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ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr and the Mahdī: Between propaganda and historical memory in the Second Civil War*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2017

Mehdy Shaddel
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Abstract

The subject of the present paper is a prophetic tradition found in some compendia of eschatological aḥādīth which has received considerable scholarly attention since Wilferd Madelung dedicated an article to it in 1981. Whereas Madelung shares the opinion of earlier scholars that only some of the incidents “prophesied” by this tradition are historical, this study aims to show that it is a wholly ex post facto composition which, in its various strata, remarkably captures episodes from the Zubayrid war of propaganda against their rivals as well as their later attempts to redeem the memory of their lost cause as a just one. The discussion closes by producing a highly singular Syrian tradition most certainly put into circulation with the intent of countering these Zubayrid propaganda efforts.

Keywords

ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ZubayrPropagandaSecond Civil WarḥadīthYazīd ibn MuʿāwiyaʿAmr ibn al-Zubayral-Ḥuṣayn ibn Numayrkhasf
Type
Articles
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Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , February 2017 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2017 

The ḥadīth of the Mahdī

Perhaps the single most important contribution to the shaping of the Islamic (and in particular Shii) ideas of endtimes has been made by the following tradition, which was later taken to be a précis of the career of the Sufyānī and the Mahdī.Footnote 1 This widely attested tradition has been best preserved in Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-Sunan:Footnote 2

Muḥammad ibn al-Muthannā < Muʿādh ibn Hishām < his father < Qatāda < Ṣāliḥ Abu'l-Khalīl < ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ḤārithFootnote 3  < Umm Salama, the prophet's wife < the prophet

there will be a discord after the death of a caliph, then a man from the people of Medina will flee to Mecca, and a group of the inhabitants of Mecca will go to him and bring him out [of his place of residence] against his will and pledge allegiance to him between the Rukn and the Maqām (fa-yaʾtīhu nāsun min ahl Makka fa-yukhrijūnahu wa-huwa kārihun fa-yubāyiʿūnahu bayna ’l-rukn wa'l-maqām).Footnote 4 Then an expedition will be sent against him from (the people of)Footnote 5 Shām, but they will be swallowed up in the Baydāʾ between Mecca and Medina (wa-yubʿathu ilayhi baʿthun min (ahl) al-Shām fa-yukhsafu bihim bi'l-Baydāʾ bayna Makka wa'l-Madīna). When people see this, the righteous ones of al-Shām and the groups of Iraq will go to him (atāhu abdāl al-Shām wa-ʿaṣāʾib ahl al-ʿIrāq) and offer him their allegiance.Footnote 6 Afterwards, a Qurashī man will arise whose maternal uncles are from the tribe of Kalb. He will despatch an expedition against them, but they will triumph over them. That will be the expedition of the Kalb, and disappointment will be for those who do not share in the booty of the Kalb (wa'l-khayba li-man lam yashhad ghanīmat Kalb). He will distribute [equitably] the revenues (al-māl) and will act among the people according to the sunna of their prophet and Islam will be firmly established on earth (wa-yulqī al-Islām bi-jirānihi fi'l-arḍ Footnote 7 ). He will linger (fa-yalbathu) for seven years and then die and the Muslims will pray over him. Abū Dāwūd said, “some say, on the authority of Hishām, nine years, and some say seven years”.Footnote 8

This tradition was first brought to scholarly attention by Duncan B. MacDonald, who opined that it is “an echo of the early ʿAlid conflicts”.Footnote 9 But it was D.S. Attema who first noticed that the career of its protagonist bears striking affinities to that of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr,Footnote 10 the Medinan Qurashī aristocrat and son of the famous companion al-Zubayr ibn al-ʿAwwām who refused to pledge allegiance to Yazīd I as caliph after the death of Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān in 60 ah and fled to Mecca to seek refuge in the Meccan sanctuary. There, in due course, he proclaimed himself caliph and fought a long and bloody civil war against various rival factions, of whom the most formidable were the Umayyads, first under Yazīd, then under Marwān I, and after him under his son and successor ʿAbd al-Malik. According to Attema, the tradition was first put into circulation some time between the death of Yazīd in 64 ah and al-Ḥajjāj's ultimate victory over Ibn al-Zubayr in 73 ah.Footnote 11

After Attema, Wilferd Madelung elucidated the intricacies of this tradition still further:Footnote 12 the tradition was “war propaganda”, Madelung avers, “in support of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr”. He goes a step further than Attema and states that the first expedition “swallowed up” by the earth was none other than the historical expedition of Muslim ibn ʿUqba al-Murrī and al-Ḥuṣayn ibn Numayr al-Sakūnī, which the caliph Yazīd had sent to subdue Medina and Mecca. This expedition succeeded in bringing Medina back to the fold of Yazīd's caliphate after allegedly committing many atrocities in the battle of al-Ḥarra (63 ah) and went on to besiege Mecca, but, upon receiving the news of Yazīd's death, abandoned the siege and returned to Syria. The second expedition in this tradition is a genuine prophecy, Madelung states, which “must have been made public by [the governor of Basra] ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥārith… on the very occasion of his accepting the Baṣrans’ oath of allegiance on behalf of Ibn al-Zubayr” in 64 ah. It was, in his view, “meant to stir up support for Ibn al-Zubayr and to prepare his followers for a campaign of the Kalb in support of the caliphate of one of the sons of Yazīd” (Yazīd's mother, Maysūn bint Baḥdal ibn Unayf al-Kalbiyya, was from the tribe of Kalb, traditional allies of the Sufyānid caliphs). Hence, according to Madelung, the first part of the ḥadīth is historical, but it becomes prophecy where it begins to talk of the arrival of abdāl al-Shām and ʿaṣāʾib ahl al-ʿIrāq, as “Ibn al-Zubayr was no longer a mere seeker of asylum in the sanctuary but an open contender for the caliphate receiving homage from all parts of the Muslim world”.Footnote 13

Madelung thus appears to be basing his dissection of this ḥadīth on the well-established scholarly methods for treating apocalyptic material honed by Paul J. Alexander and others during the course of the twentieth century. By the specifications of these methods, “the latest historical element referred to in an apocalypse … precedes immediately a passage in which the author shifts from history to eschatology”.Footnote 14 However, the glaring fact remains that our ḥadīth is decidedly lacking in the eschatological dimension. It does not even allude to the eschaton, references no apocalyptic battles, and the era of equity and justice of which it speaks does not come across as the messianic era of bliss. In sum, there is nothing whatsoever in it to justify its classification under the rubric of “apocalypse”;Footnote 15 on the contrary, its matter-of-fact tone indicates that Madelung is right in identifying it as a piece of Zubayrid propaganda. It would thus seem legitimate to ask why a propagandist should have put a genuine prognostication in a piece of ex eventu prophecy whose sole aim was to furnish the prophesied event with an aura of prophetic legitimacy. What aim would such a prognostication serve? It is also unclear how the propagandist/apocalyptist who composed this piece intended to “stir up support” for its protagonist without appealing, in what Madelung claims to be the genuinely oracular part of the tradition, to what we may call the “latent apocalypticism of the human psyche”.Footnote 16

Even more startling is the titbit of trivia about the despatcher of the second expedition: he is a Qurashī with Kalbī lineage on his mother's side who dwells in Syria and whose army consists of Kalbīs – descriptions that all fit Yazīd very well. These details, taking Madelung's thesis to its logical conclusion, would show the Zubayrid propagandist to be preoccupied with a still-tangible threat from the Sufyānids. But why should supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr have thought of Yazīd's descendants as the real threat to the Zubayrid claim at a time (64 ah) when the Sufyānid cause seemed all but lost and the Umayyad family had unanimously recognized Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam – the eponymous progenitor of the Marwānid branch of the Umayyads – as caliph? One would have thought, therefore, that if either of these two expeditions is to be identified as historical, it has to be the second rather than the first. Furthermore, as noted by Michael Cook, the tradition's more likely nine-year time of lingering happens to be equal to “the duration of the historical caliphate of Ibn al-Zubayr … a fact hardly to be anticipated in 64/684”, thus making “the distinction between memory and fantasy… blurred”.Footnote 17 In the light of these problems, Cook has questioned the textual integrity of the tradition as we have it, but one may wonder whether the events alluded to in this ḥadīth have been correctly identified to begin with. Could it not be that the second expedition mentioned in the tradition was actually the expedition of Muslim ibn ʿUqba and the first one an earlier, lesser known engagement? By the time Yazīd sent Muslim at the head of an army to quell Ibn al-Zubayr's subversive activities he had been in Mecca, calling himself “a seeker of refuge in the sanctuary” (ʿāʾidhun bi'l-bayt), for some three years and had made no secret of his irreconcilable disagreement with Yazīd in particular and hereditary succession to the caliphate in general.Footnote 18 During these three years Yazīd did resort to whatever option he had to force Ibn al-Zubayr's hand.

