4
ʾILÂM-EN-NÂS.
Muhammad, who is known as Diyâb-el-Itlîdy, from the region of el-Minyeh-el-Khasibiyyeh.[1]
Some of the pious brethren whom it would be impossible for me to refuse, have asked me to collect for them accounts of events which occurred during the times of the early Khalîfahs of the Benu-ʾOmeyyah and the Benu-ʾAbbâs. And I consented to do this, though knowing myself to be unequal to it; for verily it is said: Obedience is better than Politeness.
And I called my work, Warnings for Men, or ʾIlâm-en-Nâs, on account of what befell the el-Barâmakah at the hands of the Benu-ʾAbbâs.[2]
And I have begun my subject with the Commander
- ↑ A town so called after el-Khasîb-ibn-ʾAbd-el-Hamîd, who was the collector of the revenues of Egypt for Harûn-er-Rashîd. It is in Upper Egypt in lat. 28° 5′ N., on the west bank of the Nile.
- ↑ I have not in this volume reached the point here alluded to. The el-Barâmakah were. one of the most illustrious families of the East, being originally descended, according to some authors, from the ancient kings of Persia. The uncertainty of human happiness is the moral which the author in alluding to them evidently intends to point. For during the reign of Harûn-er-Rashîd, A.H. 171 to 193 (A.D. 787 to 808), the whole family fell under the Khalîfah's displeasure; and from the topmost pinnacle of wealth, consideration, and power, descended to the lowest depths of poverty and misery. Different reasons are assigned for the change in er-Rashîd's feelings towards these great men, into which it is useless now to enter. But I may remark that after
