We have already encountered al-Suli’s reputation as a biographer of the Caliphs and indeed out of the many works that he is said to have authored[10] it is Kitab al-Awraq f? Akhbar al-Khulafa? wa-l-Shuara? which must be considered his magnum opus.
In Kitabal-Awraq, al-?uli took up the ambitious task of chronicling the biographies of all former Abbasid Caliphs and prominent poets up to his own day. He called the work al-Awraq ‘pages’ because he devoted many ‘pages’ to the biography of each subject.
The significance of this work is that Abu Bakr al-?uli, who was always in the company of a number of Caliphs, was an eye-witness to much of what he wrote[11], but he could also draw on a vast network of informants among the courtier class (including family members) who remembered serving past Caliphs.
Now Kitabal-Awraq survives partially[12] and speaks to the prodigious skill of al-Suli as a historian[13], so can it be expected that al-Suli, someone who wrote biographical accounts of the Caliphs and other influential figures, would not have penned ‘pages’ on al-Ri?a? After all, al-Ri?a was at one point in time the appointed crown-prince, second in the land only to the Caliph al-Ma?mun!
It is my contention that al-?uli did indeed pen a biography of al-Ri?a which can be recovered from al-?aduq’s ?Uyun.
Two Worlds Collide
Abu Bakr al-?uli did not meet al-Ri?a as the Imam was before his time, but when al-Ri?a (d. 203[14]), who was living in Medina like all his illustrious ancestors, was fatefully summoned to Marw by the Caliph al-Ma?mun (d. 218) in the year 200[15] he came into contact with a wholly different class of people – the courtiers of the Abbasid court. And if there was one family of courtiers that for several generations was a mainstay at court it was the ?ulis.
Thus we find that one of al-?uli’s informants in the biography is his own grandmother, a slave-woman named Ghadr who had been brought to court for the pleasure of the Caliphs and whom al-Ma?mun gifted to al-Ri?a and whose house-hold she joined for a time.
The main source, however, for al-?uli’s portrayal of al-Ri?a is his grand-uncle (his grandfather’s younger brother) by the name of Ibrahim b. al-?Abbas al-?uli (d. 243). Ibrahim was a courtier to al-Ma?mun, being an accomplished poet[16] in his own right, as well as a Katib (secretary) in the administration[17]. He was an eye-witness to much of the Imam’s stay in Khurasan and had some important exchanges with him.
Figure 1: The Suli Family-tree
Another important source is the ambitious[18] courtier Abu al-?usayn Mu?ammad b. Abi Abbad (henceforth Ibn Abi ?Abbad) who joined the Imam’s household after being assigned to it by the vizier al-Fa?l b. Sahl ostensibly to serve as a Katib (secretary) for al-Ri?a but likely spy on him[19]. This assignment meant that Ibn Abi ?Abbad spent a long time with the Imam and was there with him in some of his private moments.