It is my contention that the incidents recounted in this tradition are all historical, and in the remainder of this article I shall take a closer look at ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr's career after Muʿāwiya's death to match up these allusions with historical events. To recapitulate, the tradition mentions two expeditions: the first is despatched from Syria (or, alternatively, consists of Syrians) which is “annihilated” (lit. “swallowed up, afflicted by khasf”) at the Baydāʾ between Mecca and Medina; the second expedition consists of Kalbī tribesmen and is despatched by a Qurashī with Kalbī lineage on his mother's side which is defeated by the tradition's hero and his partisans. These are the main clues provided by our ḥadīth which should be followed up in the course of its examination.

ʿAmr ibn al-Zubayr and the army of khasf

The chronology of events in the Ḥijāz following the death of Muʿāwiya is to some extent confused, but we may attempt a reconstruction based on what information the sources supply and with the help of some informed speculation. The sources agree that when Muʿāwiya died in Rajab of 60, al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr al-Anṣārī was governor in Kūfa, ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ziyād in Basra, ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ “al-Ashdaq” in Mecca, and al-Walīd ibn ʿUtba ibn Abī Sufyān in Medina.Footnote 19 Yazīd dismissed al-Walīd shortly afterwards, presumably because of his failure to exact the oath of allegiance from al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī and Ibn al-Zubayr as he had required. He then appointed ʿAmr al-Ashdaq in his stead, while also retaining him in his position as governor of Mecca. ʿAmr arrived in Medina in Ramaḍān of 60 and remained in this position until the beginning of Dhu'l-Ḥijja, 61 ah.Footnote 20 In Iraq, when al-Ḥusayn's envoy to Kūfa, his cousin Muslim ibn ʿAqīl, effectively wrested the control of the town from al-Nuʿmān, Yazīd responded by dismissing the latter and appointing ʿUbayd Allāh over Kūfa while retaining him as governor of Basra.Footnote 21 This must have happened towards the end of 60, with al-Nuʿmān apparently departing for Syria immediately afterwards. Having dealt with al-Ḥusayn's abortive rebellion early in 61, Yazīd seems to have wasted no time in attending to the threat to his authority posed by Ibn al-Zubayr. He first reacted to the news of the latter's not-so-discreet activities by sending a delegation of ten notables – among them al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr and ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿIḍāh al-Ashʿarī – to Mecca to attempt a conciliation with Ibn al-Zubayr, first by offering material incentives and warning him against the dangers of internal division, and then, if this did not work, by reminding him of al-Ḥusayn's bloody end.Footnote 22 Not unexpectedly, Yazīd's envoys failed to convince Ibn al-Zubayr, who even refused to talk to them after an initial angry exchange with Ibn ʿIḍāh. Given that al-Nuʿmān is a member of the delegation in virtually all accounts that name some of its members, this event, too, must have taken place in 61 ah – that is, after al-Nuʿmān's departure from Kūfa at the end of 60.Footnote 23

Meanwhile in Medina, the new governor, ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd al-Ashdaq, had to find a replacement for his chief of shurṭa – the previous chief, Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, having resigned his post upon the former's arrival to join Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca.Footnote 24 In his lieu al-Ashdaq appointed a half-brother of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr, ʿAmr by name,Footnote 25 notorious for his violent and brusque manner and his antipathy to his brother.Footnote 26 His animosity towards ʿAbd Allāh was so strong that as ṣāḥib al-shurṭa he would arrest people on the slightest suspicion of harbouring Zubayrid sympathies and subject them to lashing – among them one of his own brothers, al-Mundhir, the latter's son Muḥammad, and ʿAbd Allāh's son Khubayb – leaving them with no alternative but to flee to Mecca.Footnote 27

When Yazīd's delegates returned to Shām and reported the situation in Mecca to him, he entrusted ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd with the task of arresting Ibn al-Zubayr and sending him to the caliphal court in Shām, in chains if need be.Footnote 28 The duty to arrest Ibn al-Zubayr fell to ʿAmr ibn al-Zubayr. Some sources inform us that he even volunteered for the task, citing the longstanding vendetta against his brother and reassuring ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd that “you would never find anyone who is more averse to him than me to send against him” (wa-lā tuwajjihu ilayhi rajulan abadan ankaʾa lahu minnī).Footnote 29 Having found a volunteer to command the expedition, ʿAmr al-Ashdaq was now looking for troops. But pro-Zubayrid sympathies ran high among the population of Medina and no one would have willingly served in this army. After his dismissal, al-Ashdaq would describe to the caliph the situation in the Ḥijāz and the strict measures to which he had to resort in revealing terms:

O, commander of the believers! The present sees things that the absent cannot see. The majority of the people of Mecca and Medina were inclined towards him [viz. Ibn al-Zubayr] and had given him their unanimous approval [for the caliphate] (wa-aʿṭawhu ’l-riḍā),Footnote 30 with some calling for others [to pledge allegiance to him] secretly and others openly. And I did not have troops at my disposal to overpower him if I were to fight him, while he avoided me and was watchful of me. So I tried to be lenient towards him and tolerate him in the hope of luring and overcoming him (wa-kuntu arfaqu bihi wa-udārīhi li-astamkira minhu fa-athiba ʿalayhi) – having already severely restricted him and deprived him of many things that would have otherwise ended up in his hands (wa-manaʿtuhu min ashyāʾa kathīratin law taraktuhu wa-iyyāhā mā kānat lahu illā maʿūnatan) – posting around Mecca and on the routes leading to it guards who would not allow anyone in without first reporting to me his name and that of his father, his city of residence, and the reason for his trip and what he was after. If he was one of his partisans or those who were inclined towards him I would send him back unachieved (radadtuhu ṣāghiran), but if cleared I would allow him in the town.Footnote 31

This being the situation, the governor and his chief-of-police had particular problems convincing the regulars from the army stipends (ahl al-dīwān) to join the expedition. Reports indicate that the majority of the ahl al-dīwān refused to join and hired men to go in their place (or they were forced by ʿAmr to send hired men instead).Footnote 32 Al-Ṭabarī further informs us that no more than a few dozen (ʿasharāt) of the ahl al-dīwān were present in this army.Footnote 33 Al-Ashdaq was thus left with no choice but to raise troops from among the considerable number of Umayyad mawālī present in Medina.Footnote 34 That the backbone of ʿAmr's one-thousand-strong army was comprised of Umayyad mawālī is indicated by a report produced by al-Balādhurī concerning the composition of ʿAmr's army. According to this report, ʿAmr left Medina “with four hundred soldiers, a group of Umayyad mawālī, and others not enrolled in the dīwān” (wa-kharaja fī arbaʿ miʾa min al-jund wa-qawmin min mawālī banī Umayya wa-qawmin min ghayr ahl al-dīwān).Footnote 35 Furthermore, al-Ṭabarī’s statement that “a large group” of mawālī ahl al-Madīna accompanied this army must probably be read as a reference to the mawālī of those Umayyads who were resident in Medina.Footnote 36 Piecing together all the accounts, we may conclude that ʿAmr had 400 men – apparently mostly from the dīwān or hired men – under his direct command, with some 700 more – apparently mostly Umayyad mawālī – in another contingent under the command of Unays ibn ʿAmr al-Aslamī.Footnote 37 This latter contingent of Umayyad mawālī was “completely routed” (huzima aqbaḥa hazīmatin)Footnote 38 in an ambush by ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣafwān ibn Umayya al-Jumaḥī and a ragtag band of Zubayrid sympathizers.Footnote 39

Still other reports assert that this army was a Syrian army (jaysh min ahl al-Shām).Footnote 40 This is quite significant inasmuch as the tradition's statement that its first army would be Syrian (min al-Shām) was the most important consideration in Madelung's identification of it with the expedition of al-Ḥuṣayn ibn Numayr.Footnote 41 Yet ʿAmr ibn al-Zubayr's army could hardly have been raised in Syria, for elsewhere we hear Yazīd reprimand ʿAmr al-Ashdaq for failing to ask for reinforcements to be sent from there.Footnote 42 This divergent report, nonetheless, is of some import for our analysis as it does not seem to be simply erroneous. Rather, it indicates that people thought of Umayyad mawālī as “Syrians”. In this connection it is also important to remember that, as Gerald Hawting observes, “the Umayyad armies are constantly referred to as ahl al-Shām while their opponents are usually called … ahl al-Ḥijāz” in the context of the Second Civil War, an observation seconded by John Haldon and Hugh Kennedy.Footnote 43 This brings us back to the minority variant min ahl al-Shām recorded for our tradition in some manuscripts of Abū Dāwūd's Sunan as well as in Ibn Abī Shayba's Muṣannaf Footnote 44 – a variant of which Madelung does not show awareness. In the light of these reports on the composition of ʿAmr's army, we can now safely give preference to this minority variant. To paraphrase, this army of Umayyad mawālī was probably referred to as “Syrian” by some,Footnote 45 as the testimony of several medieval historians suggests, and that is almost certainly why the ḥadīth describes it as “an expedition min ahl al-Shām”.

