��MASHAD, THE HOLT CITY OF PERSIA
��Mamun's iniquity.^ The date when this foul deed was com- mitted was the year 201 a.h. (817 A.D.), and the saint died at the village of Sanabad (since absorbed in Mashad) in the dis- trict of Tus.2 By a somewhat strange anomaly, considering the story of the murder, though possibly to avoid suspicion, and especially because it was his own prediction, his body was buried close by that of the illustrious Harun ar-Rashid in the mausoleum which the hated son Mamun had erected to the great caliph's memory.^
Local legend even ascribes to Alexander the Great, who actually had been at Tus more than a thousand years before, a prophecy that this spot in the environs of that ancient city would one day be the burial-place of a famous man.* Passing
��1 See Sykes, Glory of the Shia World, pp. 249-250 ; and Miss Sykes, Persia, p. 95.
2 According to al-Biruni {Chronol- ogy of Ancient Nations, tr. Sachau, p. 330, London, 1879), the day of Riza's death was Ramazan 21 ; or, according to a tradition to which less credence was evidently given, Dhu-'l- Ka'da 23 {i.e. either April 12 or June 12, 817 A.D.). The story that Imam Riza was poisoned by Mamun was re- corded a few years after the event by Masudi (943), Prairies d'or, 7. 3, 60; cf. 6. 415 and 7. 101, who allows, how- ever, that there was some doubt re- garding the truth of it. He gives the date of Riza's death as 4 Jamadi I, 193 A.H. (=Feb. 23, 809 a.d.), and says that he was 49 years and 6 months of age, or, according to others, 63 years old.
8 This is implied in the remark of Kazvini (1275 a.b,), quoted by Le Strange, p. 390, to the effect that both bodies lay under the same dome, and that Mamun caused the two graves to be made exactly alike, see below, p. 268, n. 4. According to one account
��both bodies were interred in an old tower, originally built by the 'Fire- worshipers,' see Bassett, Land of the Imams, pp. 222-223. The Dabistan, a seventeenth century Persian treatise (tr. Shea and Troyer, 1. 48, Paris, 1843), also records a tradition that ' the mausoleum of Imam Reza in San- abad of Tus' was originally a 'fire temple.' The whole circumstances of Riza's death through Mamun's perfidy are vividly told by Fraser, pp. 449-451, from an account repeated to him by the chief priest of the shrine, although he draws attention to certain discrep- ancies in the reports of other authori- ties. The account adds that the Imam is stated to have said, 'the caliph Haroom charged his son to bury him in such a manner that his body might face mine ' ; and in accordance with the directions given, 'the feet of the Imaum were placed towards the head of the caliph, and both were vnthin the four walls built by Secunder Roomee [Alexander the Great].'
- The legend about Alexander's
alleged prophecy is given by Fraser, p. 449.
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