the caliphate, reins and all, into your hands; yet you drove him off to al-Raqqah, where he now sits idle, entrusted with no task and never summoned for any affair, while the land is splitting open on every side, rebellions are multiplying, and evils are spreading among the people.

Once al-Maʾmun was convinced of this, he ordered a march on Baghdad. Al-Fadl ibn Sahl, however, had already realized what those advisers were plotting against him, so he beat some of them and even tore out the beards of others. Al-Maʾmun set out; when he reached Sarakhs (1) a band of men attacked the vizier al-Fadl ibn Sahl with swords while he was in the bath and killed him. This occurred on Friday night, two nights having passed of Shaʿbān, and he was sixty years old (2). Al-Maʾmun sent men in pursuit of the killers; they were four slave soldiers, and he had them put to death. He then wrote to al-Fadl’s brother al-Ḥasan ibn Sahl to console him and appointed him to the vizierate in his brother’s stead.

Al-Maʾmun left Sarakhs on the day of ʿĪd al-Fiṭr, heading for Iraq. Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mahdī was in al-Madāʾin, confronted by an army fighting on al-Maʾmun’s behalf.

In this same year al-Maʾmun married Būrān (3), the daughter of al-Ḥasan ibn Sahl; he married ʿAlī ibn Mūsā al-Riḍā to his own daughter Umm Ḥabīb; and he married his son Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar to his other daughter Umm al-Faḍl.

That year Ibrāhīm ibn Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar, brother of ʿAlī al-Riḍā, led the people in the pilgrimage; after invoking blessings for al-Maʾmun, he prayed for his brother. When the Hajj was completed he traveled on to Yemen, which had been seized by Ḥamdawayh ibn ʿAlī ibn Mūsā ibn Māhān (4).

Among the notable figures who died this year were Ayyūb ibn Suwayd (5), Ḍamrah (6), and ʿAmr ibn Ḥabīb (7).