1 Al-Rashīd’s Annual Alternation of Warfare and Pilgrimage

Al-Rashīd was widely celebrated for his alternation by year of two meritorious activities: jihād, campaigning at the frontier, and ḥajj, participation in the pilgrimage to Mecca.¹⁸ His annual alternations recapitulated the pattern attributed to his contemporary, the muḥaddith and warrior-renunciant ʿAbdallāh Ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797).¹⁹ Narratives that invoke Hārūn’s display of one or both of these two emblems of leadership of the Muslim community appear in Pseudo-Māwardī’s, al-Thaʿālibī’s and Ghazālī’s mirrors.

In his seventh chapter, devoted to the governance of the common people (siyāsat al-ʿāmma), Pseudo-Māwardī relates a well-known narrative set in the context of al-Rashīd’s military campaigning at the Byzantine frontier. The event to which the narrative refers occurred in 187/803, when, having been defeated at the Anatolian city of Heraclea, the Byzantine Emperor Nikephorus negotiated a truce with Hārūn, but promptly broke it; confident that the exceptionally cold weather would prevent the caliph from returning to march against him, Nikephorus raided the Muslim frontier territory and took a number of prisoners.²⁰

In al-Ṭabarī’s account of these events, the poet’s intervention forms an integral part of the narrative; not merely an act of laudatory commemoration of al-Rashīd’s celebrated victory against Nikephorus, al-Taymī’s verse performed the strategic function of informing the caliph, who had already returned as far as Raqqa, that the Byzantine emperor had broken his agreement.²³ Pseudo-Māwardī’s report of this episode, however, occurs in the context of his exposition of the ruler’s duty to guarantee his subjects’ security against external or internal foes, and provides an exemplary case of royal dedication to this duty. It depicts the caliph, used to comfort and luxury, as the willing sufferer of extreme physical hardship for the sake of his subjects’ security; his commanders’ reluctance to endure these conditions highlights further the caliph’s exceptional commitment to the tireless defence of his people. For Pseudo-Māwardī’s audience, the narrative perhaps brought to mind the Samanid Amīr Ismāʿīl b. Aḥmad (r. 279–95/892–907), who also campaigned frequently at the (eastern) frontier, and who reportedly endured acute bodily discomfort, including long exposure to conditions of rain and snow, in order to maintain his subjects’ access to his person for the redress of grievances; such stories of devotion to the cause of justice for the least of his subjects contributed significantly to the shaping of the Amīr’s royal persona.²⁴

Both Pseudo-Māwardī and al-Thaʿālibī adduce their narratives to illustrate the absolute nature of kings’ responsibility to ensure the subjects’ security, and the high reputation that their dedication to this duty earns them. By its placement in his text, however, al-Thaʿālibī’s narration acquires a slightly defensive aspect that is absent from Pseudo-Māwardī’s sparser telling: as if against imputed accusations of physical indulgence and irresponsibility, al-Thaʿālibī positions his account in an exposition of the onerous physical as well as moral burden that kings bear, a burden that offsets their seemingly boundless riches and comfort. Jihād was not a prominent feature of the Kh^wārazmshāh Maʾmūn II’s military activities, a point perhaps relevant to al-Thaʿālibī’s failing to mention the militant nature of al-Rashīd’s nocturnal travels.²⁷ Instead, al-Thaʿālibī deploys the story to buttress his presentation of the divine mandate for princely rule. To underline this intended reception of the narrative, al-Thaʿālibī follows this passage with a selection of Qurʾānic quotations, adduced in an associative manner and similarly intended to consolidate kings’ unique position in the divinely ordered universe.²⁸

This anecdote appears after a sequence of narratives that depict other exemplary monarchs, such as ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–20), who, in Ghazālī’s portrayal, were, like al-Rashīd, exceptionally amenable to counsel, and repented. The account locates Hārūn’s supplication at ʿArafāt, where pilgrims spend the day of 9th Dhū l-Ḥijja in prayer, meditation and spiritual companionship. Although Ghazālī places this narrative in a section that exhorts rulers to heed the advice of religious scholars, it features Hārūn alone. It nevertheless depicts the caliph’s sense of mortality and his personal humility before God – qualities highlighted in the large number of narratives that display al-Rashīd’s receptivity to religious exhortation. For Ghazālī’s audience, it is likely that the account summoned images of the caliph’s searches for improving counsel, which form the subject of the following section.

