and six gates, and extending for half a parasang. He also mentions a castle and a mosque. A large number of Sanskrit medical, pharmacological, and toxicological texts were translated into Arabic under the patronage of Khalid, the vizier of Al-Mansur. Khalid was the son of a chief priest of a Buddhist monastery. Some of the family were killed when the Arabs captured Balkh; others including Khalid survived by converting to Islam. They would later come to be known as the Barmakids of Baghdad. Judaism An ancient Jewish community existed in Balkh as recorded by the Arab historian Al-Maqrizi who wrote that the community was established by the transfer of Jews to Balkh by the Assyrian King Sennacherib. A Bāb al-Yahūd (Gate of Jews) and al-Yahūdiyya (Jewish town) in Balkh is attested to by Arab geographers. Muslim tradition stated that the prophet Jeremiah fled to Balkh and that Ezekiel was buried there. This Jewish community was noted in the eleventh century as the Jews of the city were forced to maintain a garden for the Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni for which they paid a tax of 500 dirhems. According to Jewish oral history, Timur gave the Jews of Balkh a city quarter of their own with a gate to close it. The Jewish community in Balkh was reported as late as the nineteenth century where Jews still resided in a special quarter of the city. The famed Jewish exegete Hiwi al-Balkhi was from Balkh. Arab conquest At the time of the Islamic conquest of Persia in the 7th century, however, Balkh had provided an outpost of resistance and a safe haven for the Persian emperor Yazdegerd III who fled there from the armies of Umar. Later, in the 9th century, during the reign of Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar, Islam became firmly rooted in the local population. Arabs occupied Persia in 642 (during the Caliphate of Uthman, 644–656 AD). Attracted by the grandeur and wealth of Balkh, they attacked it in 645 AD. It was only in 653 when Arab commander al-Ahnaf raided the town again and compelled it to pay tribute. The Arab hold over the town, however, remained tenuous. The area was brought under Arab control only after it was reconquered by Muawiya in 663 AD. Prof. Upasak describes the effect of this conquest in these words: "The Arabs plundered the town and killed the people indiscriminately. It is said