After Marwan’s accession to the caliphate in 684 all of the remainder of the Umayyad caliphs were descended directly from him. It is remarkable that his son ‘Abd al-Malik (caliph 685–705) was himself succeeded in the caliphate by no fewer than four of his own sons, the succession of the brothers continuing down until 743 and being interrupted only by the brief caliphate of their cousin ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (717–20).1 ‘Abd al-Malik’s immediate successor was his eldest son al-Walid I (705–15) and his rule seems hardly differentiated from that of his father, for, almost from the time when the civil war ended until shortly before the death of al-Walid, the dominant figure in the sources is the governor of Iraq and viceroy of the east al-Hajjaj (governor 694–714). Like his predecessor Ziyad, we tend to hear more about him than about the caliphs in Syria and he thus serves to give a unity to the period of ‘Abd al-Malik and al-Walid. This period, although not without its problems for the government, was in some ways the high point of Umayyad power, witnessing significant territorial advances both in the east and the west and the emergence of a more marked Arabic and Islamic character in the state’s public face. Before discussing the period following the civil war, however, there are some developments in the earlier part of ‘Abd al-Malik’s caliphate which need to be noted.
First, the grip of the Marwanids on the caliphate was tightened. At the meeting which discussed the future of the caliphate before Marj Rahit in 684 the Marwanids had not been the only branch of the Umayyad family in contention, and acceptance of Marwan seems to have been secured only at the price of guarantees regarding the future right of succession of some of the other contenders. The claims of the surviving members of the family of Yazid b. Mu‘awiya may have been sidestepped by Marwan’s marriage to Yazid’s widow Fakhita. Indeed some sources say that Marwan’s refusal to honour the promises he had made about the succession of Khalid the son of Yazid led Fakhita to poison her new husband. A stronger rival of Marwan was ‘Amr b. Sa‘id al-Ashdaq of another branch of the Umayyad family, whose seniority was indicated by the fact that he had been governor of Medina for a while under Yazid. When ‘Abd al-Malik succeeded Marwan, ‘Amr felt that the guarantees made before Marj Rahit had not been honoured, and, in 689–90, taking advantage of the absence of ‘Abd al-Malik in the field against the Zubayrids, he revolted and seized Damascus. ‘Abd al-Malik had to abandon his expedition and on his return to Damascus he had ‘Amr b. Sa‘id killed, apparently after promising him a safe conduct.2
Marwan had planned it that he should be succeeded by his two sons, ‘Abd al-Malik and ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, one after the other, and had had the oath of allegiance taken for them while he still ruled. When ‘Abd al-Malik became caliph his brother ‘Abd al-‘Aziz was appointed to be his governor of Egypt. There then arose a tension, which became quite common in the Marwanid period, between the ruler’s desire to pass on the caliphate to his own children and the previous caliph’s arrangement of the succession. ‘Abd al-Malik tried without success to get ‘Abd al-‘Aziz to give up his claims to the caliphate, and it was only the death of the latter shortly before that of the caliph which prevented a possible dispute over this question. In view of the potentiality for conflict inherent in the lack of a fixed order of succession to the caliphate in the Umayyad period, it is remarkable how seldom real trouble developed from it. When it did, as in the third civil war following che death of Hisham in 743, it was because the succession issue was bound up with others.
Apart from the difficulties caused by the feuds between Kalb and Qays after the battle of Marj Rahit, which continued in Syria and Mesopotamia even after the ending of the second civil war, the other important and interesting occurrence involving ‘Abd al-Malik in the early part of his caliphate was his building of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The original inscription which he had put inside the Dome tells us that it was built by ‘Abd al-Malik in the year 72 (that is, AD 692). In spite of a recent attempt to argue that this date refers to the beginning of the building, it is more likely, and is generally accepted, that it is the date of its completion. In other words, the conception and construction of the Dome occurred while the second civil war was still in progress, while Arabia and Iraq were still in the hands of the Zubayrids. K.A.C.Cresswell suggested a date between 684 and 687 for the beginning of the building.
