al-Muchtār ibn Abī ʿUbaid

Al-Muchtār ibn Abī ʿUbaid ( Arabic المختار بن أبي عبيد الثقفي, DMG al-Muḫtār b. Abī ʿUbaid aṯ-Ṯaqafī ; born around 622 in Ta'if , today Saudi Arabia ; died April 3 687 in Kufa , Iraq) was the leader of a pro- Alid revolt in Kufa between 685 and 687. Al-Mukhtar sales on October 18, 685 supporters of the Caliph Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr , in turn, before the Umayyad from the Iraq had expelled. Soon Muchtar also ruled parts of Iran . He relied mainly on non-Arab Mawālī , to whom he paid his own wages.

However, when Muchtar increasingly involved the native population ( Mawālī ) who had converted to Islam in power and tax revenues, tensions soon arose with the Arab tribal aristocracy, which saw their monopoly of power endangered. Muchtar was able to put down this revolt and drive his opponents to Basra . An extension of his rule to Basra and an attack on the Hejaz failed in the following years , but he won a victory over the Umayyads in northern Iraq (686).

However, towards the end of 686 , Musab ibn az-Zubair defeated Muchtar twice and began the siege of Kufa. With the death of Muchtar on April 3, 687 (14th Ramadan 67 AH ), Kufa and all of Iraq fell again to the followers of Abdallah ibn az-Zubair.

The Muchtar uprising is significant because it was here that the Mawali fought for their share of power for the first time. Even if this initially failed, the problem worsened with the increasing conversion of the local population to Islam in the following decades and was to contribute significantly to the overthrow of the Umayyads ( 750 ).

literature

• Gernot Rotter: The Umayyads and the Second Civil War. Commission publisher Franz Steiner GmbH, Wiesbaden 1982
• Ulrich Haarmann: History of the Arab World. CH Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47486-1

See also

• Kaisanites (Muchtarites)