Wazir

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WAZIR

In medieval Muslim society, the wazir (Per., vazir) was the prime minister who administered the central government for the caliph. The term wazir occurs in the Qur˒an once (25:35), where it has the meaning of "helper"—a meaning that is loosely applied to political assistants in the early Umayyad period (661–750). The Islamic office of wazir developed in the early Abbasid Age (750–1258), probably during the reign of Caliph al-Mahdi (775–785). Historians believe the office evolved out of the administrative functions of the chief scribal secretary (katib) whose duties, functions, and authority were well established under the Byzantine and Sassanian governments that fell in part or in total, respectively, to Muslim rule in the seventh century. Thus, some of the earliest figures to serve in this important and powerful post in Baghdad and other capitals of government established by the Abbasid caliphs were chief secretaries trained under non-Muslim governments who converted to Islam and continued to apply their skills under the new Muslim rulers.

A famous line of early wazirs came from the Barmakid family, originally affiliated with a Buddhist temple in Balkh (Bactria) in Central Asia. A patriarch of the Barmakid family, Khalid ibn Barmak, joined the Abbasid revolution against the Umayyad caliphate in the mid-eighth century, and he and his son and descendants served as wazirs to Abbasid caliphs for the next few decades. The main duty of the wazir was to run the government for the caliph on a day-to-day basis. As the complexity and size of the central government grew in the eighth century and thereafter, so did the duties and executive power of the wazir. Included among these duties was supervision over several subdivisions of administrative government (sing. wizara), such as the military, treasury, and post. The actual power of the wazir began to diminish in the late ninth century, when military warlords in Central Asia (many of whom accepted Islam) seized control of the Islamic lands beyond Baghdad and its immediate surroundings in Iraq. In later times the term wazir came also to mean an advisor to a ruler.