We must now turn to the last piece of information supplied by the ḥadīth concerning the first expedition – to wit, its location. According to most sources, upon his arrival in Mecca Unays stationed himself in Dhū Ṭawī while ʿAmr entered Mecca with some of his men to negotiate his brother's surrender. ʿAbd Allāh, who had no intention of giving himself up to be ignominiously hauled off to Damascus, tried to play for time and at the same time connived with ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣafwān to rid himself of his brother. ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣafwān then gathered Ibn al-Zubayr's supporters (and, of course, ʿAmr's enemies) and fell upon Unays and his men at Dhū Ṭawī.Footnote 46

This Dhū Tawī, according to Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, “is a well dug by ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manāf, situated on the highest point of Mecca, near the Bayḍāʾ [adjacent to] the dwelling of Muḥammad ibn Sayf” (biʾrun ḥafarahā ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manāf wa-hiya ’llatī bi-aʿlā Makka ʿinda ’l-Bayḍāʾ [sic] dār Muḥammad ibn Sayf).Footnote 47 Under “al-Bayḍāʾ”, he informs us that it is the same place as the pass (thaniyya) of Tanʿīm in Mecca,Footnote 48 and sub verbo “al-Thaniyya al-Bayḍāʾ” we read that “it is a pass near Mecca that leads down to Fakhkh when coming to Mecca from the direction of Medina; [it is] the lowest point of Mecca, overlooked by Dhū Ṭawī” (ʿaqabatun qurb Makka tahbaṭuka ilā Fakhkhin wa-anta muqbilun min al-Madīna turīdu Makka; asfal Makka min qibal Dhī Ṭawī).Footnote 49

Yāqūt thus implies that this Bayḍāʾ was not part of the town itself. This is corroborated by what we can glean from a ḥadīth on the authority of Nāfiʿ, the mawlā of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar. According to Nāfiʿ, on trips to Mecca, Ibn ʿUmar “would always spend the night in Dhū Ṭawī, then ritually wash himself in the morning, and enter Mecca in the midday” (lā yaqdamu Makka illā bāta bi-Dhī Ṭawī ḥattā yuṣbiḥu wa-yaghtasila thumma yadkhulu Makka nahāran), purportedly following the example of the prophet.Footnote 50 Dhū Ṭawī thus seems to be the last stop outside the sacred precincts of the Meccan sanctuary. In the light of this tradition, ʿAmr's rationale for leaving Unays in Dhū Ṭawī and entering Mecca with only a handful of his men becomes evident: he wanted to avoid marching on the holy city and desecrating it as far as possible, and was therefore simply trying to threaten his brother by show of force. This is in harmony with the ḥadīth’s report that the place of the first engagement is “between Mecca and Medina”. Nonetheless, it records the name of this place as Baydāʾ and not Bayḍāʾ, but it is not hard to imagine how a tradent could have mistaken the two orthographically and metrically similar terms, especially given that there actually was a place called Baydāʾ located on the route connecting Medina to Mecca.Footnote 51 It must also be borne in mind that, semantically speaking, baydāʾ and bayḍāʾ could both signify the same thing, namely, “a barren piece of land”,Footnote 52 and this might have further helped with the confusion. It may, however, be objected that, if really so, at least one of the variants of this tradition must have recorded it as al-Bayḍāʾ, but it must be pointed out that the tradition has come down to us through a partially single chain of tradents. In such a case, an error committed by one of the single-chain tradents is the only thing that gets passed down the line of transmitters.Footnote 53 Finally, we must also take notice of Ibn Aʿtham's words which, revealingly, characterize the location of the incident as “between Mecca and Medina”, thereby putting to rest the (due) reservations expressed by Michael Cook.Footnote 54

Needless to say, the expedition of “Abū Yaksūm”Footnote 55 ended in disaster. Unays was killed along with, in Ibn Aʿtham's words, “a great number of his men” (fa-qutila min al-qawm maqtalatan ʿaẓīmatan),Footnote 56 and ʿAmr himself, deserted by those accompanying him, was taken captive. He was first sheltered by his other brother ʿUbayda, but ʿAbd Allāh handed him over to those who had suffered at his hands in Medina to exact their revenge on him. Al-Mundhir and his son forwent their right to revenge, so we are told, but others did not show much magnanimity towards him. He was beaten up and then thrown into a prison that came to bear the epithet of one of his own troops, a recalcitrant ghulām of the aforementioned Muṣʿab ibn ʿAbd al-RaḥmānFootnote 57 known as ʿĀrim – so called because of his wickedness in defecting to the side of his master's enemies – who was killed there in an ingenious manner.Footnote 58 Untreated, ʿAmr perished in prison as a result of his wounds, and his corpse was gibbeted on ʿAbd Allāh's orders.Footnote 59

Al-Ḥuṣayn ibn Numayr and the expedition of the Kalb

The second attempt by the Umayyads to quash Ibn al-Zubayr is very well known, but a few words about it are in order before closing our historical analysis. First, it is important to note that the mild tone of our ḥadīth when narrating this episode (fa-yaẓharūna ʿalayhim, “they will defeat them”) is a far cry from the triumphalist language it uses of the first expedition (fa-yukhsafu bihim; figuratively, “they will be wiped out”), in what seems to be an unmistakable allusion to the miserable fate of Unays’ detachment. This is consistent with what is reported for the expedition of al-Ḥuṣayn ibn Numayr: the Syrians had reduced Ibn al-Zubayr and his supporters to the Holy Sanctuary and its immediate environs by the time the news of Yazīd's sudden demise arrived, but with the death of their favoured contender there was no longer any point in fighting over the caliphate and they had to abandon the siege.Footnote 60 They were thus defeated in the strategic sense of the word, but far from wiped out.Footnote 61

Second, the ḥadīth boasts of the “booty of Kalb”. After hearing of Yazīd's death, al-Ḥuṣayn ordered a retreat towards Medina, but order in his army soon began to disintegrate and the stragglers were attacked and killed by bands of vengeful Ḥijāzīs.Footnote 62 Pseudo-Ibn Qutayba produces a report according to which the people of Medina took prisoner more than 400 men from this army. They were held captive in Medina until Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr arrived with orders from his brother ʿAbd Allāh to execute them all in al-Ḥarra, in an apparent retaliation for their sack of Medina in the aftermath of the battle of al-Ḥarra the previous year.Footnote 63 With morale at a low ebb, the breakdown of order in the retreating army was so complete that, as one eyewitness put it, “a baby girl could take away a horseman's belongings” (wa'llāhi in kānat al-walīda la-takhruju fa-taʾkhudhu al-fāris mā yamtaniʿu).Footnote 64 The Syrian army thus seems to have been not only raided, but also looted upon this retreat of 1812.

