He became well read in science and letters, especially history and tradition, for “his understanding was as the understanding of the learned;” and, like all educated Arabs of his day, he was a connoisseur of poetry which at times he improvised with success. [FN#259] He made the pilgrimage every alternate year and sometimes on foot, while “his military expeditions almost equalled his pilgrimages.”  Day after day during his Caliphate he prayed a hundred “bows,” never neglecting them, save for some especial reason, till his death; and he used to give from his privy purse alms to the extent of a hundred dirhams per diem.  He delighted in panegyry and liberally rewarded its experts, one of whom, Abd al-Sammak the Preacher, fairly said of him, “Thy humility in thy greatness is nobler than thy greatness.""No Caliph,” says Al-Niftawayh, “had been so profusely liberal to poets, lawyers and divines, although as the years advanced he wept over his extravagance amongst other sins.”  There was vigorous manliness in his answer to the Grecian Emperor who had sent him an insulting missive:—­“In the name of Allah!  From the Commander of the Faithful Harun al-Rashid, to Nicephorus the Roman dog.  I have read thy writ, O son of a miscreant mother!  Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt see my reply.”  Nor did he cease to make the Byzantine feel the weight of his arm till he “nakh’d"[FN#260] his camel in the imperial Court-yard; and this was only one instance of his indomitable energy and hatred of the Infidel.  Yet, if the West is to be believed, he forgot his fanaticism in his diplomatic dealings and courteous intercourse with Carolus Magnus.[FN#261] Finally, his civilised and well regulated rule contrasted as strongly with the barbarity and turbulence of occidental Christendom, as the splendid Court and the luxurious life of Baghdad and its carpets and hangings devanced the quasi-savagery of London and Paris whose palatial halls were spread with rushes.

The great Caliph ruled twenty-three years and a few months (A.H. 170-193 = A.D. 786-808); and, as his youth was chequered and his reign was glorious, so was his end obscure.[FN#262] After a vision foreshadowing his death,[FN#263] which happened, as becomes a good Moslem, during a military expedition to Khorasan, he ordered his grave to be dug and himself to be carried to it in a covered litter:  when sighting the fosse he exclaimed, “O son of man thou art come to this!” Then he commanded himself to be set down and a perfection of the Koran to be made over him in the litter on the edge of the grave.  He was buried (aet. forty-five) at Sanabad, a village near Tus.