Muhammad ibn Sulayman ibn Ali

He also played a leading role in the suppression of the pro-Alid uprisings of 762–763 and 786, and helped ensure the peaceful accession of Caliph al-Mahdi in 775.

Sulayman accumulated enormous estates in the area, which he turned into his virtual fiefdom, erecting a new governor's palace and engaging in various public works in the city.

[2] The historian Hugh N. Kennedy qualifies him as "the ablest and most important of the younger generation of the Abbasid family",[3] and he appears to have enjoyed the esteem of al-Mansur: the historian al-Tabari reports that when Muhammad's older brother Ja'far once complained of receiving a donation only half the size of his brother's, the Caliph replied that "Wherever we turn we find some trace of Muhammad in it and some part of his gifts in our house, whereas you do not do any of this".

[4] As a close member of the dynasty, and moreover as someone who apparently never held any ambition towards the throne, he was one of the few outsiders allowed entry into the inner apartments of the caliphal palace.

[10] In the next year, he was appointed governor of Kufa, replacing Isa ibn Musa, who had just been demoted in the line of succession below al-Mansur's son al-Mahdi.

[19] According to al-Tabari, al-Mahdi in the same year also gave him the governorship of Sind, to which he appointed Abd al-Malik ibn Shihab al-Misma'i as his deputy.

[23] In 786, he participated in the pilgrimage along with other members of the dynasty, and by coincidence was thus involved in the suppression of the Alid rebellion led by Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya's nephew, Husayn.

They also found vast quantities of balms and food, especially fish, all of which had spoilt and were unceremoniously dumped on the street outside Muhammad's palace at al-Mirbad, the commercial centre of the city.