The Dome of the Rock has been the subject of considerable speculation and controversy. We have no clear and uncontestable statement about why ‘Abd al-Malik built it, what function the building was intended to have (it is not, for example, a mosque), the significance of the site which it occupies (it may be questioned whether the traditional association between the rock over which it is built and the miraculous ascension of Muhammad to heaven, the mi‘raj, existed at the time when it was built), or its relationship to other Muslim sacred places and buildings. Attention has centred especially on this last question. Some of the Muslim sources say that it was built to provide a focus for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem which would rival the Ka‘ba at Mecca, at that time under Ibn al-Zubayr’s control. While some modern scholars have accepted this view, and sought to relate the Dome to what they saw as a more general Umayyad policy to build up the religious significance of Jerusalem at the expense of the holy places in the Hijaz, others have argued that it relies too much on the tendentious anti-Umayyad outlook of the Muslim tradition. If the Dome was meant or used as a centre of pilgrimage, the latter argue, this could only have been intended as a temporary measure, since no Muslim ruler could risk being regarded as an enemy of the pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj), one of the five ‘pillars of Islam’ and a fundamental duty which had been imposed in the time of the Prophet. Those who adopt this latter position tend to see the Dome as an expression of cultural and religious assertiveness on the part of ‘Abd al-Malik directed particularly at the Christians, the previously dominant religious group in Syria. Some support for this interpretation can be gathered from passages in some sources and from the inscriptions of the Dome itself.3
Nevertheless, to interpret the Dome as primarily an expression of Muslim self-confidence, or as an attempt to outshine the Christian religious buildings of Jerusalem and Syria, possibly underestimates the significance of the site on which it was built and isolates it from other developments involving the sanctuary in the second civil war. Whatever specifically Muslim associations came to be attached to the rock over which the Dome was built, at the time it was generally held, by Muslims, Jews and Christians, to be part of the ancient Jewish Temple of Jerusalem. As such it had great cosmological significance and was regarded as the centre of the world, although Christians had transferred several of the cosmological notions to Christian holy places such as the church of the Holy Sepulchre and Mount Calvary. This alone makes it likely that the Dome of the Rock was to have a unique importance. In addition, Jewish apocalyptic ideas expected the coming of a king who would restore the Temple (destroyed by the Romans in AD 70), and it seems likely that ‘Abd al-Malik’s uniquely magnificent edifice would be put in this context. Finally, it has already been noted that Ibn al-Zubayr seems to have identified himself with the Ka‘ba at Mecca and that the second civil war saw the repeated demolition and rebuilding of Ibn al-Zubayr’s sanctuary. It seems logical, therefore, to see the building of the Dome of the Rock against the background of arguments about the sanctuary in the second civil war and to see it as a contender for the role of the Muslim sanctuary. That it did not achieve this status, and that when Mecca came under Umayyad control its Ka‘ba was accepted as the sanctuary by all Muslims, need not reflect on ‘Abd al-Malik’s intentions when he built it.
