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also to say [alluding evidently to Fezl ben Rebya], “Some people prompted us to punish our ablest and most faithful advisers and made us believe that themselves were capable of replacing them; but, when we did their will, they were not of the least use to us.” And he recited the following line:
God curse your ancestors! Spare us your calumnies or fill their place.
The royal murderer appears never to have recovered his peace of mind; it is said that he never knew refreshing sleep after Jaafer’s death and his confession is recorded that he would have given his whole realm to have called him back to life. According to Ibn Bedroun, his sister Uleiyeh once said to him, “My lord, I have not seen you enjoy a day of perfect happiness, since you put Jaafer to death. Why did you so?” To which Er Reshid replied, “If I thought my shirt knew the reason, I would tear it in pieces.” When, after he had become convinced of the irreparableness of his loss, any blamed the Barmecides in his presence, he would say, “Perdition to your fathers! Cease to blame them or fill the void they have left.” After the death of Jaafer and the imprisonment of Yehya and Fezl, he had no one in whom he could trust, having committed the fatal error of dividing his kingdom between his sons in his lifetime, and went in continual apprehension of being poisoned by the latter, fearing even to confide the knowledge of the lingering disease by which he died to his physicians, whom he suspected (not, it would seem, without cause) of being his sons’ creatures, and it is said that even his old servant Mesrour,
