Aaron the Orthodox appears in The Nights as a headstrong and violent autocrat, a right royal figure according to the Moslem ideas of his day.  But his career shows that he was not more tyrannical or more sanguinary than the normal despot of the East, or the contemporary Kings of the West:  in most points, indeed, he was far superior to the historic misrulers who have afflicted the world from Spain to furthest China.  But a single great crime, a tragedy whose details are almost incredibly horrible, marks his reign with the stain of infamy, with a blot of blood never to be washed away.  This tale, “full of the waters of the eye,” as Firdausi sings, is the massacre of the Barmecides; a story which has often been told and which cannot here be passed over in silence.  The ancient and noble Iranian house, belonging to the “Ebna” or Arabised Persians, had long served the Ommiades till, early in our eighth century, Khalid bin Bermek,[FN#264] the chief, entered the service of the first Abbaside and became Wazir and Intendant of Finance to Al-Saffah.  The most remarkable and distinguished of the family, he was in office when Al-Mansur transferred the capital from Damascus, the headquarters of the hated Ommiades, to Baghdad, built ad hoc.  After securing the highest character in history by his personal gifts and public services, he was succeeded by his son and heir Yahya (John), a statesman famed from early youth for prudence and profound intelligence, liberality and nobility of soul.[FN#265] He was charged by the Caliph Al-Mahdi with the education of his son Harun, hence the latter was accustomed to call him father; and, until the assassination of the fantastic tyrant Al-Hadi, who proposed to make his own child Caliph, he had no little difficulty in preserving the youth from death in prison.  The Orthodox, once seated firmly on the throne, appointed Yahya his Grand Wazir.  This great administrator had four sons, Al-Fazl, Ja’afar, Mohammed, and Musa,[FN#266] in whose time the house of Bermek rose to that height from which decline and fall are, in the East, well nigh certain and immediate.  Al-Fazl was a foster-brother of Harun, an exchange of suckling infants having taken place between the two mothers for the usual object, a tightening of the ties of intimacy:  he was a man of exceptional mind, but he lacked the charm of temper and manner which characterised Ja’afar.

The poets and rhetoricians have been profuse in their praises of the cadet who appears in The Nights as an adviser of calm sound sense, an intercessor and a peace-maker, and even more remarkable than the rest of his family for an almost incredible magnanimity and generosity—­une generosite effrayante.  Mohammed was famed for exalted views and nobility of sentiment and Musa for bravery and energy:  of both it was justly said, “They did good and harmed not."[FN#267]