Third, the tradition speaks of a Qurashī man with a Kalbī mother and an army comprised of the Kalb. That Yazīd's mother was the daughter of a powerful family of Kalbī kingmakers is a well-established fact,Footnote 65 neither is there any question as to the prominent role the Kalb played in Syrian politics and in the Syrian army at this time.Footnote 66

To sum up, our ḥadīth retails the saga of a Medinan who goes to Mecca after the death of a caliph and receives the allegiance of (some) Meccans, then has to face two expeditions sent against him – the first consisting of Syrians to be “swallowed up” in the Baydāʾ between Medina and Mecca, the second consisting of Kalbīs and sent by a Qurashī who is a Kalbī on his mother's side. The ḥadīth’s protagonist will receive support from Syrians and Iraqis alike, “linger” for nine years,Footnote 67 and die. On the other hand, as we know from narrative sources, Ibn al-Zubayr fled Medina for Mecca upon the death of Muʿāwiya and, received the allegiance of many Meccans, “some secretly and others openly”, around the same time.Footnote 68 Then his partisans “soundly routed” the army of Umayyad mawālī, called “Syrian” by some and led by his own brother, in Dhū Ṭawī, just outside Mecca, and later withstood the predominantly Kalbī army of al-Ḥuṣayn ibn Numayr sent by Yazīd – who was a Qurashī on his father's side and a Kalbī on his mother's. He was subsequently recognized as caliph in all Iraqi and most Syrian garrison towns.Footnote 69 ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr was eventually killed after nine years of openly contending for the caliphate in 73 ah. Therefore, it now seems safe to assume that the episodes recounted by our tradition are, pace Madelung, entirely historical.

Appendix I: The Zubayrid propagandist

Confident that the tradition stems from the Basran milieu of 64 ah, Madelung identified the ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith in its isnād – who must have been its original disseminator – with ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Nawfal ibn al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the man who was elected as Basra's interim governor when ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Ziyād had to flee the town after Yazīd's death.Footnote 70 In that capacity he recognized Ibn al-Zubayr as caliph and received the pledge of allegiance from the Basrans on his behalf in 64 ah. But now it seems indisputable that the tradition in its present form postdates Ibn al-Zubayr's demise, and this poses a problem for Madelung's identification: not only is this ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith not known for having been an ardent supporter of Ibn al-Zubayr, having recognized him merely because he was the only contender left on the scene at the time, he was thrown into prison by his successor – Ibn al-Zubayr's appointee – and extorted of the money he had allegedly embezzled while governor.Footnote 71 This could hardly have made him daydream about his ephemeral and lukewarm association with the Zubayrid cause in later years and, therefore, we do not seem to stand on firm ground with regard to the identity of the propagandist responsible for the initial circulation of this tradition.Footnote 72

Be that as it may, a case could be made for another of Ibn al-Zubayr's governors of Basra, but this would require his given name and patronymic to have been transposed in the process of transmission. Al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Rabīʿa al-Makhzūmī was among the very first to offer his allegiance to Ibn al-Zubayr in the year 64Footnote 73 and remained one of his closest confidants throughout the duration of his reign. He was perhaps the only one in Ibn al-Zubayr's inner circle (setting aside his extended family) to survive the final Umayyad attack on Mecca in 73 ah.Footnote 74 In some reports, he is even said to have defended Ibn al-Zubayr against the charge of mendacity before ʿAbd al-Malik shortly after the latter's rebuilding of the KaʿbaFootnote 75 in 75 ah.Footnote 76 Above all, his name appears in compendia of apocalyptic aḥādīth, along with a number of prominent associates of Ibn al-Zubayr, in connection with traditions recounting the “swallowing up” of an army marching on the Meccan sanctuary.Footnote 77 In short, al-Ḥārith appears to have remained deeply committed to the memory of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr and his own role in what later became known as the “second fitna” to the very end. By his last act of tribute to this memory he unintentionally cast the future Mahdī, the awaited redeemer of Islam, in the mould of the “pious” caliph Ibn al-Zubayr.Footnote 78

Appendix II: The refugee at the sanctuary: a war of propaganda

In his analysis of this tradition, Madelung brought to light traditions of a similar texture which shared some basic elements with it. These traditions, which speak of the march of an army on the sanctuary in pursuit of a man of the Quraysh, an ʿāʾidh, who has sought refuge there, “were first put into circulation by ʿAbd Allah b. al-Zubayr and some of his most prominent backers at the time of the Syrian campaign against Medina and Mecca under Yazīd” and, Madelung argues, were incorporated by “ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥārith … in his own ḥadīth”.Footnote 79 If we replace the words “the Syrian campaign against Medina and Mecca” with “the expedition of ʿAmr ibn al-Zubayr”, there will be nothing in Madelung's conclusion with which we may not agree. There is, nevertheless, one element common to most versions of these “prototype” traditions that merits our further attention, and that is a preoccupation with those in the “army of khasf” who are accompanying it “against their own will” (kārihan) and will be killed in the event. These traditions invariably end with the narrator enquiring about the fate of this group and the prophet replying that they too will be killed, “but will be resurrected in the hereafter [and judged] according to their intent” (ʿalā niyyatihi).Footnote 80 As we have seen, there were people in ʿAmr's army who sympathized with ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr and were forcibly recruited, and at least some of these must have also been killed in Dhū Ṭawī. This element of the khasf-narratives hence seems to be an attempt to absolve these “collateral casualties” of any wrongdoing in having unwillingly accompanied ʿAmr's army and violating Mecca's sanctity.

These pro-Zubayrid traditions find an exceptionally noteworthy Syrian counterpart in Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād al-Marwazī’s collection which was undoubtedly put into circulation with the specific aim of nullifying their effect. It goes as follows:

al-Walīd ibn MuslimFootnote 81  < Ṣadaqa ibn KhālidFootnote 82  < ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ḤumaydFootnote 83  < MujāhidFootnote 84  < TubayʿFootnote 85

a seeker of refuge will take refuge in Mecca, but he will be killed. Then some time will pass until another one will [arise and] take refuge [there]. If you live until that time do not fight him, for it [viz., the army that fights him] will be the army of khasf (sa-yaʿūdhu bi-Makka ʿāʾidhun fa-yuqtalu; thumma yamkathu ’l-nās burhatan min dahrihim thumma yaʿūdhu ākharun, fa-in adraktahu fa-lā taghzuwannahu fa-innahu jaysh al-khasf).Footnote 86

This tradition, as we can gather from its chain of tradents, has its provenance in pro-Umayyad circles of Syria and would have done the Umayyads a twofold service, first by reassuring their supporters (as well as their enemies) that Ibn al-Zubayr would eventually be killed,Footnote 87 – a genuine prophecy which came to materialize over a decade later when al-Ḥajjāj's troops stormed the sacred precincts of the Kaʿba after a months-long siege – and then by proclaiming that the refugee at Mecca, predicted in the Zubayrid traditions, who would enjoy divine favour and whose enemies would be blotted out by divine wrath was not Ibn al-Zubayr, but another person, a second ʿāʾidh, who was yet to appear.Footnote 88 It was, in all likelihood, first propagated by Tubayʿ not long after the debacle of ʿAmr's expedition.Footnote 89 The testimony of pro-Syrian traditions related on his authority leaves little doubt as to where his sympathies lay.Footnote 90

The Second Civil War was not just about claims to the caliphate. It was also about claims to precedence in religion, closeness to the prophet, and ostentations of religious zeal. It was at this time that unequivocal professions of Islamic faith – including the name of Muḥammad – first appeared on a coinage, that of the Zubayrids.Footnote 91 Likewise, in our case it is only the Zubayrid tradition that attempts to include the prophet in its isnād, a pattern also to be observed in other Zubayrid propagandistic ḥadīthsFootnote 92 – though, of course, they were not the only, or even the first, group to do so.Footnote 93 The new paradigms thus brought about would remain in place for long after the close of the civil war, and the legacy of the Zubayrids thereby lingered on centuries after the defeat of their cause.Footnote 94

Footnotes

*

I should like to express my unqualified gratitude to Sean W. Anthony (Ohio State University), Mushegh Asatryan (University of Calgary), Ella Landau-Tasseron (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Ian D. Morris (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) for reading through various drafts of this paper and offering constructive suggestions. My thanks are also due to Hossein Sheikh (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) for encouraging me to finish this work. It goes without saying that I am solely responsible for all the remaining errors and infelicities.

References

1 See Wilferd Madelung, entries “Mahdī” and “Sufyānī” in EI2 . Elsewhere he cursorily suggests that this ḥadīth might have later played a role in giving rise to the belief in the Sufyānī, but this is doubtful; Madelung, “The Sufyānī between tradition and history”, Studia Islamica 63, 1986, 5–48 Google ScholarPubMed, 9–10; cf. my “The Sufyānī in early Islamic kerygma: an enquiry into his origins and early development”, forthcoming in JRAS.

