The Tragedy Of The Baramika | Mufti Abu Layth

this in arabic what was called in damascus brahmkin this area is actually quite significant why and to understand that we have to step into a time machine and we have to go back approximately 1200 years okay so we do this area was given to a very it was one of many areas given to a very powerful family known as the brahmika okay which was plural

of burma now who are these people why are they so important and what led to the tragedy one of the greatest soul-shattering heart-piercing tragedies of islamic history it is known as nakbatul baramika the tragedy of the baramika

let's put these questions there to recite who are these people these people are of persian origin they emerge in very early islam in the umayyad era so let's say we're talking i don't know within a century after the prophet sallallahu alaihi these people emerge they are from that region the the kind of near east and there's this person called burma and he's not just an anybody he was a high priest for the zoroastrians

and had an esteemed position he used to look over several administrative affairs for the great temples including the great temple of the zoroastrians where they with the fire had not gone out for over a thousand years so this person varmak he they say during the umayyad maybe abdul malik's reign he embraces islam it all falls under islam so he becomes a muslim now he has he's somebody

of social standing a lot of people follow him you know especially his people think about it he's like this high priest and he maintains that kind of respect amongst his people especially the harassani you know the people of khorasan that part of let's say iran leading leaning east and then that afghanistan region those kind of places were called horizon these people historically had a great respect for him and they were very sophisticated because this was the just after the sassanid empire had

collapsed and if you recall in some of my our other lessons we've spoken about how even people like uh and when he wanted to expand his treasury and have a greater income for the caliphate he looked at the techniques adopted by the sassanids for the development and growth of wealth and he actually adopted those techniques and they were so these people were quite sophisticated they had a huge dynasty that lasted for so long and very wealthy so yeah so here he is now

he goes on keeps this he has children his son khalid goes on to become also a renowned figure yeah and some say him and his child yahya they play a role in the rising of the the the abbasids the abbas the abbasid dynasty when it wanted to overthrow the umayyads those of you that know we can cover that in a another lesson sometime that the opposites come from the from that's where they emerge from and there's a great figure that will have to

speak about him on some he's another known as abu muslim one of the most um outstanding powerful characters of islam who combines glory with tragedy but that's a a different story but with the rise of the abbasids are these people khalid uh al-burmaki and his son yahya al-baramaki they are there they're rising the abbasids take over they kill the umayyads this these people are important why because they have social standing and they the abbasids and these people

need them remember these are originally persian people farsi but they have huge followings they have a social sway they are like today you would say influences but they're not just like the just just do some kind of a uh i don't know like a monkey dance they what they do is they actually have wisdom as well and administrative strategies so the abbasids keep them close that's all cool this yahya al-baramaki he is quite close he's used they pick his brains for administrative structures how do we do

this how do we do that and things are going good things are going sweet now what happens in the house of panil abbas there is some dispute i will get into all of it but those of you that know how you know it begins with pure bloodshed with safar and then it goes on and then you've got mansoor and there's some stability and people say it's actually these people like khalid al-barmaki who advised mansoor to build baghdad and make that as is see this is the kind of input they're giving at an administrative level but then his son yahya is very close he takes care of in fact he becomes so

close he takes care of the caliph's children like his own so many of us have heard of haruna rashid the great legendary you know caliph in fact when you think of the islamic golden age haruna rashid comes to your mind the caliph from the story of the arabian nights a thousand and one nights that's haruna rashid so he grows up around yahya al-barmaki who's who's taking care of him and he's like a he's like an additional parent for him that's how close he is what happens is

mansoor had set the crown after him the caliphate to harun rashid's older brother i mean sorry after mansur there was mahdi but then mahdi had set it for you've got haroon's older brother hadi and then this is this is how it was said okay it was already said that first the elder brother is going to become king once he dies the younger brother is king this is how a lot of them were doing it tiga nothing you know no no real news there hardy becomes the caliph

fine it's already written in the program he decides after a little while to change it he says look i've got my younger brother he's only a young teenager after me it's gonna be him haruna rasheed ah i'm not really feeling him so yeah you know he's all right he's i guess is little you're all right bro but why don't i make my son the next caliph