2 Al-Rashīd’s Responsiveness to Exhortation

Numerous narratives portray Hārūn as an eager seeker of edifying advice, characteristically from religious scholars and renunciants.³¹ Although many scholars and renunciants eschewed contact with rulers, there remained a substantial number, including several figures of great prestige and eminence, who were willing to associate with and offer counsel to them. Indeed, Ghazālī himself was deeply involved in political life, and composed mirrors for caliphs and, as the case of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk shows, sultans, even after his decision to leave Baghdad and pursue the ideal of a secluded life (ʿuzla) in Khurasan.³² As Tayeb El-Hibri has written, most of the early Abbasid caliphs are credited with piety in their demeanour, deference to mainstream religious principles and admiration for spiritual figures; but the stories of al-Rashīd’s “scrupulous observance of the tenets of Islam, and … [sensitivity] … to the mildest words of religious advice” far outnumber those ascribed to other Abbasid caliphs.³³ Al-Ṭabarī (224–310/839–923) reports numerous narratives in which Hārūn al-Rashīd solicits and responds with marked emotion, usually copious weeping, to moral exhortation,³⁴ and the historian and polymath al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/956) reports that the philologist al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 213/828) encountered the caliph, shortly before he died, in floods of tears, occasioned by his stumbling upon some inscribed verses of the poet Abū l-ʿAtāhiya (d. c. 210/825), who, after years of service as a court poet, abandoned the composition of love poetry and panegyric for zuhdiyyāt, ascetic verse.³⁵

In this narrative, as in his narrative of Hārūn’s weathering of harsh winterly conditions for the sake of his subjects’ welfare, Pseudo-Māwardī employs a prosimetric form in which the prose of the khabar involving Hārūn and Ibn al-Sammāk is followed, in a process of associative development, by a well-known poetic meditation. The verses alter the register of the passage, detach it from the individuals named in the prose narrative and transform its sentiment of memento mori into eternal and universal wisdom. This shift facilitates Pseudo-Māwardī’s invocation of the early kings, and his reference to Alexander and Aristotle as paradigmatic exemplars of the relationship of receptive ruler and sage counsellor. He then moves to the conclusion of his chapter, in which he observes that sincere advice, impartially delivered, should not be expected to coincide with rulers’ immediate desires. The entire chapter is intended to prepare the mirror’s audience for the critical counsel that will follow, and models the humble response that the virtuous monarch displays.

In Part I of his Persian Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, Ghazālī also relates several narratives that depict Hārūn al-Rashīd as a seeker of counsel.⁴¹ Indeed, with ʿUmar I b. al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 13–23/634–44) and ʿUmar II b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, Hārūn is one of the royal figures most frequently invoked in Part I. ʿUmar I and ʿUmar II also appear repeatedly in Part II, where, however, it is Anūshīrvān who predominates among the author’s exemplary royal figures,⁴² and Hārūn, as the following section will show, figures only in an incidental and ambiguous manner.

In Part I of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, Ghazālī relates two narratives in which Hārūn appears as the quintessential representative of royal power tempered by self-control and humility. In both cases he solicits counsel from a renunciant, who somewhat reluctantly supplies it, in a series of terse pronouncements. Like Ghazālī’s khabar concerning Hārūn’s prayer at ʿArafāt, the two narratives involving renunciants appear one directly after the other under the heading of the second principle of the branches of the tree of faith, that is, the embodied enactments that proceed from the ten principles that comprise the root of faith, namely knowledge and belief. This second principle, as previously mentioned, is that the ruler should constantly seek the company of men of religion and request their counsel; he should also avoid scholars who, by flattery and deceit, aim to manipulate him.⁴³

