Jafar ibn Yahya
Jafar ibn Yahya was the younger son of the vizier Yahya the Barmakid, the companion of Harun al-Rashid's nights and the holder of his seal, the Jafar of the Arabian Nights who walks the streets of Baghdad in disguise beside the caliph, and the man Harun had beheaded on the night of 29 January 803 and displayed in three pieces on the bridges of the city, which was the end of the Barmakids and, in the memory of the Muslim world, the end of the golden age. He was born in 767 and grew up in the palace with Harun, who was a year older, and when Harun became caliph in 786 and Yahya vizier, Jafar had the seal, the postal service, the mint and the guard, and was for a time governor of Egypt, Khurasan and Syria, where he pacified the tribal feuds of Damascus. He was the most cultivated man of the court, a calligrapher, a patron of the translators, the friend of the court's most scandalous poet, the founder of the paper industry in Baghdad according to one tradition, and the host of the caliph's drinking parties, which is why the storytellers made him the caliph's shadow. He built the palace on the east bank that became the caliphs' own after his death. His brother Fadl was the soldier and administrator and Jafar the courtier, and Harun's mother is said to have preferred the one and Harun the other. The chroniclers' explanations for the night at Anbar begin with the story that Harun, wanting Jafar and his sister Abbasa at the same table, married them on condition the marriage was never consummated, and that it was, and a child hidden in Mecca. Al-Tabari repeats it and doubts it. Others say Jafar had released an Alid prisoner the caliph had put in his charge, or that the family's wealth and independence had become intolerable, or that Harun, who had been governed since boyhood, decided at forty to govern. The executioner Masrur was sent to Jafar's house that night with the caliph's order; Jafar asked to be allowed to see Harun and was refused, and his head was taken back to the palace and his body hung on the bridges for a year before it was burned. The name Barmakid became a word for generosity and for ruin, and the Barmecide feast of the Nights, a banquet of empty dishes, took it.
- Lived: 767 CE – 803 CE
- Nationality: Persian
- Roles: vizier, courtier
