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Abū Ḥafṣ ՙUmar al-Kirmānī and the rise of the Barmakids

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

C. Edmund Bosworth
C. Edmund Bosworth
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Abū Ḥafṣ al-Kirmānī is known mainly from al-Ṭabarī as a rāwī for events in the caliphates of Mūsā al-Hādī and Hārūn al-Rashīd; from al-Jahshiyārī as a rāwī for an anecdote concerning al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā al-Barmakī (and probably for other, unattributed items of information); and from the mention of him as 'Umar [b.] al-Azraq al-Kirmānī, author of a book called the Akhbār al-Barāmika wa-faḍā'iluhum (‘Historical accounts of the Barmakid family and their merits’) by Ibn ‘Asākir in his great biographical dictionary of the leading figures and scholars associated with his native city of Damascus, citing him as an authority on Khālid b. Barmak's early close connexions with the ‘Abbāsid Imāms Muḥammad b. ‘Alī b. ‘Abd Allāh b. al-'Abbās and his son Ibrāhīm.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 268 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1994

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References

1 Ta'rīkh, ed. Leiden, III, 572–3, 574–5, 603, 613, 683.

2 Kitāb al-Wuzarā' wa'l-kuttāb, ed. 'Allāh, Abdal-Ṣāwī, (Baghdad, 1357/1938), 208Google Scholar = ed. al-Saqqā, Muṣṭafā, al-Abyārī, Ibrāhīm and ‘al-Ḥafīz, AbdShaiabī, (2nd edition, Cairo, 1401/1980), 258Google Scholar.

3 Ta'rīkh Dimashq, facsimile text al-Bashīr, Dār (Amman, 1988), V, 413Google Scholar (kindly communicated to me by Dr. Lawrence I. Conrad); Tahdhīb Ta'rīkh Dimashq, epitomised and ed. ‘Badrān, Abd al-Qādir (Beirut, 1399/1979), V, 31–2Google Scholar. For other, less important known quotations from al-Kirmānī, see Bouvat, L., Les Barmécides d'après les historiens arabes et persons (Paris, 1912) ( = RMM, XX, 1912), 6, 19Google Scholar.

4 al-Ṭabarī, III, 572–3 (on Yaḥyā b. Khālid's fears of violence at the hands of al-Hādī, because of his links with the caliph's brother and rival al-Rashīd, and al-Hādlī's attempts to divert the succession from al-Rashid to his own son Ja'far), 603 (on the exact details of the births of the future caliphs Muḥammad al-Amīn and ‘Abd Allāh al-Ma'mūn). Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā was also an informant for Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī on Barmakid family history, see ibid., III, 575. Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā was a survivor; although mulcted of 700,000 dirhams and imprisoned until al-Amīn liberated him on his accession, he subsequently headed the dīwān al-zimām for the new caliph, but went over to al-Ma'mūn during the civil war. See al-Jahshiyārī, , ed. Baghdad, 148, 186, 192, 234–5 = ed. Cairo, 193, 234, 241, 297–8;Google Scholar al-Ṭabarī, III, 680, 684; and cf. Sourdel, D., Le vizirat §abbāside de 749 à 936 (132 à 324 de I'Hégire) (Damascus, 1959–1960), I, 144, 152, 156Google Scholar.

5 al-Ṭabarī, III, 575 (on the fears of al-Rashīd' mother al-Khayzurān for the safety of her son).

6 al-Jahshiyārī, ed. Baghdad, 58 = ed. Cairo, 88, and al-Jāḥiz, , Kitāb al-Hayawān, ed. ‘al-Salām, AbdHārūn, Muḥammad (Cairo, 1357–64/1938–1945), IV, 423–4Google Scholar (on Khālid b. Barmak's perspicacity, shown during the military campaigning in Persia by the ‘Abbāsid general Qaḥṭaba b. Shabīb, see below, p. 273).

7 For a review of this, see Bosworth, C. E., in JSS, XXXV, 1989, 164–6Google Scholar. The riwāyas on the Barmakids are at pp. 12–17.

8 Frankfurt, 1986–8, 10 vols. plus index vol.

9 Damascus, 1408–9/1988–9, 10 vols. 1 am grateful to Dr. David Morray of University College, Dublin, for giving me access to both this and the facsimile edition, neither of which is as yet widely available in British libraries.

