The Byzantine embassy and al-Muqtadir's great procession

Al-Suyuti's account in "History of the Caliphs" says that envoys of the king of the Romans came in 305 AH with gifts and asked for a truce, and the caliph al-Muqtadir held a great procession. ²

The account counts a hundred and sixty thousand troops standing in arms from the Shammasiyya gate to the palace of the caliphate. After them seven thousand servants, then seven hundred chamberlains. The curtains on the walls of the palace of the caliphate reached thirty-eight thousand brocade curtains, the carpets twenty-two thousand, and in the audience hall a hundred lions in chains. ²

The account says that gifts from the ruler of Oman arrived in the same year, among them a black bird that spoke Persian and Hindi more eloquently than a parrot. ²

These figures are as al-Suyuti relates them; no second source for them is given in the data. They need an additional source.