Muhammad was a cousin of the first two Abbasid caliphs, Abu'l-Abbas al-Saffah and Abu Ja'far al-Mansur.[1] His father, Sulayman ibn Ali al-Hashimi, had long served as governor of Basra. 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. After his death in 759/60, that position was inherited by Muhammad and his brother Ja'far.[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.[5]