Musa el-Hadi, his eldest son, succeeded him, being the fourth caliph of the race of Abbasids.  On ascending the throne, he withdrew the government of Egypt from Fadl ibn Salih, appointing in his place Ali ibn Suleiman, also a descendant of Abbas.  El-Hadi plotted against the claims of Harun to the succession, but he died before his plans had matured, and Harun became caliph in the year 786.

The reign of Harun er-Rashid was the most brilliant epoch of the empire of Islamism, and his glory penetrated from the far East to the western countries of Europe, where his name is still celebrated.

[Illustration:  347.jpg DOOR OF AN ARABIAN HOUSE.]

Harun seems to have been as reluctant as his father and grandfather were before him to leave a province too long in the hands of a governor, and he even surpassed them in his precautionary measures.  In the year 171 of the Hegira, he recalled Ali ibn Suleiman, and gave the government of Egypt to Musa ibn Isa, a descendant of the Caliph Ali.

Thereafter the governors were changed on an average of once a year, and their financial duties were separately administered.  Musa ibn Isa, however, held the appointment of Governor of Egypt on three separate occasions, and of his third period Said ibn Batrik tells the following anecdote: 

“While Obaid Allah ibn el-Mahdi was ruling in Egypt,” he relates, “he sent a beautiful young Koptic slave to his brother, the caliph, as a gift.  The Egyptian odalisk so charmed the caliph that he fell violently in love with her.  Suddenly, however, the favourite was laid prostrate by a malady which the court physicians could neither cure nor even diagnose.  The girl insisted that, being Egyptian, only an Egyptian physician could cure her.  The caliph instantly ordered his brother to send post haste the most skilful doctor in Egypt.  This proved to be the Melchite patriarch, for in those days Koptic priests practised medicine and cultivated other sciences.  The patriarch set out for Baghdad, restored the favourite to health, and in reward received from the caliph an imperial diploma, which restored to the orthodox Christians or Melchites all those privileges of which they had been deprived by the Jacobite heretics since their union with the conqueror Amr ibn el-Asi.”

If this story be true, one cannot but perceive the plot skilfully laid and carried out by the powerful clergy, to whom any means, even the sending of a concubine to the caliph, seemed legitimate to procure the restoration of their supremacy and the humiliation of their adversaries.

[Illustration:  349.jpg A VEILED BEAUTY]

The year 204 of the Hegira was memorable for the death of the Iman Muhammed ibn Idris, surnamed esh-Shafi.  This celebrated doctor was the founder of one of the four orthodox sects which recognised the Moslem religion, and whose followers take the name “Shafites” from their chief.  The Iman esh-Shafi died at Fostat when but forty-three years old.  His dogmas are more especially followed in Egypt, where his sect is still represented and presided over by one of the four Imans at the head of the famous Mosque Jam el-Azar, or mosque of flowers.