2 My reconstruction is based on two editions: Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd (Beirut, n.d.); and Shuʿayb Arnāʾūṭ and Muḥammad Kāmil Qurrabalalī (Damascus, 1430/2009).

3 He is only mentioned as “a companion of Ṣāliḥ” in Abū Dāwūd's first narration; his name, however, appears in other isnād chains for the same ḥadīth; see also the asānīd of the other versions in Cook, Michael, “Eschatology and the dating of traditions”, in Motzki, H. (ed.), Ḥadīth: Origins and Developments (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 217–41 (p. 228)Google Scholar, originally published in Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies 1, 1992, 23–47.

4 While Madelung has opted to render the verb yukhrijūnahu by “they will make him rise in revolt”, I think the translation “they will take him out of his residence” better fits the context since the sentence seems to be primarily preoccupied with locations. Moreover, the fact that the tradition does not refer to the unnamed Qurashī opponent of its protagonist as caliph, whereas it does refer to the equally unnamed Muʿāwiya as such, in addition to the fact that he only shows up after the episode of the bayʿa, goes against Madelung's construal of the term khurūj as “rebellion” here.

5 Thus in the ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd edition, but not in the Arnāʾūṭ edition and most other compendia.

6 The ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd edition again has “between the Rukn and the Maqām” here.

7 ilā al-arḍ in the Arnāʾūṭ edition.

8 Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, ed. M.M. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, IV, 107–8; ed. S. Arnāʾūṭ and M.K. Qurrabalalī, VI, 344–6.

9 MacDonald, “Mahdī”, EI 1.

10 Attema, De Mohammedaansche Opvattingen omtrent het Tijdstip van den Jongsten Dag en zijn Voorteekenen (Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers, 1942; unfortunately this work has not been available to me).

11 Attema, apud Madelung, Wilferd, “ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr and the Mahdi”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40, 1981, 291–305 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 292).

12 Mention should also be made of Richard Hartmann who, apparently without knowing of Attema's work or having this particular tradition in mind, perceptively observed that “der Feldzug nach dem Ḥiǧāz, ganz unverkennbar – und zwar gewiß schon in der ursprünglichen Gestalt – den Ereignissen des Jahre 63/683 nachgebildet sind, was den Sufyānī … als Yazīd redivivus erscheinen läßt”. See his “Der Sufyānī”, in Studia Orientalia Ioanni Pedersen Septuagenario (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1953), 141–51Google Scholar, 148–9 (citing one of his earlier works).

13 Madelung, “ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr”, 293.

14 Alexander, “Medieval apocalypses as historical sources”, The American Historical Review 73, 1968, 997–1018 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, (p. 999); cf. also Rowland, Christopher, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London, 1982), 248–67Google Scholar. For the particular case of the Islamic apocalyptic tradition, see Cook, “Eschatology”, especially pp. 219–20.

15 For an instructive taxonomy of the content of an apocalyptic composition, see Collins, John J.’ editorial introduction to the classic volume Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre (Semeia 14, 1979), 1–20 Google Scholar; and now Collins, John J., “What is apocalyptic literature?”, in idem (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1–16 Google Scholar.

16 Or, in case one wishes to subscribe to the thesis that apocalypse is the literature of the times of crisis, without bearing any trace of having been composed under eschatological pressures. For a survey of the debates over the social setting and function of the genre “apocalyptic”, see Thompson, Leonard L., The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 25–34 Google Scholar. As will be seen, the tradition under discussion here actually falls under the category of a genre of great antiquity in the Near East, aptly dubbed “mantic historiography” by Matthew Neujahr; see his excellent monograph, Predicting the Past in the Ancient Near East: Mantic Historiography in Ancient Mesopotamia, Judah, and the Mediterranean World (Providence, RI: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012). Unfortunately, the study of apocalypticism in its Islamic context is still in its infancy and the investigation of its socio-historical setting(s) and the likely need for a redefinition of the genre in the light of the Islamic material are major desiderata of the field. Herein I work on the premise that the former is not much different in the case of the Islamic apocalyptic tradition. The following historical analysis, it will be seen, will not refute this premise, but a more in-depth study will be required before we take such paradigms for granted in the case of the Islamic endtimes literature as well.

17 Cook, “Eschatology”, 230.

18 For the political history of this period, see Gerald Hawting, R., The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate ad 661–750 (London: Routledge, 2000), 46–50 Google Scholar; Wellhausen, Julius, Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1960), 71–125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (English translation The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall [Calcutta, 1927], 133–200); Rotter, Gernot, Die Umayyaden und der zweite Bürgerkrieg (680–92) (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1982), 37–59 Google Scholar; Lammens, Henri, Le Califat Yazīd Ier (Beirut, 1921)Google Scholar; Ibn-Ḥusayn, Buthayna, al-Fitna al-thāniyya fī ʿahd al-khalīfa Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya, 60–64 H./680–684 M. (Beirut, 2013; not consulted)Google Scholar; Kister, Meir J., “The Battle of the Ḥarra: some socio-economic aspects”, in Rosen-Ayalon, M. (ed.), Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1977), 33–49 Google Scholar.

19 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa'l-mulūk, ed. Ibrāhīm, Muḥammad Abu'l-Faḍl (Cairo, 1387/1967), V, 338Google Scholar; al-Athīr, Ibn, al-Kāmil fi'l-taʾrīkh, ed. al-Qāḍī, Abi'l-Fidāʾ ʿAbd Allāh (Beirut, 1407/1987), III, 377Google Scholar; Kathīr, Ibn, al-Bidāya wa'l-nihāya, ed. Mastū, Muḥyī al-Dīn (Beirut and Damascus, 1431/2010), VIII, 213Google Scholar; al-Jawzī, Ibn, al-Muntaẓam fī taʾrīkh al-mulūk wa'l-umam, ed. ʿAṭā, Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir and ʿAṭā, Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir (Beirut, 1415/1995), V, 322Google Scholar.

20 Khayyāṭ, Khalīfa ibn, Taʾrīkh, ed. al-ʿUmarī, Akram Ḍiyāʾ (Riyadh, 1405/1985), 229, 231Google Scholar (where thumma nuziʿa ʿAmr ʿan al-Madīna fī sanat sittīn after the notice on al-Ḥusayn's death should obviously read iḥdā wa-sittīn), 233, 235, 254; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 343, 399, 474, 477; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 380, 405, 446–8; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 215 (putting ʿAmr's arrival at either Ramaḍān or Dhu'l-Qaʿda), 245, 297; pseudo-Ibn Qutayba al-Dīnawarī, al-Imāma wa'l-siyāsa, ed. Shīrī, ʿAlī (Beirut, 1410/1990), II, 5–6 Google Scholar (in spite of an earlier confused report in ibid., I, 227); Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, V, 324, 329; al-Makkī, ʿUmar ibn Fahd, Itḥāf al-warā bi-akhbār umm al-qurā, ed. Shaltūt, Fahīm Muḥammad (Cairo, 1404/1983), II, 56Google Scholar; Rabbihi, Ibn ʿAbd, al-ʿIqd al-Farīd, ed. al-Tarḥīnī, ʿAbd al-Majīd (Beirut, 1404/1983), V, 125Google Scholar. Here it must be noted that despite the insistence of al-Ṭabarī and a few others (al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 477; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 298; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, V, 348; al-Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh, ed. Muhannā, ʿAbd al-Amīr [Beirut 1431/2010], II, 169Google Scholar) that in 61 the ḥajj was led by al-Walīd, one report indicates that Yazīd's decree arrived late and ʿAmr himself led the pilgrimage that year (Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 56, citing Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī). The situation at the end of 61 provides a better context for the report that both ʿAmr and Ibn al-Zubayr openly bore arms while performing the ḥajj rites (Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, V, 325), and this, in turn, lends some credence to Ibn Fahd's statement.

