Barmakids

The Barmakids (Persian: برمکیان‎‎ Barmakīyān; Arabic: البرامكة‎ - al-Barāmikah, from the Sanskrit: pramukha प्रमुख "leader, chief administrator, registrar"); also spelled Barmecides, were an influential family from Balkh in Bactria where they were originally hereditary Buddhist leaders, and subsequently came to great political power under the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. Khalid, the son of Barmak became the Prime Minister or Wazir of Al Saffah, the first Caliph of the Abbasid dynasty. His son Yahya aided Harun Al-Rashid in capturing the throne and rose to power as the most powerful man in the Empire. The Barmakids were remarkable for their majesty, splendor and hospitality. They are mentioned in some stories of the Arabian Nights.

Origins

The family is traceable back to the hereditary Buddhist administrators, Sanskrit प्रमुख Pramukha (Arabized to Barmak), of the Buddhist monastery of Nava Vihāra (Nawbahar) west of Balkh (Northern Afghanistan). Historians of Islam have sometimes considered the Barmakids to have been Zoroastrian priests before converting to Islam, an erroneous view based on the fact that Balkh was known as an important centre of Zoroastrianism, or from a simple failure of early Islamic sources to distinguish Zoroastrians from Buddhists. In fact, the Barmakids descended from the chiefs, or administrators of the Buddhist monastery called Navavihāra (Skt. नवविहार) or "New Monastery", that was described by the Chinese Buddhist diarist Xuanzang in the seventh century which may have led to the Persian and Arabic error of thinking that the term "Nowbahār" was the name of a Zoroastrian fire temple headed by the Barmakids as reported in Islamic sources. The Pramukhas converted during the Arab invasion of the Sasanian Empire.