The motives of this terrible massacre are variously recounted, but no sufficient explanation has yet been, or possibly ever will be, given.  The popular idea is embodied in The Nights. [FN#269] Harun, wishing Ja’afar to be his companion even in the Harem, had wedded him, pro forma, to his eldest sister Abbasah, “the loveliest woman of her day,” and brilliant in mind as in body; but he had expressly said “I will marry thee to her, that it may be lawful for thee to look upon her but thou shalt not touch her.”  Ja’afar bound himself by a solemn oath; but his mother Attabah was mad enough to deceive him in his cups and the result was a boy (Ibn Khallikan) or, according to others, twins.  The issue was sent under the charge of a confidential eunuch and a slave-girl to Meccah for concealment; but the secret was divulged to Zubaydah who had her own reasons for hating husband and wife and cherished an especial grievance against Yahya.[FN#270] Thence it soon found its way to head-quarters.  Harun’s treatment of Abbasah supports the general conviction:  according to the most credible accounts she and her child were buried alive in a pit under the floor of her apartment.

But, possibly, Ja’afar’s perjury was only “the last straw.”  Already Al-Fazl bin Rabi’a, the deadliest enemy of the Barmecides, had been entrusted (A.D. 786) with the Wazirate which he kept seven years.  Ja’afar had also acted generously but imprudently in abetting the escape of Yahya bin Abdillah, Sayyid and Alide, for whom the Caliph had commanded confinement in a close dark dungeon:  when charged with disobedience the Wazir had made full confession and Harun had (they say) exclaimed, “Thou hast done well!” but was heard to mutter, “Allah slay me an I slay thee not."[FN#271] The great house seems at times to have abused its powers by being too peremptory with Harun and Zubaydah, especially in money matters;[FN#272] and its very greatness would have created for it many and powerful enemies and detractors who plied the Caliph with anonymous verse and prose.  Nor was it forgotten that, before the spread of Al-Islam, they had presided over the Naubehar or Pyraethrum of Balkh; and Harun is said to have remarked anent Yahya, “The zeal for magianism, rooted in his heart, induces him to save all the monuments connected with his faith."[FN#273] Hence the charge that they were “Zanadakah,” a term properly applied to those who study the Zend scripture, but popularly meaning Mundanists, Positivists, Reprobates, Atheists; and it may be noted that, immediately after al-Rashid’s death, violent religious troubles broke out in Baghdad.  Ibn Khallikan[FN#274] quotes Sa’id ibn Salim, a well-known grammarian and traditionist who philosophically remarked, “Of a truth the Barmecides did nothing to deserve Al-Rashid’s severity, but the day (of their power and prosperity) had been long and whatso endureth long waxeth longsome.”  Fakhr al-Din says (p. 27), “On attribue encore leur ruine aux manieres fieres et orgueilleuses de