months, totaling twenty thousand dinars, a sum he had borrowed from some private individuals, and this put everyone at ease.
Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mahdī, however, mourned the slaying of Muḥammad al-Amīn son of Zubaydah and composed a few elegiac lines for him. When word of this reached al-Maʾmūn, the Caliph sent him a stern message, chiding and reproaching him for it. Ibn Jarīr ⦗1⦘ records a large collection of elegies written for al-Amīn and even cites a sampling of the lampoons directed against him. He also quotes these verses that Ṭāhir ibn al-Ḥusayn recited after killing him:
You ruled mankind by sheer compulsion and might,
felling the towering tyrants in the fight;
You drove the caliphate toward Marw at speed,
hurrying it to al-Maʾmūn with eager heed.
The Caliphate of ʿAbd Allāh al-Maʾmūn ibn Hārūn al-Rashīd
When his brother Muḥammad was killed on the 4th of Ṣafar in 198 AH—some say in Muḥarram—allegiance to ʿAbd Allāh al-Maʾmūn became firmly established throughout East and West alike. He appointed al-Ḥasan ibn Sahl governor over Iraq, Fars, Ahwāz, Kūfah, Baṣrah, the Ḥijāz, and Yemen, dispatching deputies to each of those regions. He then wrote to Ṭāhir ibn al-Ḥusayn, who was in Baghdad, ordering him to proceed to al-Raqqah to wage war against Naṣr ibn Shabath; he made him governor of al-Jazīrah, Syria, Mosul, and the Western Provinces, and he sent a letter to Harthama ibn Aʿyan appointing him governor of Khurāsān.
In that same year al-ʿAbbās ibn Mūsā ibn ʿĪsā al-Hāshimī led the people in the ḥajj.
Those who died in that year included:
Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah,
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Mahdī,
and Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd al-Qaṭṭān—three leading scholars in ḥadīth, jurisprudence, and the evaluation of transmitters.
[Then came the year 199 AH]
During it al-Ḥasan ibn Sahl arrived in Baghdad to assume its governorship on behalf of al-Maʾmūn and dispatched his deputies to the rest of his domains. Ṭāhir set out to take charge of al-Jazīrah, Syria, and the Western lands, while Harthama marched to Khurāsān as its governor. Late in the previous year, in Dhū al-Ḥijjah, al-Ḥasan ibn al-Harsh ⦗2⦘ had risen, calling people to al-Riḍā from the Family of Muḥammad, and he collected