Barmakids

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The Barmakids (Persian: برمكيان Barmakīyān; Arabic: البرامكة al-barāmika, also called Barmecides) were a noble Persian family which attained great power under the Abbasid caliphs.

Origins

The family has its origin in a line of heredetary priests (Sanscrit प्रमुख Pramukh, arabized to Barmak) at the Buddhist monastery of Nava Vihara (Nawbahar) west of Balkh. Shortly before the arrival of the Arabs, the monastery had converted to Zoroastrianism.

According to tradition, during the Arabic conquest of the region, the wife of the priest was taken for a time into the harem of Abdallah, brother of Kotaiba, the conqueror of Balkh, and became the mother of Khalid bin Barmak the Barmecide. Barmak subsequently (about A.D. 736) rebuilt and adorned his native city of Balkh after the rebellion of Harith.

The family then relocated to Merv, an influent regional center.

Influence in the early Abbasids

The Barmakide family was an early supporter of the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyads and of As-Saffah. This gave Khalid bin Barmak considerable influence, and his son Yahya ibn Khalid was the vizier of the caliph al-Mahdi and tutor of Harun al-Rashid. Yahya's sons Fadl and Ja'far (the Giafar of the Arabian Nights) both occupied high offices under Harun.

Many Barmakids were patrons of the sciences, which greatly helped the propagation of Greek science and scholarship from the neighbourign Academy of Gundishapur into the Arabic world. They patroned scholars such as Gebir and Jabril ibn Bukhtishu.

Disgrace and fall

In 803, the family lost grace to the eyes of Harun al-Rashid, and many of it's members were imprisonned.

The story of their disgrace, though romantic, is not improbable. Harun, it is said, found his chief pleasure in the society of his sister Abbsa and Ja'far, and in order that these two might be with him continuously without breach of etiquette, persuaded them to contract a purely formal marriage. The conditions were, however, not observed and Harun, learning that Abbsa had borne a son, caused Jafar suddenly to be arrested and beheaded, and the rest of the family except Muhammad, Yahya's brother, to be imprisoned and deprived of their property. It is probable, however, that Harun's anger was caused to a large extent by the insinuations of his courtiers that he was a mere puppet in the hands of a powerful family.

Legacy

The expression Barmecide Feast, to denote an imaginary banquet, is drawn from one of the tales (The Story of the Barber's Sixth Brother [link]) in the Arabian Nights, in which a series of empty dishes is served up to a hungry man to test his sense of humour by one of the Barmecides.

See also

• History of Iran

References