Whenever someone begged from him in the street while he was riding, the very least he would order to be given was two hundred dirhams. (1)

On one occasion a man addressed him in verse:
“O namesake of the chaste prophet, Yaḥyā, two gardens
have been granted you by our Lord’s bounty.
Everyone who passes you along the road
is sure to receive two hundred from your largesse.
Two hundred dirhams is a paltry sum for one like me;
for you it is but the trifle a speeding rider might cast aside.”

“You speak the truth,” Yaḥyā replied, and commanded that the man be escorted to his house ahead of him. When he returned he inquired about him and learned that the fellow had just married and was about to bring his bride home. So he gave him four thousand for the dowry, four thousand for a house, four thousand for furnishings, four thousand for the wedding feast, and another four thousand as ready money.

Another man once came to ask his help. Yaḥyā said, “Alas! You have arrived at a time when I have no cash. Yet a friend has written asking me to send him whatever gift I choose. I hear that you are about to sell a slave-girl of yours and that you have already been offered three thousand dinars for her. I shall request her from him, so do not sell her for less than thirty thousand dinars.”

They approached me and haggled until the price reached twenty thousand dinars. My heart was too weak to refuse, so I agreed; he took the girl and I took the twenty thousand dinars, and he presented her to Yaḥyā.

When I met Yaḥyā he asked, “For how much did you sell her?”
“Twenty thousand dinars,” I answered.
“You are base indeed,” he said. “Take your slave-girl back. A friend in Fars has written asking me for something as a gift, and I shall request her; do not sell her for less than fifty thousand dinars.”

They came again and bargained her price up to thirty thousand dinars, so I sold her to them. When I went back to him, he reproached me once more and returned her to me. I said, “I call you to witness that she is free and that I have married her. A slave-girl who has brought me fifty thousand dinars—never again shall I let her go.” (2)

Al-Khaṭīb relates that al-Rashīd once demanded ten million dirhams from Manṣūr ibn Ziyād, while the latter possessed only one million. Distressed— for the caliph had threatened him with death and the destruction of his property unless he produced the money that very day—he went to Yaḥyā ibn Khālid and told him his plight. Yaḥyā immediately released five million dirhams for him and obtained another two million from his son al-Faḍl, saying to him, “My son, I hear you intended to buy an estate with that money. Here instead is an estate that yields gratitude and endures forever.”

He then obtained one million from his other son Jaʿfar, and from his slave-girl Dananīr a necklace she had bought for one hundred thousand dinars together with twenty thousand dinars, telling the clerk in charge, “Enter it against you at only two million.”

When the funds were laid before al-Rashīd he returned the necklace, having previously given it to Yaḥyā’s slave-girl as a gift; once bestowed, he never reclaimed it.

While they were later in prison, shackled in irons, one of his sons said, “Father, after all the power and luxury we enjoyed, have we come to this?”

He replied, “My son, it was the prayer of a wronged man that sped through the night while we were heedless of it, but Allah was not heedless of it.”

Then he recited:
“Many a people lived in bliss for a time
while the days were lush and abundant …”