al-Muqannaʿ

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Al-Muqannaʿ ( Arabic المقنّع 'The masked') was the nickname of an Iranian officer from the city of Marw , who led a religious and political uprising movement with a Churramite orientation during the caliphate of the Abbasid al-Mahdi (775–785) in Sogdia and was executed in 779/780 or later. His real name was Hāschim ibn al-Hakīm, but in some sources it is also given as ʿAtāʾ. He is said to have received his nickname al-Muqannaʿ because he hid his face under a golden mask during his uprising. His followers have been because of the white shirts they wore when al-Mubaiyida (المبيضة, DMG al-Mubaiyiḍa , the white-clad people).

One of the most important sources on the personal background of al-Muqannaʿ is the 943 "History of Bukhara" ( Taʾrīḫ-i Buḫārā ) of Narschachī, which was originally written in Arabic, but only survived in a Persian adaptation from the 12th century. There are also various other Arabic and Persian sources that shed light on his insurrectionary movement.

Historicizing Persian representation of al-Muqanna

Life

Military and political career

According to Arabic and Persian sources, Hāschim ibn al-Hakīm began his military-political career as an officer in the Chorasan army of Abu Muslim , which brought the Umaiyad state to collapse in 748/749 and led the Abbasids to power. When in 752 Ziyād ibn Sālih, the governor of Bukhara and Sogdia, who had triumphed in the battle of the Talas , rose against Abū Muslim, the latter sent his close confidante Abū Dāwūd Chālid ibn Ibrāhīm adh-Dhuhlī against him. Hashim was one of his troops and lost an eye while fighting Ziyād.

After the assassination of Abū Muslim by al-Mansūr in 755, Abū Dāwūd became governor of Khorasan and Hāschim acted as its secretary. After Abū Dāwūd's death in 757 he became an advisor to the next Chorasan governor ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn ʿAbd ar-Rahmān al-Azdī, who, however, sided with the Alides a year later and was therefore recalled and executed in Iraq in 759. This brought Hashim himself into conflict with the caliph, who imprisoned him in Iraq for some time. According to Narschachī's report, however, this happened because al-Muqannaʿ had claimed prophethood for himself.

"King of Sogdia"

In 768, Hashim reappeared under the name al-Muqannaʿ ("the masked one") in Khorasan and took possession of several mountain fortresses in the Kish region with his followers . These included Nawākit (now Kamay-tepe) and Sandscharda in the mountains of Sanām. In 773/4 his group attacked the village of Būmidschkath in the vicinity of Bukhara from there , killing the muezzin and many of its inhabitants.

When Humaid ibn Qahtaba, the governor of Khorasan, died in 774, al-Muqannaʿ and his followers, which included many Sogdian peasants and Turkish nomads, conquered Samarkand , assumed the title of "King of Sogdia" and had coins minted on them presented himself as "Hāschim, the avenger of Abu Muslim". The new caliph al-Mahdi reacted to this in 775 by sending the Chorasan general Jibrāʾīl ibn Yahyā to Samarkand. He briefly captured the city, but soon had to turn his attention to another non-Arab insurgent named Yūsuf al-Barm, who had risen in Tocharistan , so that al-Muqannaʿ had the opportunity to recapture Samarkand in 776, and then almost that occupy the entire Kaschka-Darya region down to Termez .

Al-Mahdi responded to the uprisings in the same year by sending a new governor, Muʿādh ibn Muslim, who arrived in Marw in 777 and initially took up the fight against the Turks in Bukhara, but was unsuccessful in the fight against al-Muqanna..

The End

In 779 Muʿādh ibn Muslim was dismissed at his own request, and al-Musaiyab ibn Zuhair ad-Dabbī was appointed the new governor in Khorasan. During his tenure, which lasted until 782/3, al-Muqannaʿ was defeated. The high command in the fight against al-Muqannaʿ had the military commander Saʿīd al-Haraschī. He first besieged al-Muqannaʿs brother in Nawākit and then al-Muqannaʿ himself. He was abandoned by his followers. Only 2,000 men stayed with him and defended the mountain fortress in the Sanam Mountains. Al-Muqannaʿ poisoned his wives and himself in a hopeless situation; his last followers were massacred by the Abbasid army. After his death, people allegedly tried to burn him at a stake so that his people would not believe he would reappear. But that failed and so his severed head was sent to the caliph in Aleppo . Most sources date the death of al-Muqannaʿ to the year 779/780. However, later dates (up to 785) are also mentioned.

Teaching

Al-Muqannaʿ taught according to Ibn Challikan, Ibn Athir , Ibn Chaldun and others. a. that the divine spirit first revealed itself in the figure of Adam and demanded the worship of the angels, then in the figure of Noah , then in other prophets: Abraham , Moses , Christ , Mohammed , Ali , Muhammad ibn al-Hanafīya and finally Abu Muslim and then appeared in himself. According to al-Biruni , he demanded that the teachings of Mazdak (community of property, promiscuity ) be followed. Only two of the eleven names of his supporters were Muslim names and his movement is often viewed as anti-Islamic.

His movement also had social aspects, as it is also credited with the abolition of property, but there is no evidence for the persecution of landowners or the distribution of their property. Al-Muqannaʿ received little support from the cities, instead mainly from the rural population and the mountains.

He was immortalized in two Persian poems in which he conjured a false moon from a well in Nachschab that was visited night after night. His sect, the al-Mubayyida (white shirts) existed until the 12th century.

literature

swell
Studies
  • MS Asimov, CE Bosworth et al. a .: History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Volume IV: The Age of Achievement. AD 750 to the End of the Fifteenth Century. Part One: The Historical, Social and Economic Setting. Paris 1998.
  • Patricia Crone : The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran. Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012. pp. 106-143.
  • Patricia Crone: Al-Muqannaʿ . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica (English, including references)
  • Frantz Grenet: "Contribution à l'étude de la révolte de Muqanna '(c. 775-780): traces matérielles, traces hérésiographiques" in Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi (éd.): Islam: identité et altérité; homage to Guy Monnot . Turnhout: Brepols 2013. pp. 247-261.
  • Boris Kochnev: "Les monnaies de Muqanna" in Studia Iranica 30 (2001) 143-50.
  • Wilferd Madelung, Paul Ernest Walker: An Ismaili heresiography. The "Bāb al-shayṭān" from Abū Tammām's Kitāb al-shajara. Brill, 1998.
  • Svatopluk Soucek: A history of inner Asia. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ See Crone 2012, 106.
  2. ↑ See Crone 2012, 106.
  3. ↑ See Crone 2012, 115.
  4. ↑ See Crone 2012, 106–111, 115.
  5. ↑ See Crone 2012, 111, 116.
  6. ↑ See Crone 2012, 112, 142.
  7. ↑ See Crone 2012, 113.
  8. ↑ See Ibn Challikān 206.
  9. ↑ See Crone 2012, 113; Madelung / Walker 74; Soucek 65.
  10. ↑ Cf. on the subject the descriptions from the 10th century in Madelung / Walker: An Ismaili heresiography. P. 76
  11. ↑ Asimov, Bosworth et al. a .: History of Civilizations of Central Asia. P. 50.
personal data
SURNAME Al-Muqannaʿ
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Al-Mukanna; the veiled one
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Leader of an anti-Arab and anti-Islamic uprising in Sogdia
DATE OF BIRTH before 776
DATE OF DEATH after 779