Babak al-Khurrami

Babak al-Khurrami. Al-Tabari says that al-Mu'tasim killed Babak al-Khurrami, and that al-Afshin brought him to al-Mu'tasim in 223 AH. ^{2 3}

Ibn al-Nadim relates from Waqid ibn Amr al-Tamimi a report on the beginning of his affair. His father was a plasterer from al-Mada'in who went to the frontier of Azerbaijan and married Babak's mother, then was killed on a journey to Gilan. Babak joined al-Shibl ibn al-Mangidh al-Azdi, then Muhammad ibn al-Rawwad al-Azdi at Tabriz for about two years, then returned at the age of eighteen. ⁴

The same report says that the wife of Javidan ibn Sahrak gathered her husband's army to Babak after his death, and spread that the soul of Javidan had entered his body. This is Ibn al-Nadim's report from Waqid, and it is not confirmed from another source in the data. ⁴

Babak was the head of the Khurrami movement, which drew partly on Mazdakism and used particularly violent methods. His name is an Arabicised form of an Iranian name. According to Ibn al-Nadim, his father was an oil-merchant from al-Mada'in, or by another account a descendant of Abu Muslim, and Babak followed an obscure trade in Adharbayjan. He was noticed by Diawidhan b. Sahl, head of the Khurramis, who died soon afterwards; Babak then claimed that Diawidhan's spirit had entered him. He began to stir the people of al-Badhdh, a place no longer extant in the mountains of Arran near the Araxes. His operations are dated to about 201/816-7, and were assisted by the rebel schemes of Hatim b. Harthama, governor of Armenia, and by the difficulties in the province that followed al-Ma'mun's return. ⁵

Al-Ma'mun sent Yahya b. Mu'adh against him in 204/819-20, and other commanders later failed as well. By the end of al-Ma'mun's caliphate the revolt had reached the Jibal. Al-Mu'tasim placed al-Afshin in charge in 220/835. Al-Afshin rebuilt the fortresses on the al-Badhdh road that Babak had destroyed, and, despite a defeat that Bugha the Elder suffered at Hashtad-Sar, took a rebel leader, Tarkhan. Reinforced by troops under Djafar al-Khayyat and by the volunteers of Abu Dulaf, he set up a camp in 222/837 from which he harassed the fortress of al-Badhdh. The fortress was taken and sacked on 9 Ramadan 222 (15 August 837) by troops from Farghana. Babak fled and was handed over to al-Afshin by the Armenian elder Sahl b. Sunbat, with whom he had taken refuge. He reached Samarra on 3 Safar 223 (4 January 838). Al-Mu'tasim had him paraded on an elephant and executed with extreme cruelty, and his body was left hanging on the gallows. ¹

The capture and execution did not end the Khurrami movement, which is attested through the third/ninth century. The followers of the former rebel, who called themselves the Babakiyya, were still at al-Badhdh in the fifth/eleventh century, waiting for the Mahdi and practising certain special rites. ⁶