There were two lines of ruby on the front and the back of it...

There were two lines of ruby on the front and the back of it; and the rest of it was decorated with great pearls the like of which was not available."[2] It was said that the estimators were [1] Bayna al-Khulafa' wa al-Khula'a, pp. 25-26. [2] Al-Diyarat, p. 100.

unable to estimate these pearls because they were very expensive.[1] This is an example of the lavish expenditure and of making light of the Muslims' properties of which Islam took great care and required (the rulers) to spend them on public interests, and made it forbidden for them to choose any of them. Yet another example of al-Mehdi's lavish expenditure is that he bought a very precious gem of…