Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 9.djvu/398

364 and disaffection rose to such a pitch that he thought it well to leave Baghdad (whither he never returned) and take up his residence at Rekkeh, a city on the Euphrates, 115 miles E. of Aleppo. He soon felt the void left by the loss of his great ministers and gave way to bitter and unavailing remorse, in which, however, repentance had no part, it being merely sorrow for the results of the sin and not for the sin itself. “It is observed,” says Price in his History of Mohammedanism, “that, on the extermination of the Barmecides, the affairs of Haroun fell into immediate and irretrievable confusion. Treason, revolt and rebellion assailed him in different parts of the empire [especially in Khorassan, where Fezl’s beneficent government had not been forgotten and which was the native country of the family]. He felt himself from disease [and natural incapacity] unequal to the cares of government and expiated, by a tardy and unavailing regret, his unfeeling cruelty to the lamented race of Bermek.” Fezl ben Rebya, whose treacherous malice had been largely instrumental in procuring the fall of the Barmecides, succeeded to their honours, but proved utterly unable to supply their place, and of this Er Reshid himself soon became conscious, as is shown by the following anecdote, related by El Jihshyari in his History of the Viziers. “Er Reshid,” says he, “repented of his conduct to the Barmecides and deeply regretted the manner in which he had treated them.them.” [sic] He said, before some of his brothers, that, were he but assured of the fidelity [that is to say, of the forgiveness] of Yehya and Fezl, he would reinstate them in their offices. He used