Abu Rakwa

Abu Rakwa أبو ركوة(* around 975 ; † 1007 in Cairo ) was leader of an uprising against the Fatimids in the years 1005-1006.

Abu Rakwa ("The one with the canteen") was an adventurer from Andalusia who worked as a teacher in Kairuan , Egypt and Cyrenaica and was the descendant of the Andalusian Umayyad caliph Abd ar-Rahman III. issued. As such, the Bedouins of Cyrenaica made him the leader of their revolt against the Fatimids .

The Bedouins of the Banu Qurra (the leading clan of the Banu Hilal ) had refused a Fatimid campaign to Ifrīqiya around 1000 because of insufficient payment . In 1004, despite security guarantees, envoys of the tribe and other hostages were executed by the Fatimids, which led to the uprising in Cyrenaica.

On March 31, 1005, Abu Rakwa officially laid claim to the throne of the caliphate in Cyrenaica and assumed the throne name an-Nasir li-Din Allah. He allied himself with the Bedouins of Cyrenaica and presented his revolt as a fight against the oppression of the Sunnis in Egypt by the Shiite heresy of the Fatimids. Barka , the center of the country, could not be conquered at first. Only after two Fatimid campaigns had failed did the Fatimid garrison of the city fled to Egypt by sea. The uprising reached its climax in the summer of 1006 when Abu Rakwa invaded Egypt. An attack on Alexandria failed , but it advanced on Cairo , but was badly beaten on August 16 at Giza and on August 30, 1006 at Ras al-Birka . Although he managed to escape to Nubia , his hiding place was found in a monastery. For a payment of one million dinars , Abu Rakwa was extradited to the Fatimids and executed in Cairo on March 9, 1007.

The uprising of Abu Rakwa is significant for the history of the Fatimids insofar as al-Hakim brought a rapprochement with the still Sunni majority of the population in Egypt. This culminated in the fact that in 1009 even the Sunni faith was temporarily equated with the Shiite faith.

literature

• Heinz Halm: The Caliphs of Cairo. CH Beck, Munich 2003