That the only surviving member of the group of three, Isaac, was being sent back with the elephant was heralded as advance news to Charlemagne from two emissaries he met in 801: one was sent by the caliph Harun al-Rashid himself, another by Abraham (Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab), who was governor of Africa.

[11] In the year 810, Charlemagne left his palace and mounted a campaign intending to engage with King Gudfred of Denmark and his fleet that invaded and plundered Friesland.

Charlemagne had crossed the Rhine River and tarried at a place called "Lippeham" awaiting troops for three days, when his elephant suddenly died.

[17][18] The claim dates at least as far back as 1746,[19] (or 1735)[20] when J. H. Nünning (Nunningus) and a colleague had published a notice that "Lippeham" was to be identified with Wesel;[21] and that a colossal bone unearthed from the area, in the possession of their affiliated museum, was plausibly a part of the remains of the elephant Abul-Abbas.

[22] Another gigantic bone was found in the Lippe River among a catch of fish in the herrschaft of Gartrop [de] in early 1750, and it too was claimed to be a piece of Abul-Abbas.

[15] Some added details about the elephant's death, stating he was in his forties and already suffering from rheumatism when it accompanied Charlemagne in the campaign across the Rhine heading to Friesland.

[24] In 1971, Peter Munz wrote a book intended for popular readership which repeated the same "white elephant" claim, but a reviewer flagged this as a "slip" given there was "no evidence" known to him to substantiate it.

[28] Another clue comes from the Irish monk Dicuil who mentions Abul-Abbas in his description of India in his geographic work De mensura orbis terrae ("Concerning the Measurement of the World") in 825.

[28][d] An inhabited initial B from a copy of Cassiodorus' Commentary on the Psalms made at the Abbey of Saint-Denis in the first quarter of the ninth century (now Paris, BnF lat.