ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair

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The various camps during the Second Civil War (around 686). The territory of ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair is marked in blue.

ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair , ( Arabic عبد الله بن الزبير; * 619 ; † November 5, 692 ) was the Counter - Caliph in Mecca from 683 to 692 and fought the Umayyads from there . The counter caliphate is also known as the Meccan caliphate and its followers as Zubairites .

The opposition to the Umayyads

Abdallah was the son of the Prophet 's companion az-Zubair ibn al-ʿAuwām and Asmā 'bint Abī Bakr , a half-sister of Aisha bint Abi Bakr . He took part in the campaigns in Egypt , Persia and North Africa . After the assassination of Caliph Uthman ibn Affan , he rejected his successor Ali ibn Abi Talib and took part in the camel battle in Iraq on the side of Aisha (656).

When the Umayyads had asserted themselves as caliphs, Abdallah withdrew to Medina and, with Husain ibn ʿAlī, became the leader of a religious-political opposition group for which the struggle for the spread of Islam had priority. The Umayyads were accused of viewing the religious enthusiasm of Muslims as a means of power politics. There was open outrage when Muʿāwiya designated his son Yazīd as his successor in 680 and thus attempted for the first time to establish a hereditary caliph dynasty. The old, religiously motivated resentments against the Umayyads and their thirst for power were now resurrecting everywhere. After the death of his father in April 680 and his elevation to the position of the new caliph, Yazīd did everything in his power to force the most prominent objectors to take the oath of allegiance . He instructed his governor in Medina to harass Ibn az-Zubair and al-Husain until they swore allegiance to Yazīd. To avoid the pressure, the two fled to Mecca, which had retained its status as an inviolable asylum from pagan times.

After Husain's death in the Battle of Karbala , Ibn az-Zubair began to build up a force in Mecca and declared Yazīd to be deposed. The people of Medina followed his example and chose their own guide. Yazīd then sent an army to Medina, which inflicted a crushing defeat on the insurgents there in August 683 near Harra. In September the Umayyad army began a siege of Mecca for several weeks. The city was shot at with stones and boulders, and the Kaaba also caught fire. It was only 50 days later, when news of Yazid's death came from Syria, that the Umayyad army withdrew.

After the self-proclamation to the caliph

After the death of Yazid I (683), Abdallah proclaimed himself caliph in Mecca. Since the succession to the throne was temporarily unclear among the Umayyads after the death of Muʿāwiya II , Abdallah was recognized by the Muslims in Iraq, Iran , Egypt and even in parts of Syria . In particular, the Arab tribal association of the Qais ʿAilān, which had only just formed and was in opposition to the Umayyads, supported Ibn az-Zubair. With the widespread recognition of Abdallah, it also becomes clear that the thesis advocated by the Umayyads that the office of caliphate is hereditary had not yet established itself among the Muslims. In 684 the Umayyads under Marwan I (684-685) were able to oust the followers of Abdallah from Syria and bring Egypt under their control after the victory at Marj Rahit near Damascus .

In Kufa in October 685 the Shi'it al-Muchtar ibn Abī īUbaid rose against the governor sent by Ibn az-Zubair and brought the city into his power. The hopes of the Kufic Shiites were directed at this time to a third son of , Alī , who was called Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya , since his mother was not the daughter of the prophet Fatima , but another woman of ʿAlīs from the Arab tribe of Hanīfa. This Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya lived in Medina. He had no part in what was happening on his behalf in Kufa. Al-Muchtār appeared in Iraq as his self-appointed trustee and referred to him as the “ rightly guided ” ( mahdī ) - in contrast to the two “misguided”, the Umayyad in Damascus and the counter-caliph Ibn az-Zubair in Mecca.

Another opposition group against Ibn az-Zubair formed on the Arabian Peninsula. The Kharijit Najda ibn Āmir emerged in 686 in al-Yamāma in eastern Arabia as the leader of a group of Kharijites and became an energetic ruler over a large area that included Bahrain on the Persian Gulf and Oman in the east and parts of Yemen and Hadramaut in the south. When he was at the height of his power, his influence was greater than that of Ibn az-Zubair.

The disagreement of the Muslims was particularly evident in the pilgrimage of 686, during which the pilgrims of the four parties fighting for rule in the Islamic empire faced each other with their own flags on the ʿArafa plain : 1. The Ibn az-Zubair party , 2. the party of the Kharijite Naǧda ibn ʿĀmirs; 3. the party of the Shiites of Kufa, who venerated Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya as Mahdī; and 4. the party of Syrians, who recognized the Umayyads as the rightful ruler.

Ultimately, however, Ibn al-Zubair was able to consolidate his power. In order to assert his claims to rule in the east, he sent his brother Muṣʿab to Iraq in 686 . He succeeded in winning the South Arab military leader al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra , who was active in Persia, for the Meccan caliphate. He freed the area around Baṣra from the Azraqites and ended the Shiite rule of the Muchtār over Kufa in April 687.