The incorporation into the khabar of a Qurʾānic verse constitutes a significant detail: Fużayl is reported to have wept copiously whenever he heard the name of God uttered or the Qurʾān being recited.⁵² Hārūn observes that the audition of this verse conveys counsel (pand) enough, but proceeds to order ʿAbbās to knock at Fużayl’s door. When ʿAbbās announces the presence of the Commander of the Faithful, Fużayl asks what business the caliph might have in approaching him? ʿAbbās, tellingly a poet known for his amatory verse, commands the renunciant to show obedience to the caliph, and to open the door. Fużayl, setting down a lantern, opens the door, and in the dark, the hands of the caliph and the renunciant touch one another. Fużayl exclaims at the softness of Hārūn’s hand, and expresses the fear that it will suffer divine punishment, unless God should spare it. He admonishes Hārūn to prepare for the day when he will find himself the equal of every Muslim, and will be called upon to answer before God for his justice towards each one of his subjects. Hārūn weeps. When ʿAbbās cautions Fużayl lest his harsh words should cause the caliph to die from the force of his emotion, Fużayl addresses the courtier as Hāmān, Pharaoh’s minister, and asserts that ʿAbbās and his kind have already slain the caliph, by making him a Pharaoh, the paradigmatic wicked monarch of the Qurʾān.⁵³ Finally, Hārūn implores Fużayl to accept a gift of lawful funds, but Fużayl refuses, calling on Hārūn only to take refuge in the Lord.⁵⁴

In this pair of narratives, Ghazālī deploys several topoi to display the virtue of royal humility. His purpose is to urge the ruler, in emulation of the examples he adduces, to acknowledge his subservience to an extrinsic moral authority, and to constrain his use of power accordingly. The narratives involving Hārūn and the renunciants take as their central structural feature the topos of the vastly powerful ruler who, of his own accord, seeks admonition and submits to censure from a reticent renunciant able, through his detachment from worldly concerns, to speak honestly, without fear of or concern for the consequences of his words. The first narrative omits mention of Hārūn’s response to Shaqīq’s exhortation. The second narrative includes the detail of Hārūn’s weeping, his characteristic response in narratives of the caliph-scholar or caliph-renunciant type. The second narrative includes the topos of the intermediary, the poet al-ʿAbbās b. al-Aḥnaf, a suitable foil to the renunciant Fużayl on account of his reputation for amatory verse, his close ties to the caliphal court and his enjoyment of its pleasures.⁵⁵ In another trope, Fużayl’s refusal of the caliph’s gift, despite assurances of its legality, displays the incorruptibility that only withdrawal from public life made possible;⁵⁶ the narrative contrasts the incalculable abundance of royal wealth with the spiritual riches of the renunciant. The narratives convey Ghazālī’s message that power, unless tempered by voluntary restraint, leads to moral as well as physical and political corruption.

Ghazālī concludes this section of his mirror, devoted to the second principle entailed in the branches of the tree of faith, with the exhortation that the ruler should keep these narratives (ḥikāyathā) in his mind’s eye and accept their counsels (pandhā), which have been delivered to other sovereigns before him. He should seek counsel from every scholar whom he meets.

Additionally, every scholar who gives counsel (pand) to kings should offer the sort of advice displayed in the narratives. In other words, the scholar-counsellor should not withhold the truth (kalimeh-yi ḥaqq) and should abstain from deceitful flattery (ghurūr), for these qualities render him complicit in tyranny (ẓulm).⁵⁷ Ghazālī, the scholar who expended considerable efforts in advising caliphs and sultans, urges his colleagues to acknowledge their duty to follow his example. Both Pseudo-Māwardī and Ghazālī, the first a Muʿtazilite rationalist and the second an Ashʿarite theologian, make extensive use of the figure of al-Rashīd to project for their contemporary audiences an idealised state in which ruler and men of religion supported one another, the former deferring to the latter in religious matters and the latter not shrinking from their responsibility to offer moral guidance to the former.

