In Defense of Ja’far ibn Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki: His Good Name, His Memory, and the Repose of His Soul

Since we are returning to matters of the highest importance—and to the analysis of major and minor characters in Disney films—we now come to Jafar, that figure wrapped in villainy: the dark lord with the malicious parrot in the Aladdin films. His raven-black beard and sinister serpent staff have made him an almost classic emblem of the corrupt, spiteful minister, honeyed in speech but dark at heart, consumed by the desire for power and rebellion.

For those who would like the short version: the vizier Jafar is based on a thoroughly real figure from early Islamic history. He appears under his own name and title in several tales of One Thousand and One Nights, almost invariably as an admirable, resourceful man loyally serving the most famous Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid.

The transformation of Ja'far's character—though he is now often assumed to be entirely fictional—can be traced to Western adaptations of One Thousand and One Nights. Disney's version draws heavily on The Thief of Bagdad films, the first dating from 1924. These borrow broad themes from the tales but rearrange them freely, casting Jafar as a wicked, corrupt vizier plotting to seize both the caliph's throne and his daughter's bed.

If you have come this far and wish to continue, we can set out on a short journey deeper into the story of Ja'far the Barmakid: his origins and ancestry, the deeds of his family, and his bitter end. To do so, however, we must travel some distance toward faraway Afghanistan.

The Barmakid clan, celebrated in the annals of Asia as one of the eighth century's wealthiest and most learned families, did not rise from nothing. The family from which Ja'far emerged was rather a final, dazzling flower on a deeply rooted branch of Central Asia's forgotten Buddhism.

According to one tradition, Buddhism began migrating from India's deep embrace onto the windswept plains of Central Asia during the Teacher's own lifetime. Its more substantial advances in the region probably came under the patronage of Ashoka's Mauryan Empire, and it put down deep roots in the valleys of present-day Afghanistan under local, predominantly Iranian, powers. Over this long period, important monasteries arose across the vast territory between the Indus and the Oxus. They became centers of worship, learning, medicine, and science, among the most significant the region had ever known.

If we trust the early Chinese and Muslim sources, one of the grandest and most important centers of Buddhist monastic life and scholarship in Central Asia was Balkh's Nawbahar—from the Sanskrit nava vihāra, “new monastery.”

Commanding one of Bactria's richest oases, the Nawbahar complex was something like a forgotten Central Asian Dharamsala, adorned with stupas, colorful silk banners, and Buddhist colleges enclosed by plastered mud-brick walls. It was renowned throughout pre-Islamic Central Asia. Its influence apparently reached far into remote monasteries on the fringes of the Turkmen desert and the isolated city-states of the Tarim Basin.

The Barmakids served as administrators and attendants at Balkh's Nawbahar. Their name probably derives from the Sanskrit pramukha, meaning an administrator, overseer, or something similar. They held hereditary responsibility for managing the immense monastic complex and, presumably, its associated commercial, agricultural, and medical institutions. The sources do not give us enough detail, but we may assume that the family was thoroughly immersed in the Indian learning of its age: philosophy, grammar, mathematics, medicine, and, of course, the rich traditions of Buddhist knowledge.

The Arab conquest of the eighth century did Central Asian Buddhism no favors. Its disappearance was more gradual and complex than a simple division into “before Islam” and “after Islam” suggests, but the fundamental change in the composition and orientation of Central Asia's elites affected the entire region.

As the eighth century's political order shifted and the black clouds of Abbasid rebellion gathered over the Umayyad palaces to the west, the Barmakid family lent the rebels financial, organizational, and logistical support. Its members were probably among the Abbasid movement's most important backers in all Khorasan. The establishment of the House of Abbas in splendid Baghdad owed no small debt to them. The Abbasids and the Barmakids became bound together as intimately as ruler and vizier could be.

The Barmakids were, we should remember, the product of a Bactrian elite steeped in the Buddhist learning of its time, perhaps enriched by the Persian and Hellenistic knowledge available to it. They wasted little time, contributing considerable energy and wealth to the institutions of learning in Abbasid Baghdad. They seem to have invested substantial resources and thought in translating Sanskrit knowledge into Arabic.

Although the precise details of these bodies of knowledge have been lost, they probably included medicine, mathematics, and the sciences. They were incorporated into the growing institutions of Islamic civilization: Baghdad's celebrated libraries and its bimaristans, or hospitals. At least one hospital was funded by Yahya the Barmakid, grandson of the Buddhist administrator from Balkh.

