purchased her only toward the end of his life and drew her to his breast. The girl burst into tears and said, “You have killed me, Commander of the Believers, by setting out on this expedition!” Then she began to recite (1):

I shall call upon the Lord with the plea of the desperate—
He rewards those who supplicate Him and He responds.
Perhaps Allah will spare you the dangers of war
and reunite us just as our hearts desire.

He clasped her again and, echoing her words, recited (2):

How lovely she is when tears wash the kohl from her eyes,
when even her fingers shed those tears!
That morning she said in reproach, “You have slain me,”
and with those very words you sought my death.

He then ordered the attendant Maʾsūr to treat her generously and guard her until his return, adding:

We are, as al-Akhtal said (3):
A people who, when they go to war, gird up their loins
far from the women, even if the women remain chaste.

He took his leave of her and set out. During his absence the girl fell ill, and al-Maʾmūn himself died. When news of his death reached her she drew a long, painful breath; death was upon her, and while (4) in its throes (5) she recited:

Time has made us drink of its bitterness—
after its sweetness it drenched us with sighs.
At one moment it revealed itself and made us laugh;
then it turned again and made us weep.
We belong to Allah amid all that befalls us
of His decree and the changing ways of our Sovereign.
This world shows us, through its shifting states,
a fellowship that will not last—its joys and its sorrows.
And we, within it, as though death would never part us—
our living ones (6) weep over our dead.

Al-Maʾmūn died in Tarsus on Thursday at midday—some say after the afternoon prayer—on the thirteenth of what remained of Rajab in the year 218 AH, at about forty-eight years of age. His caliphate lasted (7) twenty years and some months. His brother al-Muʿtaṣim, the designated heir, led the funeral prayer over him, and he was buried in Tarsus in the house of Khāqān.