Whatever the significance of the Dome of the Rock at the time when it was built, it stands out as one of the earliest surviving concrete expressions of the new religion and civilisation of Islam which was beginning to emerge in the lands which had been conquered by the Arabs. Apart from its innovative architecture (which is not to say, of course, that it is unrelated to previous architecture), two things in particular are noteworthy. First, the inscriptions in the Dome contained passages which may be recognised, in spite of one or two minor variants from the Koran as we know it, as Koranic. These are the earliest securely datable examples of Koranic texts to have survived. Secondly, the texts refer to Islam as ‘the religion of truth’, and this is the first certain evidence of Islam as the name of the religion of the Arabs; earlier non-Muslim literary texts do not call the Arabs Muslim or refer to their religion as Islam.4
The early Marwanid period saw a gradual move away from the indirect system of rule of the Sufyanids to a more centralised and direct form of government. The middlemen, the ashraf and the various non-Arab notables, who had stood between the government and the subjects, were replaced by officials more directly responsible to the caliph and his governors. The stimulus for this, no doubt, was provided by the second civil war when loyalty to the Umayyads had proved so fragile, and the weaknesses thus revealed were underlined by subsequent events, especially the revolt of Ibn al-Ash‘ath (see below) in the early eighth century, when the hostility of the ashraf was against manifested. Furthermore, numbers of non-Arabs now began to accept Islam and become mawali while many Arabs ceased to have a primarily military role and turned to occupations like trade. The gradual breakdown of the barriers between the Arabs and the subject peoples which ensued meant that the old system, which depended upon isolation of the conquerors from the conquered peoples, became less feasible.5
One of the important changes which came about in response to these political and social developments was the formation of something like a standing army at the service of the government, in place of the reliance on the mass of Arab tribesmen which had been characteristic of the Sufyanids. In the Marwanid period we hear, for the first time, of Syrian troops being sent to the provinces to keep order and to participate in campaigns, while it is clear that in the provinces only some of the Arabs joined the army, others adopting a more civilian way of life. At the same time the governors appointed tended to be military men, having risen in the army, unlike those of the Sufyanids who depended on their tribal standing or relationship to the caliph. Symptomatic of the change is that we now no longer hear of the meetings between the ashraf and the governor in the latter’s majlis or of the delegations (wufud) of local notables to the caliph’s court in Syria, both characteristic of the time of Mu‘awiya and Yazid.
To some extent this development is obscured by the fact that the sources continue to use Arab tribal terminology when referring to the army: such terms as qa’id for a commander or qawm and qabila for the men were originally tribal terms, and the rival factions which emerged in the provinces during the Marwanid period bear the names of the tribal confederations, Mudar and Yemen. Yet this is rather misleading. What we have are not tribes in arms as in the old days, but factions in an army, made up of men of tribal origin certainly (and factional alignment usually, but not invariably, coincides with tribal origin), but not tribes in the real sense. Arabs not enrolled in the army were not involved in the factions, but non-Arabs in the army were. The development of these factions does not become evident until after the death of al-Hajjaj, but such things as the use of the Syrians as a sort of imperial army and the tendency to rely on military men as governors do begin in his time. Indeed al-Hajjaj himself, although a Thaqafi, is an example of an individual who rose to power from comparatively humble origins through service in the army.6
Certain innovations in the system of administration and bureaucracy which are associated with ‘Abd al-Malik also strengthen the impression of a trend to a greater centralisation of government. In the classical Muslim state as it developed in the ‘Abbasid period, a government department or ministry is called a diwan. The origins of both the word and the institution are rather obscure. Tradition tells us that the first diwan was instituted by the caliph ‘Umar I (634–44) and that at that time the word referred to the register of soldiers and pensions due to them which ‘Umar had compiled. However, the word seems to have taken on its meaning of ‘government department’ already by the time of the first Umayyad, Mu‘awiya, who is said to have had a diwan for the collection of taxes and to have introduced two for the government chancery—one for the writing of documents and one for the sealing of documents (the diwan al-rasa’il and the diwan al-khatam). However, the main business of the administration remained the assessment and collection of taxes, and in a general sense the diwan refers to the administration. ‘Abd al-Malik is generally credited with changing the official language of the diwan to Arabic.