21 K.V. Zetterstéen, “al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr”, EI2 ; Rotter, Die Umayyaden, 38.

22 My summary account follows Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī’s version which is the least fragmentary and most coherent; Aʿtham, Ibn, Kitāb al-Futūḥ, ed. Shīrī, ʿAlī (Beirut, 1411/1991), V, 150–3Google Scholar; for incentives, see Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ, Taʾrīkh, 252, who alleges that Yazīd even offered to make him his governor of Ḥijāz (mentioning it after a brief report on the fire of the Kaʿba); reproduced in al-Ishbīlī, Ibn Raʾs Ghanama, Manāqil al-durar wa-manāqib al-zahar, ed. al-Rāshid, Khālid ʿAbd al-Jabbār Shayt (Baghdad, 1429/2008), 71Google Scholar. For the mission, see ibid., 70 (places it after al-Nuʿmān's mission to Medina and before the battle of the Ḥarra), 71 (produces three different reports); Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ, Taʾrīkh, 251–2; al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, ed. Zakkār, Suhayl and Ziriklī, Riyāḍ (Beirut, 1417/1996), V, 323–5Google Scholar (reporting two delegations), 327, 337 (placing it after ʿAmr's expedition); al-Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh, II, 161; al-Dīnawarī, Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd, al-Akhbār al-ṭiwāl, ed. al-Rāfiʿī, Muḥammad Saʿīd (Cairo, 1330/1912), 259–60Google Scholar (placing it immediately before Muslim ibn ʿUqba's expedition); al-Fākihī, Akhbār Makka fī qadīm al-dahr wa-ḥadīthihi, ed. ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Duhaysh (Beirut, 1414/1994), II, 352Google Scholar; Abu'l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-Aghānī, ed. ʿAbbās, Iḥsān, al-Saʿāfīn, Ibrāhīm, and ʿAbbās, Bakr (Beirut, 1429/2008), I, 37Google Scholar (placing it exactly one year after al-Ḥusayn's death); Abu'l-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad al-Bayyāsī, al-Iʿlām bi'l-ḥurūb al-wāqiʿa fī ṣadr al-Islām, ed. Maḥmūd, Shafīq Jāsir Aḥmad (Amman, 1987), I, 98–9Google Scholar; Saʿd, Ibn, al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, ed. ʿUmar, ʿAlī Muḥammad (Cairo, 1421/2001), VI, 478Google Scholar; ʿAsākir, Ibn, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, ed. al-ʿAmrawī, Muḥibb al-Dīn (Beirut, 1415/1995), XXVIII, 208, 210Google Scholar; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344, 476; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 55; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 447–8; al-Azraqī, Akhbār Makka wa-mā jāʾa fīhā min al-āthār, ed. ʿAbd al-Malik ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Duhaysh (Mecca, 1424/2003), 295Google Scholar; al-Dīnawarī, Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār (Cairo, 1343/1925), I, 196Google Scholar; ʿUqba, Mūsā ibn, Kitāb al-Maghāzī, ed. Mālik, Muḥammad Abū (Agadir, 1414/1994), 350–51Google Scholar.

23 Wellhausen, Das arabische Reich, 92–4 (Arab Kingdom, 148–50), contends that al-Nuʿmān only undertook one mission to the Ḥijāz, in the year 63 ah, to dissuade the people of Medina from rebelling, arguing that two distinct missions are unlikely to have taken place in such a short time (though he does accept a different version of the first mission to Ibn al-Zubayr as historical). But if al-Nuʿmān's first mission had taken place before ʿAmr ibn al-Zubayr's expedition to Mecca, which stands to reason, and if the governor who had despatched the expedition was ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd (disallowing the incorrect report in al-Masʿūdī, Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar, ed. Marʿī, Kamāl Ḥasan [Beirut, 1425/2005], III, 68Google Scholar), both events must have taken place during 61 ah, since ʿAmr al-Ashdaq was dismissed from his post at the beginning of Dhu'l-Ḥijja of this year (see n. 20 above). Thus, pace Wellhausen, there was a timespan of about two years between the two missions. Furthermore, while most sources mention other people along with al-Nuʿmān as taking part in the first mission, we do not hear of anyone else in the context of the second one. Rotter, Die Umayyaden, 43–4, on the other hand, thinks that there were two separate delegations apart from that of the year 63, both of which included al-Nuʿmān, with the second having taken place “zeitlich kurz vor oder kurz nach der gescheiterten Expedition des ʿAmr b. az-Zubair” – which he places at early to mid-681 ce (61 ah). Obviously, this could hardly have been the case, as al-Nuʿmān would have had to embark on two missions within a timespan of less than a year, and we still have to set aside some time for his departure from Iraq and the preparations made for ʿAmr's expedition. In any case, it is evident that the two missions reported for the year 61 ah in some sources are, in fact, two strands of tradition about the same event.

24 Muṣʿab had retained this post since Marwān's second governorship under Muʿāwiya (54–7 ah); al-Zubayrī, Muṣʿab, Nasab Quraysh, ed. Lévi-Provençal, É. (Cairo, 1953), 268Google Scholar.

25 An Umayyad on his mother's side and a second cousin of ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd; al-Zubayrī, Nasab, 214–5; Ḥazm, Ibn, Jamharat ansāb al-ʿArab, ed. Hārūn, ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad (Cairo, 1382/1962), 81Google Scholar.

26 It was said of him that “ʿAmr is not spoken to; anybody who speaks to him will regret it” (ʿAmr lā yukallamu, man yukallimhu yandam); al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 328; see also al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-Islām wa-wafayāt al-mashāhīr wa'l-aʿlām, ed. Maʿrūf, Bashshār ʿAwwād (Beirut, 1424/2003), II, 689Google Scholar.

27 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344; Ibn Raʾs Ghanama, Manāqil, 71; al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 328; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 215–6; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 380; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 49; Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, VI, 479.

28 Ibn Aʿtham, al-Futūḥ, V, 152–3; al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 327; and al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344, imply that Yazīd ordered Ibn al-Zubayr's arrest immediately after the delegation returned from Mecca.

29 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 380; cf. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 216; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 49.

30 In translating riḍā as such I am following Crone, Patricia, “On the meaning of the ‘Abbasid call to al-riḍā ”, in Bosworth, C.E. et al. (eds), The Islamic World, from Classical to Modern Times: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lewis (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1989), 95–111 Google Scholar.

31 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 478–9; cf. also Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 303; al-Bayyāsī, al-Iʿlām, I, 101; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, VI, 6.

32 Pseudo-Ibn Qutayba, al-Imāma, II, 6: fa-ḍaraba ʿalā ahl al-dīwān al-baʿth ilā Makka wa-hum kārihūna li'l-khurūj fa-qāla lahum immā an taʾtū bi-badalin wa-immā an takhrujū; the same is reported by al-Tamīmī, Abu'l-ʿArab, Kitāb al-Miḥan, ed. al-Jabbūrī, Yaḥyā Wahīb (Beirut, 1427/2006), 130Google Scholar; Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi, al-ʿIqd al-Farīd, v, 126 (where bi-adillāʾ[?] should read bi-budalāʾ). Cf. al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 328, who reports that wa-kāna akthar al-jaysh budalāʾ min al-ʿaṭāʾ wa-julluhum yahwana ’bna al-Zubayr ʿAbd Allāh. On the practice of hiring substitutes for participating in campaigns, see Bonner, Michael, “ Jaʿāʾil and holy war in early Islam”, Der Islam 68, 1991, 45–64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 47–9 (where the aforecited passage from al-Balādhurī has been misconstrued and misplaced in the reign of ʿUthmān).

33 fa-akhraja [ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd] li-ahl al-dīwān ʿasharāt wa-kharaja min mawālī ahl al-Madīna nāsun kathīrun; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344.

34 A rough estimate of the number of Umayyad mawālī in Medina at the time is provided by the reports that al-Walīd arrested 300 of ʿAmr al-Ashdaq's mawālī and ghulāms shortly after Yazīd reinstated him as governor of Medina at the end of 61; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 303; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, VI, 6; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 478; cf. also Kister, “Battle of Ḥarra”, 44–7 (see p. 46 and n. 67 thereto on this particular episode). Some accounts of the Medinan uprising of 63 indicate that the number of Umayyads and their mawālī besieged in Marwān's residence was well over a thousand, perhaps even as much as three thousand; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 455; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 308; Abu'l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, al-Aghānī, I, 39; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, VI, 12; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 483; Ibn Raʾs Ghanama, Manāqil, 72; al-Bayyāsī, al-Iʿlām, I, 107, 109; cf. also al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 345–6.

35 al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 330.

36 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344 (see n. 33 above).

