Harun al-Rashid

Harun al-Rashid (766-809) was the fifth caliph of the

Abbasid dynasty. During his reign the power and
prosperity of the dynasty was at its height, though its
decline is sometimes held to have begun at that time.

In 750 the Abbasid dynasty replaced the Umayyad as

rulers of the Islamic Empire, and for a generation they
were busy consolidating their rule and overcoming
internal disorders. They moved the capital eastward
from Damascus to their new city of Baghdad. By 786
the reorganization of the empire was bearing fruit in
greater trade and greater wealth, which made possible
the luxury now associated with the caliphal court.

Harun al-Rashid was born at Rey near Teheran in 766

(or perhaps 763), the third son of the third Abbasid
caliph, Mohammed al-Mahdi. His mother was
Khayzuran, a Yemeni slave girl, later freed, who
through her husband and son came to have great
political influence. As a boy, Harun was nominal leader
of military expeditions against the Byzantines in 780
and 782. Because of his victories he received the
honorific name al-Rashid (the Upright). He also gained
experience as governor of various provinces under the
supervision of a high official, Yahya ibn Khalid the
Barmakid. In 782 Harun had been named as second in
succession to the throne, but on his father's death in
785, the new caliph, his brother al-Hadi, treated him
very badly. Al-Hadi, however, died mysteriously in
September 786, and Harun was proclaimed caliph. He
at once appointed Yahya the Barmakid as his vizier.

His Reign
For the first 17 years of his reign Harun relied to a great
extent on his vizier and two of the vizier's sons, al-Fadl
and Jafar. Yahya appears to have been an exceptionally
competent administrator and to have shown great
wisdom in the selection and training of subordinates;
his two sons had similar qualities. The Barmakid family
fell from power suddenly with the execution of Jafar on
the night of Jan. 28/29, 803, and with the arrest of his
father and al-Fadl. The fundamental reason was that
they were too powerful and left too little scope to the
caliph.

Although the caliphate was now mostly pacified and

there were no major revolts, there was an almost
constant series of local insurrections. In the earlier part
of the reign there were troubles in Egypt, Syria,
Mesopotamia, Yemen, and Daylam (south of the
Caspian Sea), and in 806 a more serious revolt in
Khurasan under Rafi ibn Layth. The difficulty of holding
together an empire as vast as Harun's led to the
establishment of an independent principality in
Morocco by the Idrisid dynasty in 789 and of a semi-
independent one in Tunisia by the Aghlabid dynasty in
800. These marked a loss of power by the central
government. The danger of disintegration was
increased by Harun's unwise arrangement for
succession. It provided for one son, al-Amin, to become
caliph and for another son, al-Mamun, to have control
of certain provinces and of a section of the army.

Harun took a personal interest in the campaigns

against the Byzantines, leading expeditions in 797, 803,
and 806. In 797 the empress Irene made peace and
agreed to pay a large sum of money. The emperor
Nicephorus denounced this treaty but was forced to
make an even more humiliating one in 806. Cyprus was
occupied in 805. Though not mentioned in Arabic
sources, there seem to have been diplomatic contacts
between Harun and Charlemagne, in which the latter
was recognized as protector of Christian pilgrims to
Jerusalem. Harun died at Tus in eastern Persia on
March 24, 809, during an expedition to restore order
there.

His Personality
Although the poet, thinking of some of the stories of
the Arabian Nights, could speak of "the good Haroun
Alraschid, " the scholar R. A. Nicholson thought he was
rather "a perfidious and irascible tyrant, whose fitful
amiability and real taste for music and letters hardly
entitle him to be described either as a great monarch
or a good man."

Yet with all its violence and cruelty and its readiness to
have human beings executed and tortured, the court of
Harun al-Rashid undoubtedly had something which
later ages admire. It was far from being without a
conscience, and in the quality of its living there were
elements of grandeur and nobility of style; and the
tone of this life was set by Harun and the Barmakids.

Death
A major revolt led by Rafi ibn al-Layth was started in
Samarqand which forced Harun al-Rashid to move to
Khorasan. He first removed and arrested Ali bin Isa bin
Mahan but the revolt continued unchecked. (Harun
had dismissed Ali and replaced him with Harthama ibn
A'yan, and in 808 marched himself east to deal with
the rebel Rafi ibn al-Layth, but died in March 809 while
at Tus [61]). Harun al-Rashid became ill and died very
soon after when he reached Sanabad village in Tus and
was buried in Dar al-Imarah, the summer palace of
Humayd ibn Qahtaba, the Abbasid governor of
Khorasan. Due to this historical event, the Dar al-
Imarah was known as the Mausoleum of Haruniyyeh.
The location later became known as Mashhad ("The
Place of Martyrdom") because of the martyrdom of
Imam al-Ridha in 818.