The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid and his entourage have always had a strong appeal to the imagination. Accordingly, they figure in a wide range of literature, ranging from scholarly history, such as Tabari's Tarikh al-rusul wa'l-muluk, to popular storytelling. The caliph himself, his executioner Masrur, the poet Abu Nuwas and Jafar al-Barmaki are the subject of many a tale in the Thousand and One Nights. Apart from that, a special genre of trickster-like anecdotes has sprung up featuring Abu Nuwas. The Barmakid family, too, has taken up a role in popular tales, where ample attention is usually paid to the history of their dramatic downfall. Extensive work has already been done in this field, most recently by Sadan (1998) and Abouel-Lail (2007), and it is not my intention here to give an exhaustive overview of all the material. My aim here is to analyse how the account of the Barmakids' downfall as depicted in one particular branch of popular literature, namely that of popular epic (sira sha ‘biyya), is related to other parts of the literary tradition.

The downfall of the Barmakids, which took place in January 803, is often referred to in Arabic sources as the nakbat al-Baramika. It has never ceased to stir the imagination of historians as well as of the wider public. What could have incited the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid to bring down this family, with whom he had such close political and personal ties, in such a sudden and utterly ruthless way? Speculation started almost immediately, and found its way into a variety of Arabic and Persian sources.