Harun al-Rashid
Harun al-Rashid was the fifth Abbasid caliph, ruling from 786 to 809, and his court became the setting of the Thousand and One Nights. Born around 763 in Rayy, he was the son of the caliph al-Mahdi and a Yemeni slave named al-Khayzuran, who became one of the most powerful women of the period and secured his succession over his brother's line. He led campaigns against the Byzantines as a young man, reaching the Bosphorus in 782, which earned him the title al-Rashid, the rightly guided. His reign is remembered as the height of Abbasid wealth and cultural confidence. Baghdad, founded a generation earlier, became the largest city in the world outside China, and the caliphal court supported poets, musicians, physicians and translators. He is associated with the Bayt al-Hikma, the house of wisdom, where Greek, Persian and Indian scientific works were translated into Arabic; the institution took its fullest form under his son al-Ma'mun. He exchanged embassies and gifts with Charlemagne, including in 802 an elephant named Abul-Abbas, which travelled to Aachen, and a water clock that astonished the Frankish court. For seventeen years he left administration largely to the Barmakid family, Persian viziers of great ability, and then in 803 destroyed them abruptly — Ja'far was executed and the rest imprisoned, for reasons the sources do not agree on. The empire was already fragmenting: the Idrisids took Morocco and the Aghlabids ruled Ifriqiya autonomously. His decision to divide the succession between his sons al-Amin and al-Ma'mun produced a civil war after his death near Tus in 809.
- Lived: 763 CE – 809 CE
- Nationality: Abbasid
- Roles: ruler
