Ibrahim ibn Abdallah
Leader of revolt against Abbasid Caliphate
- Abd Allah al-Mahd (father)
- Hind bint Abu Ubaida (mother)
Ibrahim bin Abdullah bin Al-Hassan (Arabic: إبراهيم بن عبد الله بن الحسن; 97 AH - 145 AH / 716 AD - 763 AD) was an Arab leader, from the lineage of the Prophet's family and from the narrators. He is often mentioned in conjunction with the name of his brother, Imam Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya the Pure Soul. This association is due to their participation in the ordeal and the revolution against Abbasid rule. Therefore, it is remarkably frequent in Islamic sources that they are mentioned together when speaking about rebellion against al-Mansur . He was also a poet and a scholar of Arab history and poetry.
Biography
Ibrahim was the son of the Hasanid Abd Allah al-Mahd and Hind bint Abu Ubaida, a well-known poet who had previously been married to a son of the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. During the caliphate of Abu l-Abbas as-Saffah, he remained in hiding with his brother Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, who aspired to the caliphate. The two brothers behaved in the same way when Al-Mansur assumed the caliphate in June 754.[1] Al-Mansur feared the two brothers because of their political ambitions and searched for them everywhere. In order to get hold of her, from 758 onwards he had several of her relatives, including her father and uncle, imprisoned and mistreated in custody. Meanwhile, Muhammad and Ibrahimm traveled around the Arabian Peninsula and gathered followers around them, but without appearing openly anywhere.[2]
On September 22, 762, Muhammad finally appeared in front of Medina and took the city in a surprise attack.[3] A relative, al-Hasan ibn Muʿāwiya, was sent to Mecca as governor and was also able to quickly take control of this city and win the residents over to Muhammad's side.[4] Meanwhile, Ibrahim stayed near Basra and took the city on November 23, 762 with the support of the local governor, who sympathized with the uprising movement. He then sent armed troops to occupy other towns in the area (al-Ahwāz, al-Wāsit, various towns in Fārs). Together with his followers, Ibrahim moved towards Kufa to take the weakly fortified city.
Ibrahim also enjoyed the support of many Iraqi hadith and fiqh scholars in his rebellion. Among those who took his side are the traditionalist al-A'mash and the jurist Abu Hanifa. The latter is said to have corresponded with him and announced financial support of 4,000 dirhams.[5] Another well-known supporter of his uprising was the philologist Al-Mufaddal ad-Dabbi (d. between 781 and 787). He is said to have given Ibrahim temporary shelter before his uprising.[6] After Muhammad an-Nafs az-Zakīya fell in battle against the Abbasid military leader Isa ibn Musa on December 6, 762, his brother's followers also swore an oath of loyalty to him.
The caliph, who was busy with construction work on his new capital Baghdad at the time the uprising broke out, had troops come from Syria and the Jazeera region to fend off the uprising movement, and called on his military commander Isa ibn Musa after the uprising had been suppressed in Medina to immediately go to Iraq with his troops. When Ibrahim heard that Isa ibn Musa was approaching, he gave up the plan of occupying Kufa against the advice of his followers and went to meet Isa ibn Musa. The two armies met on January 21, 763 in Bāchamrā south of Kufa. Ibrahim's troops were initially able to deal a heavy blow to the Abbasid advance guard, but were scattered in the ensuing battles. Ibrahim remained in Bāchamrā with a few followers and seriously wounded. There he died of his wounds on February 14, 763.
Al-Mansūr subsequently took harsh action against some learned supporters of Ibrahim's rebellion. So he had Abu Hanifa taken to Baghdad and thrown into prison, where he died a short time later, allegedly poisoned by the Caliph.[6] The philologist al-Mufaddal ad-Dabbī was also imprisoned, but was soon pardoned by the caliph.[7]
The revolt of the two brothers Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya and Ibrahim in 762/763 was one of the most important political events of the early Abbasid period, so that later various scholars such as Ma'mar ibn al-Muthanna and Umar ibn Shabba created his own collections of reports about it.[8] Although these books themselves have been lost, detailed excerpts from them have been preserved in the Al-Tabari's books and the book Tālibid Fights (“Battles of the Talibids”) by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani. These two works represent the most important sources for the rebellions of the two brothers. A third brother, Idris, later emigrated to the western Maghreb and founded the Idrisid state there in 789 with the support of local Berber tribes, which lasted until the beginning of the 10th century extended over large areas of what is now Morocco.
References
Citations
- ^ Muth 1988, pp. 62.
- ^ Muth 1988, pp. 67–69.
- ^ Muth 1988, pp. 121–122.
- ^ Muth 1988, pp. 145–150.
- ^ Arendonk 1919, pp. 188.
- ^ a b Arendonk 1919, pp. 52.
- ^ Ilse Lichtenstädter. al-Mufaḍḍal aḍ-Ḍabbī. Encyclopaedia of Islam. pp. 305–306.
- ^ Tilman, Nagel (1970). "Ein früher Bericht über den Aufstand von Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh im Jahr 145 h.". Der Islam (46): 230–234.
Bibliography
- Arendonk, Cornelis van (1919). De opkomst van het Zaidietische Imamaat in Yemen. Leiden: Brill.
- Muth, Franz-Christoph (1988). Der Kalif al-Manṣūr im Anfang seines Kalifats (136/754 bis 145/762): aus d. arab. Chronik von aṭ-Tabarī übers. u. mit histor. u. prosograph. Anm. versehen. Frankfurt/Main.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).
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