Black Banners from the East - the story of the Abbasid Revolution (HT26)

The year is 750 AD, and the greatest conspiracy in history has reached fruition: Damascus has fallen. The Umayyads, rulers of the largest empire the world had ever seen, are massacred almost to a man. The new caliph, Al-Saffah (with his title meaning ‘the Shedder of Blood’), has been proclaimed in Kufa. Just three years previously, the black banners of the Abbasids had been unfurled outside the walls of Merv, in the eastern province of Khorasan, and from there, the Abbasid armies had begun their great march westward, under their enigmatic general Abu Muslim. Now their work was complete. The usurpers had been dethroned, and the family of the Prophet had been avenged. 

This story, of how the black banners of the Abbasids came to replace the white of the Umayyads across the Dar al-Islam, is one of intrigue and war, betrayal and blood. They ushered in an empire, which spanned both the golden years of Harun al-Rashid’s caliphate and the Mongols’ massacre of 1258; their empire defined the history of the Islamic world. 

FOUNDATIONS OF SAND 

At first glance, the Umayyad caliphate appeared glorious. Ruled out of the splendid capital of Damascus, it was the largest empire ever seen: its brilliant white banners stretched from the Iberian coast to the Indus, lording over both the entirety of the former Sassanian Empire and the richest of Rome’s provinces. Its military was formidable, possessing a fearsome standing army, the ahl al-sham, which had almost breached the mighty walls of Constantinople on multiple occasions. However, this was all a façade: the Umayyad caliphate was utterly illegitimate in the eyes of many pious Muslims, and its government was cruel and capricious. The first Umayyad caliph, Mu’awiya, had seized power from Ali in a civil war known as the First Fitna, which served to discredit the Umayyads amongst many from the outset. Ali, the fourth Rashidun caliph, was the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet. This alone made him an extremely revered figure, yet this was not all. Under the previous Rashidun caliphs, a movement had emerged which held that Ali ought to have been the first Caliph, and that the caliphate was the hereditary possession of his descendants, owing to his position as head of the ahl al-bayt, the Family of the Prophet. Not only this, they also held that Ali held the position of imam, spiritual leader of all Muslims, which was also a hereditary possession of his descendants. The doctrine of the imam would prove to be extremely important in Islam’s history. These followers of Ali, shi’ah in Arabic, would eventually form the Shia branch of Islam. They would not forget the sacrilege of Ali’s overthrow easily, and would always remain implacably opposed to Umayyad rule. 

However, Mu’awiya was supported by certain powerful men from the Quraysh tribe (from which the Prophet had originated), who supported the elective model of succession under which the first four caliphs had been selected. This bridge was promptly burnt when Mu’awiya decreed that his son, Yazid, would succeed him, a move that shocked previous supporters of the Umayyads. This alienated both those who desired caliphal elections, and those who believed in a hereditary caliphate, with the latter believing that it had to solely remain within the ahl al-bayt. When Mu’awiya died in 680, the empire would erupt into the Second Fitna, a prolonged civil war. The initial phase was centred on two uprisings, one in Iraq and one centred on the Holy Cities themselves. 

In Iraq, Husayn, the son of Ali and the grandson of the Prophet, would refuse to swear fealty to Yazid. Cornered in the desert with a few hundred of his most devoted followers, surrounded by an army many times that size, and refused safe passage, he and his followers (including more than twenty other members of the ahl al-bayt) were massacred near the city of Karbala despite their brave resistance.The slaughter at Karbala has not been forgotten by the Shia since, every year at Ashura (the 10th of Muharram—the date of his death), the followers of Ali mourn the death of Imam Husayn and curse Yazid. The period immediately after his death witnessed similar reactions: for even those not affiliated with the Shia, the cold-blooded murder of so many of Muhammad’s descendants proved to be an eternal black mark on the Umayyad family, which would eternally serve as a source of resentment against their rule.

Meanwhile, in Mecca, a man named Ibn al-Zubayr was planning his move. He was the last of the Sahabah, the revered companions of Muhammad himself. The son of a  powerful backer of Mu’awiya, his Islamic seniority was peerless: he would certainly have been chosen as caliph under the elective model, but the ascension of Yazid prompted his revolt. Following the death of Mu’awiya, he would seize control of the Holy Cities, establish his capital in Mecca, and proclaim himself as caliph.

Back in Iraq, another Shia uprising broke out in 685, with its participants promising vengeance for Karbala and the restoration of the ahl al-bayt. This was led by a formidable military leader named Al-Mukhtar, who fought on behalf of another son of Ali, known as Ibn al-Hanafiyyah. Ibn al-Hanafiyyah was a questionable choice for imam: he was a son of Ali, but not from his marriage to Fatima (the Prophet’s daughter); therefore, he was not a direct descendant of the prophet and today no branch of the Shia today regards him as legitimate. However, at the time, Mukhtar’s uprising gained a substantial following in Iraq. They quickly seized control of the region, with their base of operations being located at Kufa, a city of predominantly Arab settlers, which was a hotbed of Shia support.  

All seemed lost for the Umayyads; Yazid was dead, and the two caliphs after him did not reign for long. They maintained control of Syria and Egypt, but were incapable of striking back at either rebellion; most of the Islamic world began to recognise Ibn al-Zubayr as legitimate, and their days seemed numbered. It was Zubayrid forces which defeated Mukhtar, dashing Shia hopes once more, but Mukhtar’s movement endured.

The followers of Mukhtar would come to be known as the Kaysanites. Even after their military defeat, they maintained a highly organised and strictly clandestine movement, with a network of agents dedicated to spreading their message, under the leadership of a hidden imam, Abu Hashim. This laid the seeds for their next revolt. 

However, in Syria, a new Umayyad caliph, perhaps the greatest of them all, Abd al-Malik, would ascend the throne. He was not content to watch his empire disintegrate so he tenaciously struggled to restore his family’s rule. Using the dynasty’s Syrian heartland as a base and rallying his forces, he eventually cornered Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca itself. His lieutenant, al-Hajjaj, laid siege to the city, and finally took it while killing Ibn al-Zubayr in 692. However, he acquired the ignominious distinction of being the man who sacked Islam’s holiest city. Thus, Abd al-Malik restored order to the Islamic world and clawed back control for the Umayyad family, who seemed to have been doomed. The empire had been saved, but the scars of the Second Fitna would be slow to fade.

The Umayyads grossly mistreated non-Arab converts, who were never treated as equals to their Arab co-religionists, despite this contradicting accepted Islamic practice. After becoming the governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj expelled all converts from Kufa and Basra, and forced them to pay taxes. These were supposedly for non-Muslims, but in reality, they were imposed on non-Arabs; these were the financial backbone of the empire. This would have great consequences; the bulk of Mukhtar’s supporters were disenfranchised, non-Arab converts, individuals who would always prove to be a ready base of support for any anti-Umayyad rebel force which promised them equality with their Arab co-religionists. Now, the Umayyads’ precarious stance is evident, with it being clear that their supposedly glorious empire was not quite what it seemed.

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY 

The leaders of this conspiracy were the Abbasids, an obscure family. Although they boasted a noble pedigree, they were the descendants of the Prophet’s uncle, and had, thus, never been politically significant. They hardly participated in Muhammad’s rise while they were barely involved in the Rashidun caliphate or the First and Second Fitnas. It appeared that they were largely content to languish in comfortable seclusion on an estate in the Levant. However, in the early 8th century, something changed: the Abbasids, under their patriarch Muhammad,would begin a conspiracy so grand in scope that, over the following decades, it would carry them from obscurity to the dazzling heights of caliphs; this allowed them to become the masters of the Islamic world, and rulers of the splendid city of Baghdad until the Mongol sacking of 1258. 

In 716, under highly mysterious circumstances, the Kaysanite imam, Abu Hashim, declared on his deathbed that his successor would not be a descendant of Ali, but a descendant of Abbas, the aforementioned Muhammad, known as al-Imam. Now, as a result of Hashim’s will, the Abbasids secretly acquired leadership of the Kaysanites, a highly sophisticated underground organisation, which was part revolutionary movement, and part religious sect. Now came the Abbasids’ stroke of genius: rather than continuing to proselytise in Iraq, the movement’s homeland, they turned their sights further afield, to the province of Khorasan. This region, roughly comprising modern eastern Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, was in the far east of the empire. The central Umayyad authority was extremely weak there, and it was far from the minds of the caliphs. Additionally, it was primarily populated by Persians and followers of Zoroastrianism, Iran’s ancient faith. Over many years, in this far-off corner of the empire, the Abbasids laid the seeds of revolution in total secrecy, gradually gaining converts. Here, the agents of the Abbasids spread their message, da’wah, proclaiming that there was a hidden imam from the house of the Prophet, who was the rightful spiritual and temporal leader of all Muslims. The imamate would later be passed to Muhammad’s son Ibrahim in 743, who would continue the decades-long effort in total secrecy. Right under the noses of the caliphs in Damascus, they were steadily building a revolutionary army, preparing for the grand uprising in the name of the hidden imam.

A significant method through which they gained followers was through reminding people of the Umayyads’ crimes against the ahl al-bayt. Abbasid agents were well aware of the background of their prospective converts, flirting with ancient Zoroastrian imagery through the use of the colour green as a means of winning further support, while they evoked memories of the fallen Sassanians with appeals to a divine bloodline. Radically heterodox ideas, those influenced by the syncretic Khurramite movement such as the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, spread within Khorasan. They appealed to the Persian natives through their egalitarianism, promising them equality as Muslims under the new regime, in stark contrast to the Umayyads’ Arab chauvinism. The Persians, fiercely protective of their language and traditions, resented the Umayyads’ rule, as even conversion was not a path to equality, while use of the Persian language in government was reduced under the sway of all al-Hajjaj, who as held sway over much of the East.

This strategy worked with great effect: the masses of Khorasan were won over, as Umayyad authority began to dissolve, with the Abbasids drawing more and more people to their revolutionary cause. The combination of nativist sentiment and lurid tales of Umayyad crimes lit a fire in Khorasan. Peasants, Arab settlers and members of the ancient Persian nobility all joined such as Sunpadh, a Zoroastrian by birth and member of the Karen family, (one of the seven Parthian dynasties of the old Sassanian empire). He would go on to be a general in the revolutionary army.  Some would say the Abbasids lent too much in this direction, as openly heretical ideas abounded within the movement, and one missionary, Behafarid, even ‘went native’, dramatically converting to Zoroastrianism and proclaiming a new, syncretic form of Persia’s ancient faith. However, he was killed by another Abbasid agent, by far the greatest of them all, an Iranian convert by the name of Abu Muslim.

This man would go on to be the grand general of the revolutionary army, and the man who, above all, brought the Abbasids to the caliphal throne. He was a highly enigmatic figure, of whom almost nothing is known before this point aside from the basic facts, yet he clearly possessed immense military and political talent and was undyingly loyal to the Abbasids. He rapidly established himself as the leading figure in the Abbasid cause. He arrived at precisely the right hour, since by the time Abu Muslim entered the scene in 745, the Abbasids had established deep roots and achieved widespread support in Khorasan. The great conspiracy, decades in the making, had almost achieved its goal. The secret army was ready to reveal itself, and the long-awaited march to the west could soon begin.

The Qur’an says that Allah is the best of planners, and it would seem that he has quite the deputies. 

THE BLACK BANNERS UNFURLED

Now, with the situation in Khorasan at a fever pitch, the time for the revolution had at last arrived. On the 25th day of Ramadan, in the 129th year after the Hijra, 9th June 747 AD, Abu Muslim unfurled his black banners outside Merv, the largest city in Khorasan. Before its mighty walls, he arrayed the army of the hidden imam, marking the beginning of the end for the Umayyads. Abu Muslim proclaimed the start of the revolution to his massed Persian followers and rebuked the supporters of the hated usurpers. Al-Tabari tells us that Abu Muslim declared that they ‘are the slayers of the family of the Prophet, the supporters of the Banu Umayyah…and the consequences of their actions await them.’ Indeed they would.

Under Abu Muslim’s sway, the Umayyads were routed from Khorasan, and then quickly from all of Iran. Much of this was due to the skilled general Qahtaba, an Arab who had settled in Khorasan and pledged himself to the movement. The Umayyads made their stand in Persia at the city of Isfahan with an army of 60,000 strong, but were quickly defeated. This was followed by another Abbasid victory at Nahavand, which delivered Persia in its entirety to the revolutionaries. Even as the army began its triumphant march to the west, the identity of the imam was yet to be revealed. The Abbasids remained in seclusion on their Syrian estate, biding their time until victory was certain. 

At this point, with the Abbasid armies poised to enter Iraq, the formidable, battle-hardened caliph himself, Marwan II, took the field. He rallied his armies in Harran and prepared to confront the insolent rebels. Meanwhile, he finally discovered the leaders of the revolt and had Ibrahim al-Imam arrested and killed, with him never living to see the completion of his family’s great dream. Now with nothing to lose, the Abbasids finally appeared in the open. In the city of Kufa, centre of Mukhtar’s revolt and hotbed of opposition to the Umayyads, Abu Muslim proclaimed Ibrahim’s younger brother as the new imam and first Abbasid caliph. He took the honorific of Al-Saffah, the Shedder of Blood, and obtained the allegiance of all twelve leading generals. Shortly after the long-awaited unveiling of the Abbasids and the proclamation of the new caliphate, the time came to confront Marwan. The two armies met at the climatic Battle of the Great Zab River. The rebels formed a wall of spears; when the Umayyad cavalry charged, they were butchered and then routed from the field. Marwan fled in disgrace to Syria and then Egypt. There was no force to oppose the Abbasids: Damascus quickly fell, and all of the caliphate came over Al-Saffah’s side.

Following their victory, the Abbasids set about systematically exterminating the Umayyad family, almost to a man. Most notably, the fleeing caliph Marwan was assassinated in Egypt. Rumour states that his head was brought to Al-Saffah, his tongue was cut out, and fed to a cat. One particularly infamous incident occurred in Jaffa, when the Abbasid prince Abd Allah ibn Ali invited 80 Umayyads to a banquet, promising them pardons. In a sort of medieval Arab Red Wedding, he had every single one massacred at the table, while continuing to dine himself. This was said by Abd Allah to be revenge for the massacre of Husayn and his followers at the hands of Yazid. Even the dead were not allowed to rest, as the Umayyad tombs were desecrated; any skeleton found within was burnt. The revolution was complete; the ahl al-bayt had been avenged. Now, the Abbasids stood as unquestioned masters of the Islamic world; there was only one man with the power to oppose them. 

THE GREAT BETRAYAL 

The first caliph, Al-Saffah, reigned in Kufa until 754. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his brother al-Mansur, ‘The Victorious’, who was the true founder of the dynasty. He was a shrewd political operator, one determined to make his mark upon history; his reign would come to define the nature of the new caliphate. However, before he could embark on this effort, one man had to be dealt with. 

Abu Muslim had shown his immense political and military talent. He was capable of appealing to all Muslims, Arab or Persian, and could forge bonds with Zoroastrians too. By this point, he was the de facto ruler of Khorasan, where he had an extensive power base and commanded the undying allegiance of the revolutionary armies. Abu Muslim was currently in Iraq, yet if he returned to Khorasan, he would likely be untouchable. This increasingly unnerved al-Mansur; even before he was caliph, he had urged his brother to deal with him, though Al-Saffah had always refused. Upon coming to the throne, al-Mansur sought to deliberately provoke Abu Muslim. Abu Muslim was no fool, and he must have been aware that this was al-Mansur’s plan. First, he was offered the governorship of either Syria or Egypt, seemingly a reward, but one which would isolate him from his base of power in Khorasan and place him entirely under the caliph’s thumb. After much hesitation, Abu Muslim refused and began to make his way back to Khorasan. As he was doing so, he received a flurry of letters, urging him to meet with the caliph in Iraq, promising him safety and that he would retain his control of Khorasan. His most loyal supporters urged him to go on, saying that he would surely be killed if he did not go back to his homeland. However, in a particularly sly move, al-Mansur had anticipated this and had previously corresponded with Abu Muslim’s erstwhile second-in-command in Khorasan, who now proclaimed that Abu Muslim must make his peace with the caliph before returning. With his hands tied, Abu Muslim reluctantly went to meet with al-Mansur. Upon reaching the caliph, in a move of astonishing pettiness, he was kept waiting for several hours, being told that the caliph was ‘busy’ before finally being ushered in. The meeting quickly devolved. He was accused of heresy, crypto-Zoroastrianism, and several likely fictitious slights by al-Mansur, and then, without warning, cut down by his own Khorasani guards; his body was mutilated, and thrown into the Tigris.