you know that's the so he thinks yeah you know after all this is you know that's my blood i suppose my blood man my blood brother man but this is my son i'll make my son the caleb after me i'm going to change the the khalifa um allegiance because the allegiance is to me and after me to haruna rasheed no i'm going to change it to me after me my son

finds out and remember he's like the foster parent to to to haruna same thing right so this yahya albarmaki he's that tight with haruna she has so much love for his own son he has four sons he has his son is uh jaffar who is so close to harun rashid they've been brought up together yahya's wife the mother of jaffa also nurses and

breastfeeds haruna rasheed the caliph so they're like considered brothers this is how close they are his other son father his other son muhammad he's got he's got a bunch of sons and they all you know they're all young but for him even though he's come from this persian or he's that involved he feels this as an offense that wait a minute you are going against that and you're about to deprive haruna rasheed so he takes up arms he says

so he takes his sons with him he says we're going to set the record straight it's him then it's haruna rasheed takes his son he takes haruna rasheed with him who's young and remember he's been in and amongst royalty he's he's the front first guard the old guard he's got all the security he's got the armies as well he turns up and it's about to turn into something bloody and all bloody you bloody bloody you bloody blood and it's about to get old and hardy realizes you know what

this ain't going to work he says i make the mistake man i'm making the mistake so he says you know what my bad man what did i i deleted that oh sorry man how do we control z ctrl [Laughter]

this leads to some issues and then they pretty much just you know depose and remove hadi and they place haruna rasheed they say you know what this these kind of mistakes it's not too much so they say we have to they'll remove you man so they put haruna rasheed who was next anyway they they fast forward they go yeah take it to the next season so harun rashid but the problem is harun rashid is young he's what like i think he may have been 13 or something very young

and he's sitting on this throne and the kelly full kingdom is in its huge might let me give you an example of how huge the kingdom is right so i should have here so let me just bring this up so this is uh

this is a map of the uh right so this is a map of the kingdom that you can see that is relatively huge muslim spain is no longer part of it and we've discussed that in the past and west northwest africa isn't a part of it but look how vast that is you've got the entire middle east you've got reaching into horizon over there just you can see the outskirts of kabul and maybe some point that that's also part of it

and you can see right here going into bordering um eastern europe now here's a young teenager now he doesn't know what to do he doesn't know what to do so he says look he says to yahya al-baramaki you know you and remember this is who he used to call abbati used to call him basically

abbati in arabic is a nice way an endearing way of saying ya'abi dad because his own dad if you think about it would often be busy he wouldn't be around and yahiyah burma is the one who was always looking over him and he was this major he was like you could consider almost a very almost like the uh home minister or something like really significant so he says to yahya al-burmaki that dad he used to call him dad he says look please he says help me run this he says don't worry about it i got this

for you and he does he sets it up so wonderfully and now he's got even more rain he's got more control he sets up he sets and remember he's coming from a family of of of power affluence influence prosperity ministerial responsibilities people who right from the sassanid dynasty his family were this prestigious social and it's not just about you see it's not just about things like wealth it's about a mindset

you know people who have a certain way they they they have a story that we know how to deal with these things and then and so they do you see and this is what this person was he was coming with this mindset that we have always we come from this legacy of movers and shakers when it comes to world affairs and he handles it and he says to him don't you worry i've got this and this growth there is prosperity money is coming in they in fact the administrative administrative structures

are laid out by these people the house of burma came he has his children his some of his some are older than others jaffa is a very similar age to haruna rashid they grow up remember they're still young they are like the best of friends bff the bestest of friends here this is they're so tight i mean from when they've been growing up apart from actually having nursing from the same mother they used to call each other brother but

they were so it's not just calling each other brother like people can have brothers and not be so close to them they were so close they do everything together every everything you can name in fact they say even as as a young man now check this out haruna rasheed you know sometimes i don't know as some kind of humor he would have this cloak made which which it came with an arm like how the normal kind of gowns that you have but the gown was slightly large that two people could fit in it

and he used to wear it on one side and he would make jafar al-barmaki weary on the other side this one agape brotherly love so they would walk so this was the kind of this is the bond man the bond so you know that yeah the current arjuna so this is like that oh dharam so this this bond and they were and and they grow up and they mature into mature strong men