3 Al-Rashīd and the Fall of the Barmakids

The Barmakids, individually and collectively, figure in all three of the mirrors under consideration in this essay. Pseudo-Māwardī’s Naṣīḥat al-mulūk and al-Thaʿālibī’s Ādāb al-mulūk include narratives concerning Hārūn al-Rashīd’s dismissal of the Barmakids from their positions of power, a sequence of events that included his execution of Jaʿfar b. Yaḥyā al-Barmakī (150–87/767–803).⁵⁸ In Part II of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, Ghazālī devotes greater attention to the Barmakids, especially Yaḥyā b. Khālid b. Barmak (115 or 199–90/733 or 737–805), father of Jaʿfar, than to al-Rashīd. The Barmakids, who hailed from Balkh, entered the service of the caliphs in the early Abbasid period, and became intimately interconnected with the Abbasid family.⁵⁹ Under Hārūn al-Rashīd, they rose to the highest levels of power in the caliphate before the caliph caused their sudden fall in 187/803. The fall of the Barmakids generated countless accounts, many of which highlight one or both of two prominent perspectives: portrayal of the episode as a paradigmatic instance of the capriciousness of royal power and the dangers of proximity to it; and exploration of the perils attendant upon passionate love, in connection with Hārūn’s intensely close relationship with Jaʿfar b. Yaḥyā and with Jaʿfar’s marriage, at the caliph’s behest, to the latter’s sister al-ʿAbbāsa.⁶⁰ The relationship between Hārūn and Jaʿfar provides an illustration of an individual whose elevation, despite his merits, was dependent upon royal favour. Such royal attachments aroused a mixture of anxieties, not only with regard to the protégé, whose position and even life were subject to the monarch’s volatile passions, but also with regard to the king, whose excessive and uncontrolled passion exposed him to the transgression of rational boundaries and loss of control of his kingdom, perhaps to the very protégé whom he had elevated. The two perspectives focus on the arbitrary exercise of royal power and the perilous consequences, personal and political, of unrestrained passion. As Jocelyne Dakhlia has demonstrated, it provided authors and their audiences with fruitful material for the examination, criticism and (implicit) rejection of the autocratic exercise of power.⁶¹ Pseudo-Māwardī, al-Thaʿālibī and Ghazālī all employed narratives related to al-Rashīd and the Barmakids to participate in this multifaceted discourse.

Pseudo-Māwardī’s narrative deploys the topos of the caliph in earnest prayer at the Kaʿba, where sincere prayer is held to be most efficacious.⁶⁵ The presentation, wording and placement of the account invite reflection on the inferences he intended his audience to draw.

Read in the context of the passages that precede and follow it, Pseudo-Māwardī’s brief narrative supplies a prefiguration of the regret that follows ill-considered and impetuous action. It also supports Pseudo-Māwardī’s Muʿtazilite position regarding the religious status of the sinner: that divine forgiveness is contingent on sincere repentance and its practical result, abstention from future sin.⁶⁹ Alongside these literary and theological dimensions, which suggest Pseudo-Māwardī’s projection of the story as a cautionary tale, the circumstances of his environment are likely to have conditioned his meaning and his audience’s understanding of his text. It is probable that Pseudo-Māwardī’s urging of caution and restraint in the exercise of the royal prerogative of punishment evoked for his audience the current or recent situations of individuals considered to have been unfairly treated. Several prominent individuals familiar to Pseudo-Māwardī and his audience might have been regarded in this manner. Isḥāq b. Aḥmad, governor of Samarqand and the senior member of the Samanid dynastic family, had challenged Naṣr II’s accession in 301/913–14; Pseudo-Māwardī belonged to the substantial constituency that had favoured Isḥāq, who had been imprisoned after the defeat of his challenge. The military commander Aḥmad b. Sahl (d. 307/920), appointed governor of Khurasan in 306/918 and for decades a loyal vassal of the Samanids, eventually rebelled against Naṣr’s suzerainty; after his defeat, he was imprisoned, and died in detention. The Muʿtazilite theologian Abū l-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī al-Balkhī (d. 319/931), who had served as Aḥmad b. Sahl’s vizier, was imprisoned in the aftermath of the same events.⁷⁰ It seems likely that Pseudo-Māwardī and his audience might have associated his discussion of the necessity for deliberation and forethought to take precedence over impulsive and punitive action with individuals whom they knew to have suffered punishment that seemed excessive or unjust.