37 For the number of men in Unays’ contingent, see al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344 (the number of 2,000 in ibid., 347, seems to be a confusion with the rounded-up number of all the men in ʿAmr's army); Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XLVI, 9; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 380; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 216; Ibn Raʾs Ghanama, Manāqil, 71 (who adds that Unays’ troops were cavalrymen); Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, V, 324; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 49. By taking the figures reported by ancient authorities at face value the historian is always at risk of sounding credulous, especially since the publication of Conrad, Lawrence I.'s “Seven and the tasbīʿ: on the implications of numerical symbolism for the study of medieval Islamic history”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 31, 1988, 42–73 Google Scholar, but it must be noted that my argument does not hinge upon the exactitude of these figures – the only thing of importance here is the appreciable presence of Umayyad mawālī in this army.

38 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 345; cf. Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 216.

39 al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, v, 330; Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, VI, 480; VII, 184; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344–5; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XLVI, 9–10; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, V, 325; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 216; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 380; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 52; al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh, II, 690.

40 Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, VI, 479; VII, 184; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XLVI, 10; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 50; al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh, II, 689.

41 Madelung, “ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr”, 296.

42 al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, v, 334; contra Crone, Patricia, “Were the Qays and Yemen of the Umayyad period political parties?”, Der Islam 71, 1994, 1–57, 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 211, who thinks they could have been raised in Syria.

43 Hawting, “The Umayyads and the Ḥijāz”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 2, 1972, 39–46 Google Scholar (p. 42); Haldon and Kennedy, “Regional identity and military power: Byzantium and Islam ca. 600–750”, in Pohl, W., Gantner, C., and Payne, R. (eds), Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100 (Farnham, 2012), 317–53Google Scholar (p. 344).

44 Shayba, Ibn Abī, Muṣannaf, ed. Abī Muḥammad Usāma ibn Ibrāhīm (Cairo, 1429/2008), XIII, 258Google Scholar.

45 Very possibly in a contemptuous vein, given the high level of regional antagonism between the Syrian metropolis and the regions relegated to peripheral status at this time. The palpability of such regional rivalries in this period may be surmised from the circulation of early traditions glorifying certain cities (Damascus, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Kūfa) – on which see Kister, Meir J., “‘You shall only set out for three mosques’: a study of an early tradition”, Le Muséon 82, 1969, 173–96Google Scholar (note especially the traditions underscoring the primacy of the Meccan sanctuary on the authority of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr cited on p. 188); Khalek, Nancy, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 135–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. also Mehdy Shaddel, “Yazid I b. Moʿāwiya”, Encyclopaedia Iranica.

46 al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 330; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344–5; Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, VI, 479–80; VII, 184; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 50–51; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 380; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 216; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, V, 324; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XLVI, 10; al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh, 689–90. In the prelude to the campaign, al-Ṭabarī (reproduced almost verbatim by Ibn Kathīr and Ibn al-Jawzī) also states that “ʿAmr encamped in al-Jurf”, either a place in the north of Medina or somewhere near Mecca. In any event, the significance of this report is unclear to me. Al-Balādhurī also mentions al-Ḥajūn, which, per al-Ḥamawī, Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān (Beirut, 1977/1397), II, 225Google Scholar, is the highest point of Mecca, and thus could be a place adjacent to Dhū Ṭawī.

47 Yāqūt, Muʿjam, IV, 51, s.v. “al-Ṭawī”.

48 Yāqūt, Muʿjam, I, 530.

49 Yāqūt, Muʿjam, II, 85.

50 Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. al-Bāqī, Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd (Beirut, 1412/1991), II, 919Google Scholar; under “bāb istiḥbāb al-mabīt bi-Dhī Ṭawī ʿinda irādat dukhūl Makka wa'l-ightisāl li-dukhūlihā wa-dukhūlihā al-nahār”. The ḥadīth could be found in most other compendia under similar headings. I must emphasize that the authenticity or otherwise of the ḥadīth could barely have any bearing on the accuracy of the information it imparts with respect to Meccan geography.

51 Yāqūt, Muʿjam, I, 523, states that it is closer to Mecca, contra Cook, “Eschatology”, 230, who thinks it is located “just south of Medina”.

52 Lane, An Arabic–English Lexicon, s.v. “b-y-d” (“a desert, a plain wherein is nothing”) and “b-y-ḍ” (“smooth land, in which is no herbage”).

53 See the analysis and diagram in Cook, “Eschatology”, 226–8.

54 Ibn Aʿtham, al-Futūḥ, V, 153; cf. Cook, “Eschatology”, 230.

55 This is the epithet given to ʿAmr by his brother ʿAbd Allāh in Ibn Saʿd's account, after he was captured in Mecca, in an evident reference to Abraha, the Aksumite king of South Arabia who, per the tradition, led an expedition to Mecca in the year of Muḥammad's birth but was defeated by a swarm of birds which rained stones on his army; Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, VII, 185; see also Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XLVI, 11. A similar pejorative reference is made to Muslim ibn ʿUqba upon being appointed commander of the army that was to attack Medina and Mecca in pseudo-Ibn Qutayba, al-Imāma, II, 14, 15; al-Bayhaqī, Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad, al-Maḥāsin wa'l-masāwī, ed. Ibrāhīm, Muḥammad Abu'l-Faḍl (Cairo, 1380/1961), I, 59, 61Google Scholar; and al-Bayyāsī, al-Iʿlām, I, 128.

56 Ibn Aʿtham, al-Futūḥ, V, 153. Cf. al-Ṭabarī, fa-qutila Unays ibn ʿAmr wa'l-Muhājir mawlā al-Qalammas fī nāsin kathīrin; Taʾrīkh, V, 346.

57 Or, according to al-Ṭabarī and al-Balādhurī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥārith; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 346 (who mistakenly calls him Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith); al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 331.

58 Sean Anthony, W., “The Meccan prison of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr and the imprisonment of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya”, in Pomerantz, Maurice and Shahin, Aram (eds), The Heritage of Arabo-Islamic Learning: Studies Presented to Wadad Kadi (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 3–29 (pp. 5–10)Google Scholar.

59 al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 328–33; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 344–7; Ibn Aʿtham, al-Futūḥ, V, 153–4; Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, VI, 480–1; VII, 184–5; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, V, 325; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 380–1; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, VIII, 216; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 52–3; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XLVI, 9–11; al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh, 689–90; Ibn Raʾs Ghanama, Manāqil, 71. Muṣʿab al-Zubayrī knows of ʿAmr's demise in his brother's prison but, as befits a descendant of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr, not of its cause; al-Zubayrī, Nasab, 178.

60 Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi, al-ʿIqd al-farīd, V, 141–2; Ibn Fahd, Itḥāf, II, 61, 63; cf. al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 362–3; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 501; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, VI, 23.

61 Pace Madelung, “ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr”, 297.

62 al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, V, 503; followed by Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, III, 468; and Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, VI, 24.

63 Pseudo-Ibn Qutayba, al-Imāma, II, 17. These, however, may have been taken prisoner during the incident at Rabadha the next year; see al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 374; VI, 292–3.

64 Pseudo-Ibn Qutayba, al-Imāma, II, 20.

65 For the family, see Crone, Patricia, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 93–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 See, inter alia, Patricia Crone, “Qays and Yemen”, 44–9.

67 As Cook has observed, mistaking nine for seven is “a familiar graphic confusion” in Arabic and “it is even odds that nine is the original figure”; Cook, “Eschatology”, 230.

68 Note ʿAmr al-Ashdaq's words above. There are in fact a whole host of reports stating that allegiance was pledged to Ibn al-Zubayr, albeit behind the doors, during Yazīd's lifetime. I hope to take up this issue in a future study.

69 For his base of support, see A. Dietrich, “al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Ḳays al-Fihrī”, EI2 ; Sandra Campbell, “ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr”, EI3 ; as well as the works cited in n. 18 above.

70 On the circumstances surrounding his election, see Crone, Patricia, “ Shūrā as an elective institution”, Quaderni di Studi Arabi 19, 2001, 3–39, 23–4Google Scholar.

71 For his life and career, see Madelung, “ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr”, 297–305.

72 In his entry for the “Mahdī” in EI2 , V, 1232, however, Madelung backtracks on his earlier view and concludes that, in the light of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥārith's political nonchalance, “it is in fact unlikely that he was responsible for this ḥadīth”.

73 Wa-kāna ʿAbd Allāh ibn Ṣafwān asraʿ al-nās ilā bayʿatihi, thumma ʿUbayd ibn ʿUmayr wa-ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muṭīʿ al-ʿAdawī wa'l-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Rabīʿa; al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, V, 371.

