and say to her: “It was not misguidance that carried us past you; rather, we crossed the way on purpose, only to see you. Tomorrow many a tear-weeper shall be found among us and among you,⦗1⦘ and my dwelling will grow yet farther from your dwellings.”⦗2⦘

He related: She sang the verses, but the servants hurried him on. He drained another riṭl, then said, “May I be your ransom—sing:

‘Our eyes speak for us upon our faces; we remain silent while passion does the talking. At times we grow angry, at times we assent with a glance, and what passes between us none else can fathom.’⦗3⦘

He said: So she sang that for him. Then he drank a third riṭl and said, “May Allah make me your ransom—sing:

‘The best of our days was when we were apart; fate betrayed us, yet we never betrayed it. Oh, would that this same fate might, just once, return and grant us a single day like those we knew.’

He said: The young man then walked to a nearby platform, threw himself head-first from its highest step, and died. Al-Rashīd exclaimed, “The youth was hasty! By Allah, had he but waited, I would have given her to him.”⦗4⦘

Al-Rashīd’s virtues and noble qualities are indeed abundant. The leading scholars have recorded many of them; we have presented here but a fitting sample. Al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ used to say, “No one’s death is dearer to us than that of al-Rashīd, for I fear what calamities may follow it. I even ask Allah to extend his life at the expense of my own.” They recount that when al-Rashīd died and turmoil, strife, and dissension broke out—together with the claim that the Quran was created—we realized what al-Fuḍayl had feared. His earlier vision of the severed hand, the red earth, and the voice saying, ‘This is the soil of the Commander of the Faithful,’ has already been mentioned; his death occurred in Ṭūs.

Ibn ʿAsākir⦗5⦘ reports that al-Rashīd once dreamt of someone saying:

‘It is as though I see this palace whose people have perished…’ —the poem continues to its end. Earlier we noted that it was in fact his brother Mūsā al-Hādī and his father Muḥammad al-Mahdī who saw that vision; Allah knows best.⦗6⦘