The invocation of Yaḥyā the Barmakid’s aphorism regarding the land-tax establishes his wisdom and excellence, and identifies him with the principles of just governance extolled by al-Thaʿālibī. The main body of al-Thaʿālibī’s chapter, which follows this opening section, treats a number of themes: consultation, pardon, generosity, high aspiration, keeping secrets; the combination of good and bad features in kingship; granting audience and the office of the chamberlain, acquiring information and sending spies; royal hunts; protecting children from their fathers, kings’ relationships by marriage to one another (muṣāhara); royal buildings, kings’ listening to poetry; verses recording the excellent and witty customs of kings; kings’ dislike of sharing glory with anyone, cautioning kings from acting precipitously upon their decisions when they are displeased with a person, kings’ haste to anger, and their special predilection for elephants.⁷³

While al-Thaʿālibī refrains from explicit criticism of the in other respects exemplary caliph, he conveys, by his placement of this chilling narrative, well towards the end of an eclectic chapter that begins firmly in the realm of virtuous and praiseworthy qualities, such as justice, and moves in a general way towards reprehensible ones, his astonishment at this case of royal behaviour. Throughout Ādāb al-mulūk, al-Thaʿālibī, as indicated above, emphasises the distinctive circumstances and characteristics that render kings different from their subjects. He implies further the negative import of the narrative regarding al-Rashīd when he follows it with a section devoted to kings’ quickness to anger and slowness to contentment.⁷⁷

The ambiguous or negative light in which Hārūn appears in many narratives that relate or allude to the fall of the Barmakids also characterises the caliph’s few and incidental appearances in Part II of the Persian Naṣīḥat al-mulūk. No longer a pre-eminent model of royal virtue, as he had been in the narratives recounted in Part I, the caliph is a peripheral figure in Part II, where he appears exclusively in contexts associated with the Barmakids. Indeed, if it is Anūshīrvān who emerges as the leading exemplar of royal virtue in Part II, it is the Barmakids who represent the pinnacle of humane excellence: they dominate the author’s depictions of the virtues of intelligence, forbearance, magnanimity, generosity and forgiveness. He writes that after their fall, the stewardship of the kingdom and the office of the vizierate had lost status and fallen into a long decline, to be revived only with the rise of the family of Ghazālī’s contemporary and patron Niẓām al-Mulk (410–85/1019–92).⁷⁸

In Part II of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, as in the previously cited example from al-Thaʿālibī’s Ādāb al-mulūk, Yaḥyā b. Khālid is singled out for praise, and depicted as an embodiment of excellence. Numerous narratives illustrate the limitless generosity for which the Barmakids became proverbial. On one occasion, when he was riding from Hārūn’s palace to his own, Yaḥyā encountered a petitioner. He proceeded to lodge him at his gate and give him a thousand dirhams daily in an open-ended arrangement until the petitioner departed.⁷⁹ In another narrative, placed in the chapter devoted to royal magnanimity (boland-himmatī), Yaḥyā advises Hārūn on matters of royal etiquette. When Hārūn orders a gift of five hundred dirhams to a soldier who had fallen off his horse, Yaḥyā signals his reservations. To the caliph’s enquiry after the reasons for his disagreement with this decision, Yaḥyā replies that it is unseemly for a king (malik) to utter figures less than a thousand. In a case in which an amount over five hundred dirhams would be disproportionate, he advises, the king should instead bestow a horse, to avoid the appearance of pettiness (ḥaqīr-himmatī).⁸⁰

Hārūn, hearing of these events, returns the jewel to Yaḥyā. When Ṣāliḥ tells Yaḥyā about Manṣūr’s insolence (bad-fiʿlī), Yaḥyā only displays still greater magnanimity, minimising Manṣūr’s mean-spiritedness and assigning its source solely to the strain of duress.⁸⁴

The narrative showcases several of the themes associated with Hārūn and the Barmakids: Hārūn’s arbitrary exercise of his power, for which the narrator supplies no grounds; the Barmakids’ unstinting liberality and generosity to all who sought their support, regardless of their backgrounds or their merit; their never-failing forgiveness of the errors and frailties of other people, and their refusal to speak ill even of their enemies. The pathos with which (Pseudo-)Ghazālī imbues his telling of this episode, which evokes by association the cruel treatment that ineluctably awaits the Barmakids, contributes to the mood of nostalgia that the narratives in Part II of Naṣīḥat al-mulūk often carry; the Barmakids appear as semi-legendary embodiments of a lost moral and cultural excellence.

