AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Jafaar aladin9/10/2023 ![]() He was the one we all loved to hate, and with good reason. That's pretty impressive for a guy who didn't even have a talking parrot to help him out.When Aladdin first released in 1992, Jafar became a classic villain right away. The ideas and methods they helped import from India and elsewhere made the Middle East a center of scholarship throughout the Middle Ages, and those ideas eventually spread to Europe and helped spark the Renaissance. Some historians say it's much more likely that the Barmakids, with their enormous wealth and large private army, gradually became a threat to the caliph's power - one he eventually dealt with in the most final manner available.īut their contributions to the spread of scientific knowledge, especially those of Ja'far ibn Yahya, had already been set in motion. But rumor is all we really have to go on the historical records aren't very clear, and Haroun el-Rashid had the entire Barmakid family executed in 803 CE, which is an extreme response to one man's affair, even with a princess. We can't be sure whether the real Ja'far was as - so to speak - audience-friendly as the version in the new live-action Aladdin movie, but at least Princess Abbasa, the caliph's sister, seems to have thought so rumor has it that an affair with the princess led to Ja'far's execution in 803 CE. And in many of those later stories, Ja'far also has a habit of trying to seduce or marry the princess - a plot point modern audiences probably recognize. He didn't become a sorceror and a villain until centuries later, as the stories gradually evolved. He solved murder mysteries (under the threat of execution if he missed the deadline), went on adventures, and provided valuable knowledge and advice. But unlike the version modern audiences know today, the earlist fictional versions of Ja'far were protagonists, not villains. The vizier Ja'far's influence was so great that both he and his caliph, Haroun el-Rashid, appeared, mentioned by name, in several of the stories in the Arabian Nights. That sounds like a minor thing today, but at the time, it was a major boost to communication, information, and scholarship - something like the effect the printing press would have centuries later. Ja'far convinced the caliph to build a paper mill in Baghdad, which gave the caliphate a ready source of paper. The conflict culminated in the Battle of Talas in modern-day Kazakhstan, where the Abbasids and their allies from the Tibetan Empire emerged victories - and with several Chinese prisoners of war, who eventually spilled the secret of papermaking. ![]() But in 751, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Chinese Tang Dynasty found themselves at odds over control of territory in Central Asia, along a key trade corridor known as the Silk Road. Chinese merchants sold small quantities, which turn up in archives across central Asia and the Middle East, but they refused to share the secret of its manufacture. Jafar as played by Naveen Andrews in 'Once Upon A Time' (Jack Rowand/ABC via Getty Images) Gettyīefore 751 CE, papermaking was a closely-guarded state secret of the Chinese Empire. ![]() Ja'far actively continued that family tradition, but today he is best known for his role in introducing the art and science of papermaking to Baghdad. Because the family still maintained close connections with Buddhist communities in Iran and India (after all, their conversion was very recent, and some members of the Abbasid court occasionally questioned its sincerity), they frequently invited scholars from those places to the Abbasid court in Baghdad, spreading knowledge and innovations in medicine, astronomy, and other sciences further north and west. Well-educated and influential, the Barmakids found themselves near the center of power under the Abbasid caliphate Ja'far's father before him had served as vizier, and two of his brothers governed Egypt and Damascus.Īnd several members of the family became well known patrons of scientists and scholars. The Barmakids had once been the leaders and administrators of two large monasteries in Balk, just north of Mazar-e Sharif, but various members of the family converted to Islam, at least officially, when Arab armies occupied the region starting around 651 CE. He had been born into a powerful family, the Barmakids, with deep roots in a region of Afghanistan once known for its Buddhist monasteries. Ja'far didn't rise to power out of nowhere.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |