Ahmad Fanakati
Kublai Khan's finance minister
Ahmad Fanākatī, alternatively rendered as Ahmad Banākatī (Persian: احمد فناکتی / احمد بناکتی; simplified Chinese: 阿合马; traditional Chinese: 阿合馬; pinyin: Āhémǎ; before 1242 — 10 April 1282) was a Persian Muslim from the Qara Khitai (Western Liao dynasty) who served as chancellor and finance minister of the Yuan dynasty during Kublai's reign. He became known as a chief minister under Kublai and is credited with successfully establishing the financial system of the Yuan dynasty. He was considered to be a "villainous minister" in dynastic histories because of his perceived corruption.
Life and career
Ahmad Fanākatī came from Fanākat (or Banākat), a town on the upper Syr Darya in Central Asia, under the rule of the Qara Khitai until they were conquered by the Mongol Empire.
Ahmad obtained employment under Kublai through Empress Jamui Khatun, who had known him before her marriage. To her court, he was originally attached but was already in high financial office in 1264.
Trusted by Chabi Khatun, Kublai's favorite wife, Ahmad was entrusted with state finances in 1262. He was successful in managing the financial affairs of Northern China and brought huge tax revenues to Kublai's new government. In 1270, he assumed the full power of the new financial department known as the Department of State Affairs (Shangshu Sheng), which had equal status with the administrative department known as the Central Secretariat (Zhongshu Sheng). After the conquest of the Song dynasty in 1276, he entered the financial matters of Southern China.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ahmad Fanakati” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.