10 A mildly puzzling point is that ‘Abbās at two points in his book gives al-Kirmānī' patronymic as ‘Abū Ja'far’ (pp. 9, 533), which one can only take as an uncorrected lapsus calami, since the correct kunya of ‘Abū Ḥafṣ’ (the normal one in any case to accompany the ism of ‘Umar) is explicitly given by al-Ṭabarī and Ibn al-‘Adīm on several occasions (al-Jahshiyārī does not give a patronymic).

11 Ta'rīkh, III, 320.

12 cf. ibid., III, 743–7.

13 Bulliet, R. W., ‘Naw Bahār and the survival of Iranian Buddhism’, Iran, JBIPS, XIV, 1976, 144–5Google Scholar, has drawn attention to the ancient prestige and regional influence in Khurasan and Transoxania of the pramukhas of the Balkh Naw Bāhar monastery as a possible factor in the rise to power of the Muslim Barmakids during the second/eighth-century eastern Islamic world. But the Barmakids clearly rose to fame in Islam as novi homines, whatever power and glory they may have enjoyed in pre-Islamic times on the eastern Iranian borderlands, and al-Kirmānī's riwāya (below, no. 1) that Barmak reached the caliph Hishām in a massed party of shākiriyya (for the significance of this term, see below, pp. 278–9) indicates a distinctly humble and servile initial appearance, in fact as a mawlā. in Islamic society.

14 See on him, below, p. 279.

15 An early connexion of Khālid with Muḥammad b. ‘Alī and then Ibrāhīm is hinted at in later sources (e.g. al-Abbār, Ibn, I'tāb al-kuttāb, ed. Ṣāliḥ, al-Ashtar, Damascus, 1380/1961, 65)Google Scholar, but with no firm details.

16 cf. EI (2nd edition), art. ‘al-Barāmika’ (Sourdel, D.)Google Scholar.

17 cf. al-Mulk, Nizām, Siyāsat-nāma, ed. H., Darke, Tehran (1340/1962, 219)Google Scholar, § 41.34, English tr. idem, The book of government for kings (2nd edition, London, 1978), 174Google Scholar.

18 Following here Bailey's, H. W. tracing back via Bactrian of the Arabic version of the title to the Sanskrit pramukha, found in the Khotanese texts for the head of a Buddhist vihāra or monastery;Google Scholarsee his ‘Iranica,’ BSOS, XXI, 1943–1946, 2Google Scholar.

19 See EI (2nd edition), art. s.v. (Bosworth, )Google Scholar.

20 Mukhtaṣar Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. Goeje, M. J. de (Leiden, 1885), 323–4Google Scholar, French tr. Massé, H., Abrégé du livre des pays (Damascus, 1973), 383–5;Google Scholar cf. Bulliet, op. cit., 143–4.

21 Ta'rīkh Dimashq, facs. text, v, 413 = Ibn ‘Asākir, Tahdhīb, V, 3. That Naw Bahār had been a lire temple and its custodians therefore Zoroastrians, was a gratuitous and erroneous assumption on the part of most Muslim historians, cf. Barthold and Sourdel, op. cit.

22 Mukhtaṣar Kitāb al-Buldān, 324, tr. 384.

23 al-Kirmānī' information that it was Maslama' infertility which Barmak was able to cure is an additional detail amplifying the mention of this cure in al-Ṭabarī, II, 1181.

24 These raids began as early as 32/653 when al-Aḥnaf b. Qays al-Tamīmī exacted tribute from the city, and a second raid under either Qays b. ai-Haytham or ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Samura followed in 43/663–4; it was on one of these raids that the Naw Bāhar shrine was allegedly despoiled by the Arabs. Balkh and Ṭukhāristān were nevertheless not fully subdued until the time of Qutayba. See Gibb, H. A. R., The Arab conquests in Central Asia (London, 1923), 16, 31–2;Google ScholarSchwarz, P., ‘Bemerkungen zu den arabischen Nachrichten fiber Balkh’, Oriental studies in honour of Cursetji Erachji Pavry, ed. Val, DasturPavry, Cursetji (London, 1933), 434–43Google Scholar.

25 Ta'rīkh Dimashq, V, 413, and Tahdhīb, V, 32, also cited by Khallikān, Ibn, Wafayāt al-a'yān, ed. Iḥsān, ‘Abbās, (Beirut, 1968–1972), I, 332, English tr. M. G. de Slane (Paris, 1842–71), I, 306Google Scholar.