The Caliph Hārūn plays a peripheral role only in a third example, the central point of which is once again the portrayal of Yaḥyā as a moral paragon, his sterling qualities thrown into relief when displayed for the benefit of individuals who display moral weaknesses at his expense. The narrative begins with the author’s establishment of an unspoken hostility between Yaḥyā b. Khālid and ʿAbdallāh b. Mālik al-Khuzāʿī,⁸⁵ on account of Yaḥyā’s anxiety that Hārūn’s fondness for ʿAbdallāh had grown to excessive proportions ([ū-rā] bi-ghāyat-i dūst dāshtī). After Hārūn had appointed ʿAbdallāh governor of Armenia, an unnamed individual in difficult circumstances, ignorant of the strain between Yaḥyā and ʿAbdallāh, forged a letter from the former to the latter. ʿAbdallāh, on receipt of the letter, immediately suspected it was forged. He summoned the man, who, despite ʿAbdallāh’s assurances that he would be rewarded regardless, insisted that the letter was genuine. ʿAbdallāh offered him a choice: either he would initiate an investigation into the case, and, if the letter were found to be genuine, the man would be generously rewarded, and if it were found to be a forgery, he would be punished; or he would pardon the man immediately. The man chose the former alternative, and was duly detained for the duration of the investigation. ʿAbdallāh’s agent then brought the letter to Yaḥyā, whom he found in the company of his retainers (khāṣṣagīyān) and boon-companions (nadīmān). Having read the letter and dismissed the agent until the following day, Yaḥyā asked his boon-companions what should be the punishment of a man who had forged a letter to his enemy. Each one replied, and recommended punishment of some sort or another. But Yaḥyā rejected their suggestions, which he regarded as manifestations of meanness (khaṣīṣī) and petty-mindedness (dūn-himmatī). Instead, he took the episode as an opportunity to reconcile with ʿAbdallāh, and, seeing the forger as an agent of reconciliation, wrote to ʿAbdallāh averring that he had indeed written the letter, and that the man should be treated well and rewarded generously. ʿAbdallāh acted accordingly. The man eventually returned to Baghdad and sought an audience with Yaḥyā. Having reported ʿAbdallāh’s generosity towards him solely for Yaḥyā’s sake, the man expressed his gratitude, and offered the goods he had received from ʿAbdallāh first to Yaḥyā. Yaḥyā assured the man that the debt of gratitude was on his part, and added to the gifts that ʿAbdallāh had already bestowed on the man an equivalent largesse of his own.⁸⁶

The narrator states that his purpose in relating this story is to show that persons who possess the quality of magnanimity (mardom-i bā himmat) do not remain in straitened circumstances for long, just as the man in the story soon recovered his position, through the risk he took of approaching a person of magnanimity and munificence.⁸⁷ This explanation should be understood in terms of the juxtaposition of this story with the tale of Manṣūr, which immediately preceded it: in the earlier story, the protagonist Manṣūr displayed insolence despite the generous treatment he received; in this story, the man who forged the letter resorted to a dishonest stratagem, but having benefited from an act of clemency and generosity, being an educated and well-mannered person (khudāvand-i adab va-farhang) of high moral aspiration (boland-himmat),⁸⁸ he behaved with renewed honesty and gratitude. In both cases, the true exemplar of magnanimity is Yaḥyā, whose peerless moral excellence remains unchanged regardless of the injury he suffers.⁸⁹

4 Conclusion

In Arabic and Persian historiographical sources and belles lettres, the Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd features in a vast number and wide variety of narratives. Many of these narratives conform to certain types and provide vehicles for the exploration of particular themes. Pseudo-Māwardī’s, al-Thaʿālibī’s and Ghazālī’s selection and presentation of examples drawn from this repertoire illustrate the specific meanings that familiar materials could be made to carry. Outwardly similar, retellings of these narratives carry different meanings in different contexts. I have attempted to show, through the narrations found in the mirrors of these three writers, the skill and subtlety with which they selected narratives, positioned them in their works and chose their wordings, in order to convey largely implicit messages and guide the responses and interpretations of their audiences. These examples suggest the multiple levels at which mirrors for princes might be read, and demonstrate authors’ careful deployment of exemplary narratives in order to shape the reception of their works in distinct historical situations.