After the Arab conquest of the Middle East, as is to be expected, the previously existing administrative systems in the various provinces were left as far as possible intact: not only did officials who had served the Byzantines and Sasanids continue to serve the Arabs, the administration continued to use the languages which had been in use before the conquest, Greek, Coptic and Persian (Pahlevi). The change to Arabic as the sole official administrative language, the arabisation of the diwan, is generally associated with ‘Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj although there is some obscurity about dates and circumstances. Some sources, for instance, attribute the measure to al-Walid I rather than to his father, and the report which says that the change of language was introduced in response to the boorish behaviour of a Greek clerk who had urinated in an inkwell should be seen as an example of the anecdotal explanation of major gradual changes which mediaeval sources delight in. At any rate the evidence of the papyri does bear out the claim that Arabic began to be the official language of administration from about the beginning of the eighth century AD although the change was not made overnight and it was not until almost the end of the Umayyad period that Arabic became the language of administration in border provinces like Khurasan. What effect the change had or was intended to have on the ethnic origin of the personnel of the administration is difficult to say. It seems that the bureaucrats continued to be overwhelmingly of non-Arab descent, that is mawali, although as time passed the distinction between Arab and non-Arab became increasingly less clear-cut. Equally, it is possible that the move to Arabic was intended to encourage the acquisition of the language by the subject peoples but, on the other hand, the very fact that the changeover could begin necessarily indicates that already by this time there must have been a considerable number of potential bureaucrats with at least sufficient Arabic for the requirements of the administration.7
One of the diwans of the mediaeval Islamic administration occupied itself with the running of the barid. The barid was a sort of communications system, consisting of routes linking the main centres of the empire along which there were stations with horses at the ready so that messengers could come and go quickly between the provinces and the metropolis. Although theoretically a postal system, in effect it was an instrument for keeping the government informed about developments in the provinces, and the provincial controllers of the barid were local spies on behalf of the central government. Here again Muslim tradition gives to ‘Abd al-Malik an important role in the organisation of the barid system, although the possibly Greek or Latin etymology of the word suggests the continuation of a former Byzantine institution, and one often feels that Muslim tradition finds figures like ‘Umar and ‘Abd al-Malik convenient personalities with which to associate institutions or developments which it considers must have a decisive beginning but about which precise details are lacking.8
Another important development, again focusing on ‘Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj, is the introduction, for the first time, of a specifically Muslim coinage. As with the languages of administration, so with the coinage: the Arab conquerors had taken over and only slightly adapted the Byzantine and Sasanid coins which were in circulation, and the mints which had produced these coins continued to do so for the Arabs. The minting of gold coins was a Byzantine imperial prerogative, and the Arabs continued to import gold coins from Byzantium. In this way the pre-conquest gold denarius, silver drachma and copper follis became the Arab dinar, dirham and fils. Some experiments with a new type of coinage made by the Sufyanid rulers proved unsuccessful, and it was not until the 690s, both in Syria and in Iraq, that ‘Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj began to mint coins of a decisively new type, allegedly in response to a threat by the Byzantine ruler to stamp the gold coins exported to the Arabs with anti-Muslim formulae.
The most important characteristic of the new coinage was the fact that it was purely epigraphic. The faces of the coins were inscribed only with Muslim religious formulae, not with the portraits of rulers or other pictorial representations which had marked the Byzantine and Sasanid as well as some of the earlier Arab coins. This was a decisive break with numismatic tradition, and provided the model which Muslim coins have generally, but not always, followed since.9
The lack of pictorial imagery is also a striking characteristic of the Dome of the Rock and other early Islamic religious and public buildings. Opposition to the figural representation of human beings and animals is a marked feature of the Muslim religious tradition (as it is in Judaism), but this has not prevented a flourishing tradition of representational art at a popular or private level where the influence of the religious scholars was more remote. There are vigorous and even beautiful representations of human beings and animals, for example, in the lodges and palaces which the Umayyads built for themselves outside the towns. How far opposition to this sort of pictorial representation was a feature of early Islam, and the sources of Muslim hostility to such sculpture and painting, are questions which have received considerable discussion. There is some evidence to indicate that the iconoclastic movement in Byzantium, which came to the fore under Leo III (717–41), was in part a response to developments in the Muslim world, and the caliph Yazid II (720–4) is known to have undertaken attacks on the images and statues of his Christian subjects in Syria. (For further details, see O.Grabar, The formation of Islamic art, 75–103; P.Crone, ‘Islam, Judeo-Christianity, and Byzantine iconoclasm’; and G.R. D.King, ‘Islam, iconoclasm and the declaration of doctrine’, BSOAS, 48 (1985).)