26 al-Ṭabarī, , II, 840; al-Kirāanī, , in Shadharāt min kutub mafqūda, 14 (below, p. 276)Google Scholar. Lassner, Jacob notes, in his The shaping of ‘Abbāsid rule (Princeton, 1980), 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that these suckling arrangements illustrate the close links forged by the ‘Abbāsids with their supporters, the old revolutionaries. Similar arrangements apparently continued in the next generation. The mother of al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā b. Khālid, Zaynab bt. Munīr, was said to have suckled the infant al-Rashīd, whilst the latter' mother al-Khayzurān gave milk to al-Faḍl; see al-Ṭabarī, , III, 599, and Abbott, Nabia, Two queens of Baghdad, mother and wife of Harun al-Rashid (Chicago, 1946), 24Google Scholar, noting the possibility that this alleged foster-relationship of al-Rashīd and al-Faḍl b. Yaḥyā may have been a later invention of pro-Barmakid writers to heighten the atrociousness of the nakba.

27 ‘Kaḥḥāla, Urnar Riḍā, A‘lām al-nisā’ (Damascus, 1379/1959), II, 235–6Google Scholar.

28 al-Ṭabarī, loc. cit.

29 ibid., II, 1964; anon., Akhbār al-dawla al-'abbāsiyya, wa-fīhi akhbār al-‘Abbās wa-waladihi, ed. ‘al-‘Azīz, Abdal-Dūrī, and al-Jabbār, Abdal-Muṭṭalibī, (Beirut, 1971), 240Google Scholar.

30 ibid., 219–20; al-Kirmānī, , in Shadharāt, 12 (below, pp. 274–5)Google Scholar. Cf. 'ūdī, al-Mas. Murūj al-dhahab, ed. Barbier, C. A.Meynard, de and Pavet, Courteille, de (Paris, 1861–77)Google Scholar = ed. And French tr. Pellat, Ch. (Paris and Beirut, 1962–89), § 2285: Khālid is linked with Qaḥṭaba (see below) as a prominent da'ī, but the author's detailed consideration of these events was given in his (now lost) Akhbār al-zamān and his Kitāb al-AwsaṭGoogle Scholar.

31 cf. Sharon, Moshe, Black banners from the East, II: Revolt, the social and military aspects of the ‘Abbāsid Revolution (Jerusalem, 1992), 173–4Google Scholar.

32 al-Ṭabarī, II, 2004 ff.

33 Akhbār, 333; also in anon., Ta'rīh al-Khulafā’ (from the opening years of the fifth/eleventh century?), facsimile edition Gryaznevich, P. A. (Moscow, 1967, f. 274b)Google Scholar. (On t he relationship of these two sources, see Daniel, E., ‘The anonymous “History of the ‘Abbāsid family” and its place in Islamic history’, IJMES, XIV, 1982, 419–34Google Scholar. and Sharon, , Black banners from the East, [I]: The establishment of the ‘Abbāsid state-incubation of a revolt, Jerusalem 1983, 233–6.)Google Scholar Cf. also idem, Black banners from the East, II, 197. The obedience of the Ispahbadh (sc. the Dābūyid ruler in Sāri, Khūrshīd (II) b. Dādhburzmihr) was not long–lasting, and only after his death in 144/761 was Ṭabaristān brought under Arab-Muslim control; see Madelung, W., in The Cambridge history of Iran, IV: From the Arab invasion to the Saljuqs, ed. R. N., Frye (Cambridge, 1975), 198–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 al-Ṭabarī, III, 5; Akhbār al-dawla al-'abbãsiyva, 349. Cf. Bouvat, , Les Barmécides, 37Google Scholar.

35 Akhbār al-dawla al-'abbāsiyya, 279. Cf. Sharon, , op. cit., 97–103, 272–3Google Scholar.

36 al-Jahshiyārī, ed. Baghdad, 58 = ed. Cairo, 87; al-Ya'qūbī, , Ta'rīkh, ed. Houtsma, M. Th. (Leiden, 1883), II, 410Google Scholar. Cf. Sharon, op. cit., 173–4, 202.

37 The shaping of ‘Abbāsid rule, 99, 104–5.

38 al-Ṭabarī, , III, 21, 72, 75, 81, 84; Akhbār al-dawla al-'abbāsiyya, 378. Cf. Bouvat, , op. cit., 38–9: Sourdel, , Le vizirat 'abbāside, I, 71–3Google Scholar.

39 cf. Bouvat, ibid., 39–41; Sourdel, op. cit., I, 75–8.