd, fearing for their lives on account of the frost, until the winter season had passed.
That same year the pilgrimage was led on behalf of the people by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbbās b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī.
Those of note who died in that year include:
• Jaʿfar b. Yaḥyā b. Khālid b. Barmak (1) — Abū al-Faḍl al-Barmakī, the vizier, son of a vizier. Al-Rashīd appointed him over Syria and other provinces. Ibn ʿAsākir (2) relates that al-Rashīd dispatched him to Damascus when the so-called “twenty-year sedition” (3) erupted in Ḥawrān between the tribal confederations of Qays and Yaman. This was the first flame to flare up between Qays and Yaman in the lands of Islam; it had lain smoldering since pre-Islamic days and was rekindled at that moment. When Jaʿfar arrived with his army, the turmoil was extinguished and happiness prevailed. Fine verses were composed on the occasion, cited by Ibn ʿAsākir in Jaʿfar’s entry in his History (4); among them:
The fires of discord in Syria had been set alight—
Now is the hour when Syria’s blaze is quenched.
When the swelling sea of the Barmakids surges,
Its shooting stars and sparks are snuffed and spent.
Against it the Commander of the Faithful hurled Jaʿfar;
In him its breach was met, its break repaired.
He struck it with a noble, auspicious man
Whom both Qaḥṭān and Nizār alike approve.