and Rushdīn ibn Saʿd,
ʿAbdah ibn Sulaymān,
ʿUqbah ibn Khālid,
ʿUmar ibn Ayyūb the ascetic—one of the teachers of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal—and, according to one report, ʿĪsā ibn Yūnus.

[Then the year 189 AH began.]

In that year al-Rashīd returned from the ḥajj and set out for al-Rayy, where he made a series of appointments and dismissals. He also restored ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā to the governorship of Khurasan; the deputies of those provinces came to him bearing gifts and rarities of every kind and color. Thereafter he turned back toward Baghdad. The Feast of Sacrifice overtook him at Qasr al-Lusūs (1), where he offered the ritual animal, and he entered Baghdad with three days remaining of Dhu l-Ḥijjah. As he crossed the bridge he ordered that the body of Jaʿfar ibn Yaḥyā al-Barmakī—which had hung on the gallows since the day of his execution—be taken down, burned, and buried.

Soon after, al-Rashīd departed Baghdad for al-Raqqah, intending to reside there, though he left Baghdad and its pleasures with deep regret; his stay in al-Raqqah was meant only to restrain the mischief-makers in that city. Al-ʿAbbās ibn al-Aḥnaf composed the following verses on their departure:
We had scarcely dismounted before mounting again—
for us there is no difference between halting and setting out;
They asked how we fared on the day we arrived,
and we joined our answer to them with farewell (2).

That same year al-Rashīd ransomed the Muslim captives held in Byzantine lands, so that, it is said, not a single Muslim prisoner was left there. One of the poets praised him, saying:
Through you the captives were freed—
from prisons so strong no loving friend could ever visit them.