Born: Unknown (circa 800 CE), Iran (assumed)
Died: 838 CE
Country most active: Iran
Also known as: Bānu Xorramdin
This biography was originally published in the World History Encyclopedia and was written by Joshua J. Mark. It is shared in line with the Encyclopedia’s policies under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Banu was the wife of the hero and freedom fighter Babak Khorramdin (d. 838 CE) who fought against the occupying forces of the Abbasid Caliphate. By the time Banu and her husband were active, the Arab Muslims had been in control of Persia for almost 200 years and yet Persian resistance to outside domination had not ceased. Banu and Babak led a resistance cell, striking at the Abbasids and then vanishing away, and were consistently successful. They were finally only captured by Abbasid authorities when they were betrayed by one of their own and, afterwards, executed.