Informing people about what happened to the Barmakids with the Abbasids

Author's name: Muhammad Diab Al-Atlaidi

Publisher's Introduction: "We have not found a comprehensive biography of the author of this book, nor do we know what he wrote about himself in his brief introduction, or what was written about him in the "Encyclopedia of the Twentieth Century", or the historical section of "Al-Munjid", except that he is Muhammad or Mahmoud Diab Al-Atlidi, the author of the book "Informing People about What Happened to the Barmakids with the Abbasids". He was born in Al-Minya in Egypt, lived in Cairo, and died there in 1688 AD. This indicates that he was one of the writers of the era of decadence, and we see the influence of this era clearly in the decadent expressions and colloquial words he included in his book.

He gave it this name in order to name the whole after the part, because the stories of the Barmakids only take up a small part of it, while the stories and tales that deal with what happened in the early days of Islam and the days of the Umayyads, and other Abbasid and non-Abbasid stories take up most of it.

Al-Atlaidi was faithful in his transmission from others, attributing each story or tale to the book from which it was taken, or to the person from whom it was narrated. He took most of what he took from Al-Asma’i, and from the book “Halbat Al-Kumait” by Shams Al-Din Al-Nawaji, and the book “Hayat Al-Hayawan” by Al-Damiri, and “Al-Aghani” by Abu Al-Faraj Al-Isfahani. In all the stories he collected, we see the beauty of the narration, the breadth of the imagination, and the excellence of the invention, which indicates the mastery of the narrative spirit among the Arabs.

Nor tweet, for the story is ancient to them. We find its elements in pre-Islamic poetry and Umayyad poetry and prose, but it did not become a literary art, even if it did not reach the level of perfection, except in the Abbasid era, after the stories of India and Persia were translated, such as the stories of Kalila and Dimna, and the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, and religious stories were composed, as well as stories of heroism, such as the story of Antar and others, and lyrical love stories.

The stories of Atlidi in this book include religious and heroic stories, most of which are romantic, lyrical, or wine-related. The reader often senses that some of them are contrary to reason, such as the story of Ibrahim al-Mawsili, his son Ishaq, and Abu Nuwas meeting with the devil, and the singing and conversation that took place between them. Therefore, the reader is pleased to read them and enjoys them because of the common incidents they contain that arouse his curiosity, amuse him, and entertain him.

We have given each story a title derived from its subject, to make it easier for anyone who wants to search for one of them to read it on its own.

We have deemed it a duty of honesty to leave everything in the book as it is, even the verses of poetry attributed to people other than their authors, and the stories that we do not prove historically, such as the story of Maymuna, or Al-Abbasa, the sister of Al-Rashid, and her marriage to Ja’far Al-Barmaki, and the story of Al-Ma’mun and Zanbil Buran, the daughter of Al-Hasan bin Sahl, which Ibn Khaldun refuted, among other things, in the chapter “The Fallacies and Delusions of Historians” in his introduction.

However, we did not refrain from what the investigation required in terms of correcting errors or verses of poetry with irregular meters, and correcting what could be corrected of distortions that distorted the meaning or made it obscure and difficult to understand.”