and java albarmaki is so he's not only so tight he's so close to harun rasheed he is an executive when it comes to matters of influence and affairs let me give you an example if if people had come to let's say the royal court and they needed stuff done even if it was so sensitive so there's a there's an incident where somebody one of the relatives of haruna rasheed comes and he'd come to ask for haruna

rasheed's daughter's hand for his son harun rasheed wasn't there jafar al-baramaki and he asks him what what's up and he says i came for this he says i've given it i've given it there's an incident where somebody comes with a certain debt they needed and it was to be paid by uh haruna rasheed was to pay them something so i've given it somebody comes for a contract they want

to make a particular contract and acquit on a huge stat state level with when it's to do with a huge amount of land and a huge he says i've done it this and you know when haruna rasheed would come back so let's say on this incident where he has uh agreed to marrying his daughter off to someone he came back and he he finds out that do you know what harun rasheed's reaction would be he'd be so happy he'd be like man that is exactly how i would have i'm so glad you handled it this is how he had this

this admiration for and these people the uh jaffar al-baramaki father his brother these people weren't just like your kind of oh just people in a position of power they were incredibly enchanting and eloquent and so um so capable to give you an example of his knowledge jafar al-baramaki is a student of abu yusuf the great hanafi faki the student of abu hanifah his

student is jafar burmaki that's a and you know how eloquent they were in arabic incredibly eloquent they knew the poetry of jahiliyyah they knew the poetry of different arabs they even their own speech they would their own poems were so eloquent and then another thing they were known for was spending wealth now people may be critical of them but they used to give you know this is the thing people of heart because they kind of felt that

maybe you know they had this legacy of coming of being from money that so many people would come to them and they would if they found that let's say there was a person having an issue with wealth they would you know if he was asking for money they would they would give him money if they were going and they found somebody that was struggling they would say pay him give him some money you know in fact there's a there's a story some of the historians narrate they say that you know this person was absolutely disheveled

somebody could say like almost homeless selling peanuts and he's going and jehovah al-burmaki is at one of his royal courts and you can see from a distance this guy uh going approaching people on the road trying to sell them some peanuts and some fool so more fool um those of you that know arabic which it is so and he's trying to sell it and you know some people not buying here and he's just struggling and he's just sitting there in the heat and and it becomes evening

and he's just sitting there looking so miserable and jafar al-baramaki sees him he thinks wasn't that guy there earlier on so they they're about to leave their kind of palace and he's about to leave and he says to him he says go bring that guy to me so they bring him and he says uh hmm he asks him what are you doing and he says uh you know i'm just trying to sell this some and he asked him what's your story man he says look you know he's really struggling he's got no money at all he says he'd come here to make some money

this is the only thing he had to sell and uh you know and it's just basically an absolute sub story and he says well how many peanuts have you got and he says well you know i've got this bike so he says to his he has this these kind of um you could say soldiers and people like that with him a certain amount he says okay he says uh he says you see these people he tells them i want he says he says guys he says buy a peanut off

him everyone for a gold piece so this guy the peanut guy he's like what so he he's so they're all buying a this fool one each the arabic word for fool is peanut with uh a gold piece each and this guy's got a bunch of gold pieces at the end so he's selling he's selling and then he asks him so they all buy and he's got like a few left in the bag he says he says all done and he says i've got just

three four whatever and he says you buy one buy one and then he has just two left in there no sorry he has just one no he finishes he says yeah it's all finished and then he says ah there's just one one peanut i don't see this one so jeff says hand it to me cheese guy what is this one man he gets the peanut and and he breaks it in half

and he has his wife with him he says to her that buy this peanut of him this half he says but you have to buy with because right now he's got all the money he's made he's put it in this kind of he's got this kind of kind of like a a basket thing where he's put all these gold pieces he says but its price is double that basket buy off him

so his wife says okay she says fine she said i'll buy the price is double that basket she gives it so this peanut guy is like yeah guess that was handle what is going on and so when she gives him all that extra just double the price or whatever all these gold pieces he had she doubles it he then says to him that he says that and this remaining half he says you can take he tells this guy he says give him double everything he has now that's the price of this and he

says and this this was this last the he says this was the sovereignty of this peanut [Laughter] the authority if you like the amara and this person is so he is he cannot believe what has happened his life turns around this this trader this peanut man and we're going to come back to him as well in a moment so these are these people the bahamika so eloquent

