The killing of al-Amin

قتل الأمين

198 AH

In the year 198 Tahir took Baghdad ¹. Al-Tabari mentions the killing of Muhammad al-Amin in the same year ², and reports that the troops turned on Tahir five days after the killing ³. According to al-Suyuti, the year 198 began and Tahir entered Baghdad by force of the sword; al-Amin left with his mother and family for the city of al-Mansur. On his last night he was drinking with Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi; a slave-girl named Di'f sang, and he took it as an omen from her name; then she stumbled over a valuable crystal cup and broke it. He said: 'I do not think my affair is anything but near,' and he heard a voice from the Tigris: 'The matter about which you two sought a ruling has been decided.' He was killed a night or two later. He was seized and imprisoned; then a group of Persians came in at night and struck him with the sword, then slaughtered him from the nape of the neck, and took his head to Tahir, who had it set on a garden wall while it was proclaimed: 'This is the head of the deposed Muhammad.' His body was dragged with a rope. Tahir sent the head, the mantle, the staff and the prayer rug to al-Ma'mun. Al-Ma'mun was grieved at the killing of his brother; he had wished to have him sent to him alive, and he bore a grudge against Tahir until he died. When al-Amin had written to Tahir, as he was appointed to fight him, 'O Tahir, no one has stood up for our right since we rose, and his reward from us is nothing but the sword' ⁴. After the killing, Umm Ja'far wrote to al-Ma'mun: 'You were struck by the most distant of people kin to you; Tahir did it; may God not purify Tahir.' Al-Ma'mun wept and said: 'O God, I say what Ali ibn Abi Talib (may God be pleased with him) said when news reached him of the killing of Uthman: by God, I neither killed nor ordered nor approved' ⁵.