74 The date of his death is not known but he is not mentioned among those killed during the attack, is said to have had an audience with ʿAbd al-Malik sometime after the civil war, and, according to one report cited by al-Balādhurī, al-Walīd broke the news of his death to his father ʿAbd al-Malik, to the latter's regret; see n. 75.

75 al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, X, 187–8 (fails to report the context of his defence of Ibn al-Zubayr); al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh, II, 927; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XI, 437–47; al-Ṣanʿānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, ed. al-Aʿẓamī, Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān (Beirut, 1392/1972), V, 127–8Google Scholar; al-Azraqī, Akhbār Makka, I, 306–7; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, II, 971–2.

76 A hugely significant recent epigraphic find dates the event to the year 78 ah. The otherwise mundane inscription thus reads in the last three lines: kutiba hādhā al-kitāb / ʿāma buniya ’l-masjid al-ḥarām / li-sanat thamān wa-sabʿīn; see al-Ḥārithī, Nāṣir ibn ʿAlī, “Naqsh kitābī nādir yuʾarrikhu ʿimārat al-khalīfa al-umawī ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān li'l-masjid al-ḥarām”, ʿĀlam al-makhṭūṭāt wa'l-nawādir 12 (1428/2007), 533–43Google Scholar.

77 Madelung, “ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr”, 295; see also Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XI, 438–9. Madelung, rightly, identified these traditions as further pieces of Zubayrid propaganda.

78 For more insights into the Zubayrid art of the construction of the past, see Sandra S. Campbell, Telling Memories: The Zubayrids in Islamic Historical Memory, unpublished PhD dissertation (University of California, Los Angeles, 2003).

79 Madelung, “ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Zubayr”, 296.

80 See, for example, Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, IV, 2209.

81 Damascene, a mawlā of the Umayyads (d. c. 194 ah); see Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, LXIII, 274–95. For his exact date of death, see ibid., XLIII, 27 (in any event before the revolt of Abu'l-ʿAmayṭar ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khālid ibn Yazīd al-Sufyānī in 195, about which ex eventu prophecies were spuriously disseminated on his authority – certainly because of his reputation as a pro-Umayyad visionary).

82 Damascene, a mawlā of the Umayyads (d. c. 180 ah); Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XXIV, 9–16.

83 Misidentified by Bashear, Suliman, “Muslim apocalypses and the hour: a case-study in traditional reinterpretation”, Israel Oriental Studies 13, 1993, 75–99 (p. 89)Google Scholar, as the grandson of the celebrated companion ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf and the originator of the tradition. However, this ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, according to Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, VII, 466, had died at the beginning of al-Manṣūr's reign and, hence, before the events Bashear envisages as the tradition's historical context (see n. 88). The tradent remains unidentified.

84 There is some confusion with regard to his identity, arising from the similarity in the patronymic of the celebrated Meccan qāriʾ and mufassir Mujāhid ibn Jabr and a certain Mujāhid ibn Jubayr of whom nothing is known (Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, LVII, 17 ff.). The death date of 130 ah recorded for Mujāhid by Ibn ʿAsākir (Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt, LVII, 24) apparently belongs to this latter, for there is another tradition in Nuʿaym related from Tubayʿ on his authority which “foretells” the demise of the Umayyad dynasty and decidedly originates from the chaos of the Third Civil War (126–9 ah). With Tubayʿ having died long before, this tradition must go back to Mujāhid himself; see Ḥammād, Nuʿaym ibn, Kitāb al-Fitan, ed. al-Zuhayrī, Samīr ibn Amīn (Cairo, 1412/1991), 196Google Scholar (with a mutilated version on p. 132).

85 Stepson of the Jewish rabbi Kaʿb al-Aḥbār and hence a magnet for apocalyptic prophecies. He dwelt in Syria after the Muslim conquest of that territory, moved to Egypt in his later years, and died in Alexandria c. 101 ah; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, XI, 26–35.

86 Nuʿaym, al-Fitan, 327–8.

87 Ibn al-Zubayr's self-designation of “a seeker of refuge in the sanctuary” (ʿāʾidhun bi'l-bayt) is too well known to allow for the identification of the tradition's first character with any other person, a fact which could not possibly have been lost on its disseminator(s) and their audience.

88 The tradition has been misidentified by Bashear (“Muslim apocalypses”, 89) as echoing the events of the rebellion of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, a strange identification given that he rebelled, and was killed, in Medina. It goes without saying that he never called himself, and was not called, an ʿāʾidh, nor did he ever went to “take refuge” in Mecca. On him, see Elad, Amikam, “The rebellion of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan (known as al-Nafs al-Zakīya) in 145/762”, in Montgomery, James E. (ed.), Occasional Papers of the School of ‘Abbasid Studies: Cambridge, 6–10 July 2002 (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 147–98Google Scholar; and now Elad, Amikam, The Rebellion of Muḥammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya in 145/762: Ṭālibīs and Early ʿAbbāsīs in Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 2016)Google Scholar.

89 It must be conceded that Mujāhid remains a candidate, though if so he must have had a floruit spanning well over six decades. It is also possible that the isnād is wholly spurious, but in that case Tubayʿ’s name was most likely used to serve as the emblem of pro-Syrian factionalism – as well as because of his reputation as a seer. In any event, the tradition's provenance in circles close to the Umayyad court could hardly be disputed.

90 See, for example, Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, I, 207, 287 (on Mujāhid's authority).

91 Heidemann, Stefan, “The evolving representation of the early Islamic empire and its religion on coin imagery”, in Neuwirth, A., Sinai, N. and Marx, M. (eds), The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 149–95 (pp. 166–9)Google Scholar.

92 A tradition on the authority of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr himself has the prophet pronounce, “the eschaton (al-sāʿa) will come about after the appearance of thirty impostors (thalāthūna kadhdhāban), among them Musaylima, al-ʿAnsī, and al-Mukhtār. And the most nefarious (sharr) of all Arab tribes are the Banū Umayya, Banū Ḥanīfa, and Thaqīf” – the last two being the tribes of Musaylima and al-Mukhtār; recorded by, among others, al-Bayhaqī, Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa, ed. Qalʿajī, ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī (Beirut, 1408/1988), VI, 480–81Google Scholar. After Ibn al-Zubayr's death al-Ḥajjāj went to visit his bereaved mother, Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr, as a gesture, only to be told by her that she heard the prophet say, “there shall come from the Thaqīf an impostor and a butcher” (mubīr). She then continued, “we have already seen the impostor”, meaning al-Mukhtār, “as for the butcher, it is you!” Al-Ḥajjāj confirmed, “butcher of hypocrites!” See, among others, al-Bayhaqī, Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa, 481–2. Ibn al-Zubayr also ascribed traditions on the authority of ʿĀʾisha to the prophet so as to legitimize his rebuilding and restructuring of the Kaʿba, on which now see Hawting, Gerald, “‘A plaything for kings’: ʿĀʾisha’s ḥadīth, Ibn al-Zubayr and rebuilding the Kaʿba”, in Daneshgar, Majid and Saleh, Walid A. (eds), Islamic Studies Today: Essays in Honor of Andrew Rippin (Leiden, 2017), 3–21 Google Scholar, especially 20–1.

93 A Syrian tradition has it that during the siege of ʿUthmān's house it was suggested to him that, among other options, he could flee to Mecca, but he rejected it because he had heard the prophet say, “a man of the Quraysh shall commit indecency (yulḥidu) in Mecca and [because of it] he shall carry the burden of half of the sins of the world”, and that he did not want to be that man; Ḥanbal, Aḥmad ibn, Musnad, ed. ʿAṭā, Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir (Beirut, 1429/2008), I, 210Google Scholar; see also Madelung, Wilferd, “ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr the mulḥid ”, in Benito, Concepción Vázquez de and Rodríguez, Miguel Ángel Manzano (eds), Actas XVI Congreso UEAI (Salamanca: CSIC, 1995), 301–8 (pp. 307–8)Google Scholar. The bestowal of the epithet of mulḥid upon Ibn al-Zubayr by his enemies was evidently motivated by Quran 22:25.

94 For more on the developments of the Islamic cultus in the immediate wake of the Second Civil War and the possible influence of Zubayrid experimentations on it, see Robinson, Chase F., ‘Abd al-Malik (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005), 90–128 Google Scholar et passim.