so spending and there's so many stories of them like this and i'm not saying they were angels i'm sure they power you know power corrupts i guess and you know it corrupts the best of people and i'm sure they you know they too would have had many flaws and they had a lot of wealth and to the extent that they say once harun rasheed was traveling and and and he saw when he was going to hajj and he would he would ask oh that's such an amazing place who does that belong to so that

belongs to brahmika but this is how tight they were and that area in damascus that i was speaking about that maktabat al-hidra jawazat in brahmika is named brahamika because the baramika had certain houses there and it was named after them and you see our rooner rasheed has a sister abbasa she is set to marry jaffa this is how close they are they are seen as you know we are

just one you know like this man like this and dusty those history remains uncertain what was the exact poison that leaked into the veins of haruna

rasheed many have speculated diverse theories but what we know [Music] is as though we with the flash of a light or the blinking of an eye overnight haruna rasheed one day becomes so poisoned immediately with the thought of the brahmika

he becomes so paranoid so instantly that one evening he gathers his special few gods and he tells them that i need you to bring me a certain amount of gods just very secretly bring them to me now and they do and he tells them at nightfall we are to make a special raid and it will be scattered it will be

diverse some of you have to set off now to be in a different city and some of you have to be here and and this whole and they're they're like okay what's going on and he says and we are to arrest his dad his stepdad or who he calls dad he's not his steplad but he calls him dad

his brother who he calls brother father al-baramaki and all the key muhammad al-but all the key barami we are to arrest and he says and all the other significant ones he says don't arrest them imminently kill them

at the fall of night the tables are so swiftly turned not a single soul caught wind of what is happening these people are dragged in they don't understand all of a sudden some people turn up they ask them oh can you come with us there's someone they're taken into a rest they don't understand what the hell is going on they brought in front of

haruna rasheed and he sends initially he initially puts them in a kind of holding cell and yahiya the father realizes that this is something this is something truly dark and they say that his son asks him that look he says he says dad what's going on that you know we after all that why why why have they put us in these rags and locked us in here and they say he said that

i perhaps he says he says maybe we've wronged a soul and a da'wah that reached the heavens rafalla that we were negligent of it yet allah is never negligent

and he says to them i did always warn you [Laughter] and they say that what in fact is a very famous poem and we can discuss that in another session as well we he says that this that basically i mean he says the first line of it that

yesterday says i did always advise you to always be super vigilant but you know alas they only realize once it's too late haruna rasheed has jaffa brought in front of him his own brother this person who he would share that thought with would walk side by side with who would marry his own daughter without and he'd be happy this person who he would uh he was his own sister abbas i was due to

marry this is to this extent this person jafar al-baramaki he has him brought and has him executed he says he turns away from him and he tells his person he he gives him the signal and then says bring him bring me his head

and in that night they say over a thousand of the brahmika were massacred [Laughter] you know this what's that purity

you know one of the greatest tales of betrayal and tragedy this night that in which everything changes for the entire abbasid dynasty nobody truly knows what was it that triggered haruna rasheed people speculate oh it was they had started to gain too much power and it occurred to him some people say

no it was they had insulted him and he came to realize some historians have said oh because he was going to marry abbas other sister all of a sudden occurred to him how can a persian marry my sister who's an arab some people say oh it was to do with the sons because haruna rasheed his main sons who were next in to be the caliph was muhammad al-amin and then there was there was and they say that some of them were siding with moon because his mother was persian and there's all these speculations but none of these incidents

were new there was nothing that was suddenly happened people say oh he squandered they squandered so much wealth that he it he'd got envious that how have they got all this power and position and some people had said but nothing had happened just now you see the power of waswasa see suspicion and paranoia

and it shocked the entire muslim abbasid world because these people were de facto the rulers and they were whether they i'm sure they were riddled with faults but their generosity had touched the hearts of thousands upon thousands haruna rasheed announced that anybody mourning their death is to be put to death so it became forbidden to mourn them or say a poem in

dedication to them he had the body of jaffa crucified and hung on a bridge outside of baghdad allah you see when the poison of hatred and toxicity runs deep in the veins insane can drop and stoop solo