The cult reform in Mecca

After the Kaaba caught fire and was badly damaged during the siege of Mecca in the autumn of 683 , Ibn az-Zubair had it completely demolished and rebuilt. In the new building, the Kaaba was supposed to be returned to "its previous state", which supposedly existed before the Quraish was rebuilt at the beginning of the 7th century. This included opening a second door at the back, lowering the floor of the Kaaba to the level of the ground and adding heights to the ṭaṭīm wall to form an apse. Since the black stone had been hit by a catapult projectile during the siege and broken into pieces, Ibn az-Zubair had it framed in silver. In March 685 the building was rededicated. Since there were still a large number of stones left for the building, Ibn az-Zubair had the area around the Kaaba paved with them.

The end of the Meccan caliphate

After the Umayyads under ʿAbd al-Malik were able to take control of Iraq in 691, Ibn az-Zubair's position was considerably weakened. Against ʿAbdallāh himself, ʿAbd al-Malik sent his general al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf to Mecca at the end of 691 to conduct negotiations with him and, if necessary, to starve the city. Al-Hajjaj, however, ran out of patience, called in more troops and bombed the city. In October 692 he then defeated Ibn az-Zubair, who was martyred in battle. This event is considered to be the end of the second Fitna . The structural changes to the Kaaba made by Ibn az-Zubair were reversed by al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf.

With the victory over Ibn az-Zubair, the Umayyads had secured their rule for the next 50 years and could begin to consolidate the caliphate. The fighting led to a strong polarization of the population and to the downfall of the old Arab aristocracy from Mecca, on which the Umayyad rule had so far been mainly based.

ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair in the theory of Volker Popps

In contrast to Islamic historiography and the findings of Islamic studies , Volker Popp, whose work was published as part of the Inârah group led by Karl-Heinz Ohlig and Christoph Luxenberg , questioned the historicity and existence of Abdallah ibn az-Zubair and developed the theory that the tradition about ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair goes back to the resistance of the " Zunbil of Zabulistan " in the east of Persia, who were probably related to the Hephthalites and were among the bitterest opponents of the Umaiyad caliphate.

The title "Zunbil" is in the Middle Persian form "ZNBYL-ān" ("belonging to the Zunbil"; with the Middle Persian patronymic suffix "-ān") archaeological for several years (53-69 AH ) on inscriptions in the Kirman region verifiable.

According to Volker Popps' theory, these sources were misinterpreted by later Muslim historians who misinterpreted the Middle Persian spelling "ZNBYL" not as "Zunbil" but as (Arabicized) "Zubair" (the Middle Persian spelling "ZNBYL" also allows reading as "Zubīl") and "Zubīr"). Then a new framework story - this time in Mecca and not in eastern Iran - was invented around the (fictional) Abdallah ibn az-Zubair in order to be able to explain certain historical events.

This observation correlates in part with coins found in the east of the former Caliphate, from the ancient Sassanid coinage facility Darābgard (Arab. Darābdschird be attributed), traditionally Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr. On the coins an unspecified "Abdallah (ʿAbd Allaah)" is attested (this title, which can be translated as "Servant of God", was the usual designation of the rulers and is also found on all Umaiyad coins), but it is in the simultaneously completed Kirman inscriptions clearly confirmed as a "ZNBYL-ān" (ie "[the] servant of God belonging to the Zunbil").

literature

  • Wilferd Madelung: "Abd Allah b. Al-Zubayr and the Mahdi" in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40 (1981) 291-305.
  • Wilferd Madelung: ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr the 'mulḥid' in CV de Benito and M.Á.M. Rodríguez (ed.): Actas XVI Congreso de l'Union européenne des arabisants et islamisants . CSCI, Salamanca, 1995. pp. 301-308.
  • HAR Gibb: Art: "ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. I, pp. 54b-55b.
  • Gernot Rotter : The Umayyads and the Second Civil War (680-692) . Wiesbaden: Steiner 1982.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Ferdinand Wüstenfeld: History of the City of Mecca. Edited from the Arabic chronicles . Leipzig 1861. pp. 127f.
  2. ↑ See Laura Veccia Vaglieri : Art. "Ḥarra" in Encyclopaedia of Islam . 2nd ed. Vol. III, pp. 226a-227b
  3. ↑ See Wüstenfeld p. 132.
  4. ↑ See Rotter 190.
  5. ↑ Cf. W. Montgomery Watt: Art. "Ḳais ʿAylān" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. IV, pp. 833b-834a.
  6. ↑ See H. Halm: Die Schia . Darmstadt 1988. pp. 21-24.
  7. ^ See R. Rubinacci: Art. "Nadjadāt" in Encyclopaedia of Islam . 2nd ed. Vol. VII, pp. 858b-859b.
  8. ↑ a b See Wüstenfeld pp. 132-136.
  9. ↑ See Wüstenfeld: Geschichte pp. 142–46.
  10. ↑ cf. Inârah. Institute for Research into the Early History of Islam and the Koran. , Saarbrücken, 2011, homepage of the official website
  11. ^ A b V. Popp: Biblical structures in the Islamic presentation of history ; in: M. Gross, KH Ohlig : Schlaglichter: the first two Islamic centuries , Schiler Verlag, 2008. ISBN 978-3-89930-224-0 . P. 87ff.
  12. ^ HS Nyberg: A Manual of Pahlavi , Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1964. S. 158
personal data
SURNAME ʿAbdallāh ibn az-Zubair
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Caliph in Mecca
DATE OF BIRTH 619
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 692