Harun al-Rashid had his vizier Ja'far killed in one night in 803, hung his body in Baghdad, and took the Barmakid fortune

The Barmakids came from Balkh, where their ancestors led a Buddhist monastery. They ran the Abbasid government for Harun al-Rashid. Yahya ibn Khalid was his vizier, and from about 798 Yahya's son Ja'far held the post. Ja'far's mansion was said to have cost twenty million dirhams. In 803 Harun returned from the pilgrimage to Mecca. On the night of 1 Safar 187 (29 January 803) he had the eunuch Masrur behead Ja'far at Umr, near al-Anbar. The body was cut up and the parts hung in different places in Baghdad. Later accounts say they stayed up about two years and were then burned^†. Yahya and his other sons were imprisoned. The family's whole fortune was confiscated, and relatives were punished too. Harun is reported to have ordered his police chief to seize Barmakid property a year earlier, which suggests the fall was planned^†. Yahya died in prison at Raqqa on 29 November 805. His son al-Fadl died in November 808. Many sources tie the fall to a secret marriage between Ja'far and Harun's sister Abbasa. The Turkish Diyanet encyclopedia rejects that as the cause and points to the family's power and wealth; it reports Harun did not want "two suns in the sky." Yahya's sons Muhammad and Musa stayed in prison until Harun's son al-Amin freed them. In the civil war between al-Amin and al-Ma'mun, the two brothers took opposite sides.