insane and sun can stoop so low and these are the tragedies they say that you know so many people looked at jaffa those of you that know the great scholar sufyan ibn ayana used to live in makkah was slightly junior to imam malik ja'afar would give him a daily stipend some say of a thousand the nuts and that's why sufyan ibn ayena was so

wealthy because he didn't need to work they say when he heard of jaffa's death he cried sufyan ibn yena and he said that allah take care of his akhirah the way he took care of maitomya because this is there was so many people and in fact there's an incident that they say

they say that a person there's some bedouin arab who would come once a year he would come to see jaffa and what he would do is say a poem and based on that poem jaffa would give him a thousand dinars and and they say that he um he came after he came but he didn't realize of this incident he didn't know about the nakba the tragedy of the baramika and he turned up and he saw jaffar's body crucified hanging on the bridge and they say

he used to rely on that thousand dinars as his yearly income to to feed his family he used to survive the whole year based on that one uh giving of jaffa al-baramaki and they say he just cried and cried even though it was prohibited to cry for any of the baramika he cried and and he they say he fell asleep just sitting they didn't know what to do and in his dream he saw jafar al-baramaki

and and he says to him oh he says he says oh i came to i brought my poem and then jaffa says to him uh read it to me so he reads it and he says that you know that uh what he reads it and and and jafar says wow and then he says you know he says you would pay me every year and i would rely on that money and then jaffa says to him he says go to basra in such and such market there will be a trader

go to him and tell him to pay you tell him i sent you and tell him by the sovereignty of that peanut and this person goes to basra and he does nothing he turns up to this marketplace and he sees this person and then he tells him and the person pays him and then he says you know what he is 500 on top from me and he says wow he says he says you know what he says but i didn't get this sovereignty of the peanut thing please explain it and then he tells him that story he says you know once i came to baghdad and i was

homeless and i was like this and this whole story of when he says and he gave me so much i managed to come and set myself up and i've got such a lucrative trade now i'm not trying to these stories are all documented i'm not trying to say these people were angels or these people were some kind of i'm sure in many ways they had they were saints and sinners just like everyone but what haruna rashid did

was truly a barbaric tragedy the cries of this travesty did not go unnoticed you know they say that the da'wah muslim reaches allah haruna rasheed what he set into motion unquestionably derailed his entire destiny it was such a powerful dynasty i mean this was it it was the heyday of islam the golden era of islam is this era

you know when all the books are getting translated and the beta hikmah after him ameen for a short while and then moon fighting i mean for and we can cover that in another lesson sometime the travesty in that and then some stability and then after that there is no real abbasids it's they still stay by name but everything breaks everything the the glory is gone it's uh certain dynasties just rule from the shadows the boyheads and the other people and and then you'll get all all of the others that will come and there is no real the

fatamine rise from egypt and the whole thing what he had done began with some poison being whispered and even if we don't know what that poison is we know that you see giving your ear to this waswasa and acting out with barbarism and this brutality is never will never have its fruits and and this is one of the tales that we that we find you know that

it's says that he says that does you know the caravan must still go on i guess that we've gone through this these flower gardens with with pain in the heart and and it's it's something which ties straight back to

what we were taking a look at each tiny stay away from this suspicion this paranoia because the muslim dynasty if you like this golden era of islam never was regained in that capacity ever again haruna rasheed did manage to kill he did manage to kill the brahmika and destroy and remove their name eradicate their name from muslim history or at least from participatory history

in any way so anybody who did stay alive they had no real role in islam or its history after that from the household of burma he did manage to do that but what but by doing so in acting out on these suspicions or this poison that he had he derailed not only an entire civilization yet to come but it haunted him for the rest of his life you know he didn't this thing that he um that he was somehow okay with this

you're never okay with any kind of any truly wrong doing that you do you are never okay with it it is buried into your soul this it bolsters the shadow that you your inner demons they they haunt you for the rest of your life and i think there's such powerful lessons that we can always take and in our you know in our history there's so many and i thought let me share this with you because it's one of these the tragedy of the household

of parmaka the baramika ya so and how friendship can switch and turn to such toxic venomous adversity and not only ruin a person's own soul but also go on to dislodge the the the trajectory of civilization