It is related that one night the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid said to Fazl the Barmecide, "Take me to a man by whose aid I may rise out of the moral torpor into which I have fallen." Fazl took him to the door of a celebrated ascetic, Sofyan ibn Oyaina, who asked on their knocking, "Who is there?" "The Prince of the Faithful," answered Fazl. "Why did you not send for me?" said Sofyan, "I would have come myself in person to serve him." Al-Rashid, hearing this, said, "This is not the man I seek." They then departed, and knocked at the door of Fudhayl. As they arrived, the latter was reciting the following verse of the Koran: "Do those who have done evil imagine that we shall set them on the same level with those who have done well?" Koran (Sura xlv., v. 20). The Caliph had no sooner heard this verse than he said, "If it is good advice we are seeking, here is enough for us." Then they knocked at the door. "Who is there?" asked Fudhayl. "The Prince of the Faithful," Fazl answered. "What do you want?" was the reply; "I have nothing to do with you, leave me alone and don't waste my time." "But you should treat the Caliph with honour, and let us in." "It is for you to come in if you must, in spite of me," answered Fudhayl. When the Caliph and his attendant entered, Fudhayl extinguished the lamp in order not to see the intruders. Harun-al-Rashid, having touched Fudhayl's hand in the dark, the latter exclaimed, "How soft this hand is; may it escape hell fire." Having thus spoken, he rose to pray. As for the Caliph, he began to weep, and said, "Speak to me at least one word." Fudhayl, when he had finished his prayers, said to him, "O Harun, thy ancestor Abbas, who was the paternal uncle of the Prophet (on whom be peace!) said to him one day, O Prophet of God, make me ruler over a nation. The Prophet replied, I have made thee ruler over thyself. If thou rulest thine own body and keepest it constant in the service of the Lord, that is better than ruling a nation for a thousand years. Again, Omar, the son of Abd al Aziz, being installed on the throne of the Caliphate, sent for three of his intimate friends, and said to them, 'Behold me caught in the toils of the Caliphate; how shall I get rid of them? Many people consider power a blessing; I regard it as a calamity.'"