Not everyone acquiesced to this: Sunpadh, a personal friend of Abu Muslim, raised an army in Nishapur, leading a new sect, proclaiming that Abu Muslim had mystically received the imamate after the death of al-Saffah. He is said to have proclaimed that Abu Muslim had escaped death, and was temporarily in occultation, residing in a fortress of brass with the Mahdi and Mazdak, and soon all three would emerge, with Mazdak as Abu Muslim’s vizier. When Sunpadh began his revolt, he vowed to expel all Arabs from Iran permanently, yet this dream proved ephemeral, as he and his supporters were soon mopped up, and al-Mansur could move on to his next great project, as the truly undisputed master of the Dar al-Islam.

THE ROUND CITY 

To mark the start of a new era, al-Mansur realised the need for a new capital. Its name was al-Madinat as-Salam (the City of Peace) or, as it is more commonly known as, Baghdad. This was a truly imperial city, one which the Abbasids could shape as they wished. Here, al-Mansur made his mark upon the consciousness of the world, since no other city was as synonymous with the glories of the Islamic Golden Age: it was the city of Harun al-Rashid, the House of Wisdom, and the Arabian Nights. From this city, the Abbasids presided over a century of unparalleled glory.

Not only was Baghdad a symbol of Abbasid glory, it symbolised the profound changes that occurred as a result of the Abbasid revolution. Carried to power on the backs of Persian converts, Persian influence drastically shaped the new, Abbasid-ruled Islamic world. The city, in stark contrast to Damascus, was shockingly Persian. Damascus was in a former Roman province, with its architecture, such as the pillars and mosaics of the Umayyad Mosque, being rather Roman. Baghdad was in a formerly Persian province, not far from the Sassanian capital Ctesiphon, so it was built in the round style of a Persian imperial capital. This was not limited to Baghdad, however; this reflected a much larger shift in the Islamic world, as Persia truly entered Islam. From this point, the mass conversion of Persians would begin; they could now enter the halls of power since Arab ethnicity was not required, paving the way for other ethnic groups to follow suit. The priorities of the dynasty shifted too; the Abbasids did not chase after a Mediterranean empire in the Roman mould as the Umayyads did. Persian would become a prestige language across the eastern half of the Islamic world, the language of poetry and of court life. This laid the foundations for the Persianate cultural sphere which would endure until the modern era, encompassing not only Iran, but also Central Asia, Turkey and India. Perhaps this was the most profound impact of the Abbasid Revolution; despite the treacherous murder of Abu Muslim, the Persian converts who fought for him did not do so in vain. In the centuries to follow, as Abbasid authority waned, Persian dynasties would rise and rule in their own right during the period known as the ‘Iranian Intermezzo’: in 944, the Persian prince Ahmad ibn Buya, whose elder brother bore the ancient title of Shahanshah, would conquer Baghdad itself, and reduce the position of caliph to a ceremonial role. 

EPILOGUE: WHITE BANNERS IN THE WEST 

One living Umayyad man remained, by the name of Abd al-Rahman. Seeing no other choice, he spent years travelling secretly across North Africa, dodging assassins’ knives and taking refuge in isolated Berber camps, until he finally reached the straits of Gibraltar. There, he found the land of Al-Andalus (modern Spain and Portugal), where its location at the distant edge of the Islamic world meant that central authority was weak. As the Abbasids had begun their revolution in a remote province of the far east, so would the Umayyads find new life in the far west. Abd al-Rahman crossed the sea, raised an army, took the provincial capital, Cordoba, and brought all Al-Andalus under his sway. From that magnificent city, the Umayyads would rule as emirs, and then, from the year 929, as caliphs once more. 

Reading List 

Tarikh al-Tabari 

Black Banners from the East by Moshe Sharon 

The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran by Patricia Crone 

God’s Caliph : Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam by Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds

The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphs by Hugh Kennedy 

The Early Abbasid Caliphate: A Political History by Hugh Kennedy 

Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period : An Essay in Quantitative Historyby Richard Bulleit 

Contention in Abbasid Syria by Paul Cobb 

The First Dynasty of Islam : The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750 by Gerald Hawting.