Taken together, the innovations of the early Marwanid period in the field of administration and coinage help to strengthen the impression of an administration becoming more centralised and uniform. Furthermore, they add to the evidence provided by the new monumental buildings—not only the Dome of the Rock but also the mosque of the Prophet in Medina and the mosque in Damascus which incorporated the former church of St John, both built by al-Walid10 — of the emergence of a new and distinctive Arab Muslim state and culture from what had begun as, in some ways, a Byzantine or Sasanid successor state.
Al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf al-Thaqafi, governor of Iraq and the east under ‘Abd al-Malik and al-Walid from 694 to 714, is presented as the instrument, and to some extent as the instigator, of these administrative changes. Having come to prominence in the campaigns against the Zubayrids, when he had commanded the final attack on Ibn al-Zubayr, he was for a time governor of the Hijaz for ‘Abd al-Malik before being sent to Iraq. His arrival in Kufa in 694 is marked in the sources by a famous introductory khutba in the mosque, often cited as an example of Arab eloquence and reminiscent of the khutba attributed to his Thaqafi predecessor in Iraq, Ziyad: ‘I see heads which have become ripe and ready for plucking, and I behold blood between the turbans and the beards.’11
Al-Hajjaj’s immediate problem in Iraq was a threat from the Kharijites, a legacy of the breakdown of order there in the second civil war, which was made worse by the reluctance of the Iraqi soldiers to undertake campaigns against them. The threat came from two directions. In the south and east, threatening Basra, the group known as the Azariqa had been a danger even during the Zubayrid rule in Iraq. Al-Muhallab b. Abi Sufra had been entrusted with suppressing the movement by Mus‘ab b. al-Zubayr, and when Iraq submitted to the Umayyads he transferred his allegiance too. When al-Hajjaj arrived in Iraq, al-Muhallab was in the field against the Azariqa but was having difficulty in holding his army together. Shortly after al-Hajjaj’s arrival, a second Kharijite outbreak occurred, this time to the north, and a source of danger to Kufa. The leader of this second rising was Shabib b. Yazid.
Al-Hajjaj’s harsh policy against those who would not join al-Muhallab achieved its purpose and the Azariqa were gradually pushed out of Iraq into the neighbouring Persian provinces and then further east into the province of Sistan so that by the end of the seventh century they were no longer a danger for the central authority. The danger from Shabib was also overcome when, in 697, he and his followers were defeated and Shabib himself drowned while attempting to flee over the river Dujayl in Ahwaz.12 Victory over Shabib had only been achieved, though, after troops had been brought from Syria to Iraq. This was an important new development soon to be followed elsewhere. It seems that the troops were not sent back when the Kharijite menace was over but, indeed, were soon reinforced by further Syrian detachments. Apparently a new way of supporting the authority of the Umayyad governor over the troublesome Iraqi garrison towns had been introduced.