As so often happens in the realms of power, the family's position at the beating heart of the Abbasid Empire brought it almost unimaginable status, influence, and wealth. The old expression “a Barmakid feast” alone gives some sense of what must have taken place in its courtyards. Although the gaps in our knowledge of the family exceed what is known, it was certainly regarded as the richest of its time. Its wealth was said to surpass even that of the Abbasids, whom it served faithfully for three successive generations.

We now arrive at Ja'far ibn Yahya al-Barmaki, in whose name and memory we have gathered: the third generation of his family to live under the mantle of Islam. Much about his life and death remains obscure. What we do know is that, for most of his life, he followed a characteristically Barmakid course: a gilded blend of devoted service and expert administration under Harun al-Rashid. As head of the Abbasid diwan, he conducted an almost symphonic orchestration of the tax administration, mints, and imperial courier service, while commanding the caliph's bodyguard regiments. Alongside these duties, he suppressed rebellions in Syria and continued the family tradition of supporting the cultural and scientific institutions of his day.

The sources explain the bitter end of Ja'far and the Barmakid dynasty in 803, at the hands of Harun al-Rashid's executioners, with the sensuous gossip of their age. They tell of a fruitful affair between Ja'far and Harun's sister: the ironic outcome of a formal marriage arranged by the caliph himself so that the three could spend time together without violating contemporary social conventions. The story goes that the marriage was consummated and twins were born—potential heirs to the Abbasid crown. Harun flew into a rage and had Ja'far's head permanently separated from his body.

For all the seductive fragrance of this exotic tale, I find it unlikely that the irrevocable rupture between the Abbasids and the Barmakids arose from so relatively trivial an event, however emotionally charged, as a betrayal and love affair within the caliph's inner circle. The family's fall seems more plausibly the result of struggles for power at the Baghdad court. The principal beneficiaries were probably the Banu Rabi', a secondary bureaucratic family with less distinguished ancestry and influence than the Barmakids. They would later earn further notoriety through their involvement in the Abbasid civil war following Harun al-Rashid's death.

We have very little basis for judging Ja'far's character, either as a man or as a major political figure in the Islamic world of his day. Still, I feel we can at least grant him the presumption of innocence. There is no firm evidence for the accusations against him, and the prosperity of his Abbasid patrons was closely bound to the wealth and success of his own family. Seriously undermining Harun al-Rashid, then still at the height of his power, would have made little political or economic sense.

Another, more interesting possibility—though it too requires evidence—concerns the ethnic division between Persian and Arab elements within the Abbasid caliphate. We need only note that the mothers of Harun's two most important sons, the half-brothers and rival claimants al-Amin and al-Ma'mun, came respectively from the Arab aristocracy and the depths of the eastern Iranian world. This suggests the weight of the social and political dowry each brought into Baghdad's melting pot.

Perhaps, then, the choice of al-Amin as heir to the Abbasid throne signaled the breakdown of existing arrangements among the elites during Harun's own lifetime. It eventually cost the descendants of Bactria's Barmak both their carpet-draped estates and their heads.

Under the Barmakid viziers, the Abbasid caliphate and Islamic culture more broadly experienced one of the most significant periods of flourishing in their long history. The fall of the family and of Ja'far ibn Yahya closed another chapter—but certainly not the last—in the making of Islamic civilization and the continued blending of eastern elements into the political body created by the Arab caliphs.

The wise, generous, and courageous Ja'far ibn Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki remembered in One Thousand and One Nights may be as much a creation of popular imagination as the wicked vizier in The Thief of Bagdad and Disney's Aladdin. Even so, perhaps we can place some trust in the wisdom of the old crowds and their capacity to convey the faintest trace of a forgotten historical reality: the events of the ninth century and the echoes of the Barmakids' fall. Perhaps that memory deserves no less weight than the imposing but gossip-laden volumes of al-Tabari and his peers.

Ancient ethnic enmity, forbidden love, or a servant's power cut down by his master: we may never know the historical truth behind the fall of Ja'far ibn Yahya and the Barmakids. If, in our desperate search for a solid explanation, we must point an accusing finger at the family itself—rich as Croesus, dressed in silks of rare beauty, and cushioned in carpets up to their noses—we might at least accuse them of greed and desire, arrogance and the illusion of permanence.

And that, as any novice monk in forgotten Bactria could tell you, is the seed of every calamity.