[3] They were brought to the Arab garrison town and provincial center of Basra, where both were purchased by a certain Abla, a woman of the Banu Tamim, and then freed by her upon their conversion to Islam.
[4] When the latter moved to convert the Persian tax records of Iraq's central dīwān to Arabic in 697, he entrusted Salih with the task.
[5] The local and provincial dīwāns in Iraq and the eastern provinces remained Persian for many years after the change, and Salih was charged with training his bureaucrats to adopt the new Arabic system.
The kātib (scribe) of Caliph Marwan II, Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya, noted this, saying: "What a man Salih was!
[8] When, in 702, al-Hajjaj built Wasit as the new capital of Iraq and the garrison of his elite Syrian troops, the costs of construction totaled 43,000,000 dirhams, a sum far more expensive than the governor had anticipated.
[8] To test his loyalty, al-Hajjaj, at the prodding of his protege Yazid ibn Abi Muslim, commanded Salih to execute the captive Kharijite leader Jawwab al-Dabbi.
[13] Sulayman charged Salih with the arrest, torture and execution of several member of the Abu Aqil clan to which al-Hajjaj belonged.
Though Wasit was established as Iraq's capital, Basra and Kufa still served as subgovernorships and Salih sought to replace the ruined clay palace built by a previous governor, Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad.
After gaining Sulayman's approval for the construction, Salih had a taller, less expensive palace built, the first in the city to consist of baked brick and gypsum.
[17] In the assessment of the historian Martin Sprengling, "Salih ibn Abdalrahman remains a sad, lonely figure, outstanding, of most extraordinary ability, rising for his moment to heights far above the average, then melting completely out of sight".