The Barmakids are a medieval family whose dramas, involving kings from China, fire-eating ostriches, and illicit love affairs, unfold in this popular Persian compilation. The family acted as administrators at the major Buddhist centre of learning in pre-Islamic Afghanistan, and later became the chief advisors of the Islamicate caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Their stories were meant to entertain, but also teach a valuable lesson: that administrators at the highest echelons of political power should be kind and generous. The legacy of the Barmakid family lives on in the less-than-flattering depiction of evil Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin - a combination of the historical figure of Grand Vizier Jaʿfar al-Barmakī and an unnamed sorcerer in the original Aladdin story from the Thousand and One Nights. These portrayals of Jaʿfar revealing as much about their authors – their intentions and prejudice – as the character himself.
The Barmakid legacy continues in popular culture in the Islamic world and in western popular culture, amongst children and adults, largely thanks to the stories about them in the Arabian Nights (or One Thousand and One Nights). The Invisible East’s Arezou Azad and Pejman Firoozbakhsh and currently translating the Bodleian manuscript for future publication.
