for I have no authority to grant you a reprieve or to favor anyone against an explicit order of the Commander of the Faithful.”
He answered, “Then carry me home so I may bid farewell to my children, my wife, my little ones, and give my instructions to my kinsfolk.”
Mansur began taking leave of his household, and the weeping, lamentations, and cries that rose in the house were intense.
Salih continues: “I said to him, ‘Perhaps deliverance will come to you through the Barmakids; let us go to them.’
He wept and wailed all the way until we reached Yahya ibn Khalid. I explained the whole affair to Yahya and described the calamity that had overtaken Mansur. Yahya was distressed; he lowered his gaze to the ground and remained silent for a while, then lifted his head, summoned his treasurer, and asked, ‘How many dirhams do we have in the treasury?’
‘About one million dirhams,’ the treasurer replied.
Yahya ordered them to be brought, then dispatched a messenger to his son al-Fadl. He said to the courier, ‘Tell him that some splendid estates have come up for sale; send every dirham you have.’ Al-Fadl sent two million dirhams.
He sent another messenger to Jaʿfar with the message, ‘An urgent matter has arisen and we need some funds.’ Jaʿfar likewise sent two million dirhams.
Mansur said, ‘My master, I have clung to you, and I see no deliverance save at your hands and by settling what remains of my debt.’
Yahya lowered his head again and wept. Then he said, ‘Boy, the Commander of the Faithful, Harun al-Rashid, once presented our singing-girl Dinar with a jewel of great value. Go to her and tell her to send that jewel.’
The servant went, brought the jewel, and handed it to Yahya, who said, ‘O Salih, I purchased this for the Commander of the Faithful from the merchants for two hundred thousand dirhams, and he later gave it to Dinar the chanteuse. If he sees it, he will recognize it. Mansur’s liabilities are now fully covered. O Salih, ask the Commander of the Faithful to bestow Mansur upon us as a gift.’
Salih says: “I took the money and the jewel to the Caliph. While Mansur and I were on the road, I heard him reciting a line of poetry that shocked me by its ugliness and depravity—proof of his base character and lineage:
‘They did not beg for me out of any attachment to me—
they only feared the torment of the arrows.’
I flared up at him and said, ‘There is no one on earth better than the Barmakids, and no one worse than you. They bought you, rescued you from destruction, and granted you release, yet you neither thanked nor praised them, nor behaved as a freeborn man should.’ I said what I said, then continued on to al-Rashid, told him the whole story, and concealed Mansur’s foul-minded verse lest the Caliph punish him for it. Al-Rashid was astonished and ordered