Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbdallāh

Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbdallāh ( Arabic ابراهيم بن عبد الله; died February 14, 763 ) was a Hasanid Alide who, together with his brother Muhammad an-Nafs az-Zakīya, organized an uprising against the Abbasid caliph al-Mansūr in 762 , who was supported by the Zaidi Shiites . While Muhammad led the uprising in Medina as the Alida pretender to the throne , Ibrāhīm rose a little later in Basra and was able to hold out there longer than his brother.

Ibrāhīm was the son of the Hasanid ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Hasan al-Muthannā ibn al-Hasan and the Hind bint Abī ʿUbaida, a well-known poet who had previously been married to a son of the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik . During the caliphate of Abu l-Abbas as-Saffah , he went into hiding with his brother Muhammad, who was aspiring to the caliphate. The two brothers behaved in the same way when al-Mansour took office in June 754. Al-Mansūr feared the two brothers because of their political ambitions and had them searched for everywhere. In order to get hold of her, from 758 onwards he had several of her relatives, including her father and uncle, arrested and mistreated in custody. In the meantime, Muhammad and Ibrāhīm were traveling around the Arabian Peninsula and gathering followers, without, however, coming out openly anywhere.

Finally, on September 22nd, 762, Muhammad appeared in front of Medina and took the city by surprise. A relative, al-Hasan ibn Muʿāwiya, was sent to Mecca as governor and was soon able to take control of this city and pull the residents to the side of Muhammad. Ibrāhīm meanwhile stayed near Basra and took the city on November 23, 762 with the support of the local governor, who sympathized with the insurrection movement. He then sent armed troops to occupy other cities in the area ( al-Ahwāz , al-Wāsit, various cities in Fārs ). Together with his followers, Ibrāhīm moved towards Kufa to take the poorly fortified city.

Ibrāhīm also enjoyed the support of numerous hadith and fiqh scholars in Iraq during his uprising . Among those who took his side are the traditionalist al-Aʿmash and the legal scholar Abū Hanīfa . The latter is said to have corresponded with him and announced financial support of 4,000 dirhams. Another well-known supporter of his uprising was the philologist al-Mufaddal ad-Dabbī (st. Between 781-787). He is said to have given Ibrāhīm temporary shelter even before his uprising. After Muhammad an-Nafs az-Zakīya was killed on December 6, 762 in the fight against the Abbasid general ʿĪsā ibn Mūsā, his brother's followers also swore the oath of allegiance to him .

The caliph, who was busy with construction work on his new capital, Baghdad , at the time the uprising broke out, sent troops from Syria and the Jazīra to repel the uprising and called on his general führersā ibn Mūsā after the uprising in Medina had been put down to go to Iraq immediately with his troops. When Ibrāhīm heard that ʿĪsā ibn Mūsā was approaching, he gave up the plan of occupying Kufa against the advice of his followers and moved against ʿĪsā ibn Mūsā. The two armies met on January 21, 763 in Bāchamrā south of Kufa. Ibrāhīm's troops were able to deal a heavy blow to the Abbasid vanguard at first, but were dispersed in the ensuing fighting. Ibrāhīm remained in Bāchamrā with a few faithful and badly wounded. There he succumbed to his wounds on February 14, 763.

In the years that followed, al-Mansūr cracked down on some of the learned supporters of Ibrāhīm's revolt. So he had Abū Hanīfa taken to Baghdad and thrown into prison, where he died a short time later, allegedly poisoned by the caliph. The philologist al-Mufaddal ad-Dabbī was also imprisoned, but soon pardoned again by the caliph.

The uprising of the two brothers Muhammad an-Nafs al-Zakīya and Ibrāhīm in 762/763 was one of the most important political events of the early Abbasid period, so that later various scholars such as Abū ʿUbaida Maʿmar ibn al-Muthannā (d. 824) and ʿUmar ibn Schabba (st. 876) created their own collections of reports on it. Although these books themselves have been lost, detailed excerpts from them have been preserved in the World Chronicle of at-Tabarīs and the book Maqātil aṭ-Ṭālibīyīn ("Battles of the Talibids") by Abū l-Faraj al-Isfahānī . These two works represent the most important sources for the uprisings of the two brothers. A third brother, Idrīs , later evaded to the western Maghreb and founded there in 789 with the support of indigenous Berber tribes the state of the Idrisiden , which remained until the beginning of the 10th century stretched over large areas of present-day Morocco.

literature

• Cornelis van Arendonk: De opkomst van het Zaidietische Imamaat in Yemen . Brill, Leiden 1919. pp. 51-53, 287-290.
• Franz-Christoph Muth: The caliph al-Manṣūr in the beginning of his caliphate (136/754 to 145/762): from d. arab. Chronicle of aṭ-Tabarī trans. u. with histor. u. prosograph. Note provided . Frankfurt / Main 1988.
• Tilman Nagel: An early account of the Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh in the year 145 h. In: Der Islam 46 (1970), pp. 227-262.
• Laura Veccia Vaglieri : Ibrāhīm ibn ʿAbd Allāh. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Vol. 3, pp. 983b-985a.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Muth 62.
2. ↑ Cf. Muth 67-69.
3. ↑ Cf. Muth 121-122.
4. ↑ Cf. Muth 128, 145-150.
5. ↑ A list is provided by Arendonk 187-190. Can be viewed online here: https://archive.org/stream/MN40210ucmf_2#page/n313/mode/2up .
6. ↑ Cf. Arendonk 188.
7. ↑ Cf. Arendonk 52.
8. ↑ Cf. Arendonk 52.
9. ^ Cf. Ilse Lichtenstädter: Art. "Al-Mufaḍḍal aḍ-Ḍabbī" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. VII, pp. 305b-306b. Here p. 305b.
10. ↑ See Nagel 230-234.