“Come.” I walked on with him, and when we had gone a little way he heard a servant-boy calling a maid from inside a house. The boy was calling her by the very name of a slave-girl whom al-Faḍl loved. The coincidence upset him, and he complained to me of the distress it had caused.

I said, “You have been struck by the same thing that befell the man of Banū ʿĀmir, who recited: (1)
‘A caller called out while we were in al-Khayf of Minā,
stirring the heart’s sorrows without his even knowing it;
He called on Laylā by a name that was not hers,
and with that he loosed the Laylā that dwelt in my breast.’

He said, “Write those two verses down for me.” I went to a grocer, pawned my ring with him for the price of a sheet of paper, and wrote them out. He took the paper and said, “Go on your way with blessing.” I returned home. My servant said, “Give me your ring so that we may pawn it for food and fodder for the mount.” I replied, “I have already pawned it.” Before nightfall al-Faḍl sent me thirty thousand dinars in gold and ten thousand dirhams in silver, fixed that as my monthly stipend, and even paid me a month in advance.

On another day one of the notables visited al-Faḍl. Al-Faḍl honored him and seated him beside him on the couch. The man complained of a debt and asked al-Faḍl to speak to the Commander of the Faithful on his behalf. Al-Faḍl said, “Certainly. How much is your debt?” He replied, “Three hundred thousand dirhams.” The visitor left, downcast, thinking the answer had been half-hearted. He stopped to rest with one of his friends, then returned home to find that the money had reached his house ahead of him.

How fitting are the lines that a poet composed about him:
You are al-Faḍl indeed, O Faḍl son of Yaḥyā son of Khālid;
not everyone called Faḍl is endowed with faḍl (true merit).
Allah beheld the bounty that flows from you among the people,
so He named you Faḍl, and thus name and deed were joined.

Al-Faḍl held a higher formal rank with al-Rashīd than Jaʿfar, though Jaʿfar was dearer to the caliph and more intimate with him. The caliph entrusted al-Faḍl with major offices, among them the deputy governorship of Khurāsān and others. When al-Rashīd struck down the Barāmikah and imprisoned them, he had this al-Faḍl whipped one hundred lashes and consigned him to perpetual confinement until he died this very year—five months before the caliph—at al-Raqqah. His companions performed the funeral prayer over him in the palace where he died; then his bier was carried out, the people prayed over him, and he was buried there. He was forty-five years old.

The immediate cause of his death was a heaviness that afflicted his tongue; it grew severe on Thursday and Friday, and he died before the dawn call to prayer on Saturday. Ibn Jarīr (2) said that this was in Muḥarram of the year 193 AH, whereas Ibn al-Jawzī (3) placed it in 192 AH—and Allah knows best.

Ibn Khallikān (4) gives an extended biography of him and records a good number of his virtues and noble traits, among them that when he once came to Balkh