Djafar (Ja’afar) et de Fadhl (Al-Fazl), manieres que les rois ne sauroient supporter.”  According to Ibn Badrun, the poet, when the Caliph’s sister ’Olayyah[FN#275] asked him, “O my lord, I have not seen thee enjoy one happy day since putting Ja’afar to death:  wherefore didst thou slay him?” he answered, “My dear life, an I thought that my shirt knew the reason I would rend it in pieces!” I therefore hold with Al Mas’udi,

“As regards the intimate cause (of the catastrophe) it is unknown and Allah is Omniscient.”

Aaron the Orthodox appears sincerely to have repented his enormous crime.  From that date he never enjoyed refreshing sleep:  he would have given his whole realm to recall Ja’afar to life; and, if any spoke slightingly of the Barmecides in his presence, he would exclaim, “God damn your fathers!  Cease to blame them or fill the void they have left.”  And he had ample reason to mourn the loss.  After the extermination of the wise and enlightened family, the affairs of the Caliphate never prospered:  Fazl bin Rabi’a, though a man of intelligence and devoted to letters, proved a poor substitute for Yahya and Ja’afar; and the Caliph is reported to have applied to him the couplet:—­

No sire to your sire,[FN#276] I bid you spare * Your calumnies or
     their place replace.

His unwise elevation of his two rival sons filled him with fear of poison, and, lastly, the violence and recklessness of the popular mourning for the Barmecides,[FN#277] whose echo has not yet died away, must have added poignancy to his tardy penitence.  The crime still “sticks fiery off” from the rest of Harun’s career:  it stands out in ghastly prominence as one of the most terrible tragedies recorded by history, and its horrible details make men write passionately on the subject to this our day.[FN#278]

As of Harun so of Zubaydah it may be said that she was far superior in most things to contemporary royalties, and she was not worse at her worst than the normal despot-queen of the Morning-land.  We must not take seriously the tales of her jealousy in The Nights, which mostly end in her selling off or burying alive her rivals; but, even were all true, she acted after the recognised fashion of her exalted sisterhood.  The secret history of Cairo, during the last generation, tells of many a viceregal dame who committed all the crimes, without any of the virtues which characterised Harun’s cousin-spouse.  And the difference between the manners of the Caliphate and the “respectability” of the nineteenth century may be measured by the Tale called “Al-Maamun and Zubaydah."[FN#279] The lady, having won a game of forfeits from her husband, and being vexed with him for imposing unseemly conditions when he had been the winner, condemned him to lie with the foulest and filthiest kitchen-wench in the palace; and thus was begotten the Caliph who succeeded and destroyed her son.