Harun al-Rashid

The name of Harun al-Rashid has attained such a stature in the history of the Arab and Islamic worlds that it has acquired a legendary reputation that has transcended these two worlds to many nations, whose stories have been translated into their languages, becoming like the tales of “One Thousand and One Nights.” The reasons for this fame are many, the most prominent of which are: the fact that Islamic civilization reached a stage in his era where science, poetry, literature, and art flourished; the gravity of the events that took place during his reign; the obscene wealth achieved by the state; and the stories of luxury, extravagance, and elegance narrated about his court and the palaces of his ministers and entourage. However, factors and tendencies, most notably populism, have tampered with the biography of this caliph, distorting his true nature, and turning him into a story full of anecdotes of debauchery and licentiousness. These tendencies have especially sought to obscure his Arab bent, his steadfastness in the face of populism, his confrontation with it, and his attack on it. This slander of Arab history, through the distortion of the biography of Harun al-Rashid, is what prompted the author to write his book about him, to paint a true picture of him, and to refute the fabrications woven around him, the most prominent of which was the populist tendency that targeted Arab nationalism, and still does. The reader of the book will notice that the author was moderate and did not tend toward extremism. His general starting point was that Arab history still needs studies that would free it from the futility of the futility of the futility, and that his book is an attempt that falls within this framework and aspires to this goal.