upon the Barmakids, he turned toward the qiblah and said, “O Allah, Jaʿfar once relieved me of the burdens of this world; so relieve him of the burdens of the Hereafter.”
[A Remarkable Story]
Ibn al-Jawzī relates in al-Muntaẓam (1) that al-Maʾmūn was informed of a man who came every day to the graves of the Barmakids, weeping over them and mourning their loss. The Caliph ordered that the man be brought before him. When the man was ushered in—certain he was about to die—al-Maʾmūn asked, “Woe to you! What drives you to behave like this?”
He replied, “Commander of the Faithful, they once bestowed on me abundant kindness and goodness.”
Al-Maʾmūn said, “What kindness was that?”
The man said, “I am al-Mundhir ibn al-Mughīrah from Damascus. I had been living there in great comfort until my fortune vanished. Matters deteriorated until I was forced to sell my house and was left with nothing. Some friends advised me to seek out the Barmakids in Baghdad. I gathered my family and set out with a little over twenty women, settled them in an abandoned mosque, and then went off to pray in an inhabited mosque.
“I entered a mosque where I saw a company of men whose faces were the fairest I had ever beheld. I sat with them, turning over in my mind words with which I might ask them for sustenance for the dependents with me, yet shyness kept me from begging. While I was thus occupied, a servant arrived and summoned the group. They all rose, and I rose with them. We entered a vast mansion where the vizier Yaḥyā ibn Khālid sat surrounded by them. He concluded the marriage contract of his daughter ʿĀʾishah to a paternal cousin, and clods of musk and pellets of ambergris were scattered.
“Then servants came to each guest with a silver tray holding one thousand dinars and fragments of musk. Each man took his tray and departed, while I remained seated before the tray set for me, overawed and afraid to take it.
“One of those present said, ‘Will you not take it and go?’ So I stretched out my hand, poured the gold into my pocket, tucked the tray beneath my arm, and rose, fearing all the while it might be taken from me. I kept glancing back, unaware that the vizier was watching. When I reached the curtain, he ordered them to bring me back, and I despaired of the money.
“When I returned, he asked, ‘Why are you frightened?’ I told him my story. He wept and then said to his sons, ‘Take this man and make him one of you.’ A servant came, took from me the tray and the gold, and I stayed with them for ten days, moving from one son’s house to another, though my thoughts were wholly with my family and I could not leave.
“When the ten days were over, a servant came and said, ‘Will you not return to your household?’
‘I will, by Allah,’ I answered. He walked ahead of me, giving me neither the gold nor the tray. I said to myself, ‘If only this had happened before the tray and the gold were taken—if only my family had seen them.’
“He led me to a house the like of which I had never seen for beauty. We entered, and there were my dependents rolling about in gold and silk. They had been sent one hundred thousand dirhams, ten thousand dinars, a deed granting them ownership of the house and all it contained, and another deed granting them two large villages.
“I lived among the Barmakids in the sweetest of circumstances. When calamity befell them, ʿAmr ibn Masʿadah stripped me of the two villages and made me liable for their land tax. Whenever poverty overtook me I would visit their homes and their graves, weeping over them.”