The transfer of the Syrian forces to Iraq made necessary the provision of quarters for them, and it was this need which led to the construction of a new garrison town in Iraq in the early years of the eighth century. This was the town of Wasit, so called, apparently, because of its ‘middle’ position between Kufa, Basra and the old Sasanid capital at Ctesiphon (al-Mada’in). Wasit now became the Syrian garrison town in Iraq, but, whatever the intentions at the time of its foundation, it did not displace Kufa and Basra in importance in other respects and it did not become the regular residence of the Umayyad governors.13
As well as bringing in the Syrians, al-Hajjaj had decreased the pay of the Iraqi soldiers which, we are told, the Zubayrids had raised in an attempt to secure their loyalty against the Umayyads. This does not seem to have endeared him to them, and it increased their unwillingness to participate in campaigns at his command. Right from the beginning, therefore, al-Hajjaj was faced with a number of rebellions on the part of the Iraqi soldiers, sometimes even allegedly in league with the Kharijites. Most of these rebellions were suppressed without undue difficulty,14 but one of them, in the early years of the eighth century, came close to destroying al-Hajjaj’s power in Iraq. This was the revolt led by ‘Abd al-Rahman b. al-Ash‘ath, which is generally dated from about 700 to 703 although there is some doubt about the precise chronology.15
Ibn al-Ash‘ath was a descendant of the leading family of the ‘southern’ tribe of Kinda. His grandfather, after resisting the early Muslims in the Ridda wars which followed the death of Muhammad, had participated in the conquests and settled in Kufa. He and his sons were leading members of the ashraf of that town and played a prominent part in its affairs. About 700, al-Hajjaj appointed Ibn al-Ash‘ath to the command of an army to be sent to Sistan where an earlier force had been badly defeated by the still independent ruler of the kingdom of Zabulistan, roughly modern Afghanistan, known in the sources as Zunbil. The army sent under Ibn al-Ash‘ath’s command is known in tradition as the ‘army of peacocks’, usually interpreted as a reference to their splendid equipment but sometimes as an allusion to the proud and haughty manner of the Kufan soldiers and ashraf who composed it.
In Sistan the army mutinied. It is reported that al-Hajjaj had ordered an immediate attack against Zunbil, but Ibn al-Ash‘ath wanted more time to prepare and had the support of his army in this. The immediate cause of the mutiny, it is said, was the tone of a letter from al-Hajjaj ordering an immediate advance. What seems clear is that the soldiers were unhappy at the prospect of a long and difficult campaign so far from Iraq. Allegiance was therefore given to Ibn al-Ash‘ath and the decision taken to march back to Iraq to drive out al-Hajjaj.
On the march back the army was joined by Iraqi malcontents from the other garrisons they passed on the way, and by the time the army reached Fars the decision had been made to reject the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik as well as al-Hajjaj. Although the revolt was sparked off by specific military grievances, it was inevitable, given the interaction of religion and politics in early Muslim society, that it should take on a religious flavour. Highly coloured religious language is attributed to both sides, the rebels referring to al-Hajjaj as the enemy of God and comparing him to Pharaoh.
Meanwhile al-Hajjaj had received reinforcements in the shape of a further influx of troops from Syria, and he marched out to meet the rebels on the river Dujayl. This battle, however, ended in a victory for Ibn al-Ash‘ath and his men, and al-Hajjaj’s fleeing army was pursued to Basra where it managed to gain control of one of the suburbs and score a limited victory over the rebels.
The principal focus of the revolt, though, was Kufa, the base of Ibn al-Ash‘ath and the ashraf. The main part of the rebel army left Basra for Kufa, leaving only a small force behind and thus enabling al-Hajjaj to get control of most of Basra. He then pursued the rebels to Kufa, camping on the right bank of the Euphrates at some distance from the town in order to secure his communications with Syria. By this time the revolt had won the support of most of the men of religion known in the sources as the qurra’ (usually understood as Koran ‘readers’) and had acquired a significant religious hue.16 ‘Abd al-Malik appears to have tried to hedge his bets by negotiating with the rebels and even, reportedly, offering to remove al-Hajjaj from office, while at the same time sending reinforcements to his Iraqi governor. But the rebels appear to have been so confident that they felt no need to compromise.
The decisive battle, or rather prolonged period of skirmishing, took place at a site called Dayr al-Jamajim, which has not been securely identified. It occupied the late spring and early summer although there is some doubt about the year. Eventually, the rebel force began to disintegrate, encouraged by offers of pardon from al-Hajjaj for those who would submit. Again, as in previous rebellions and civil wars, a contrast appears between the discipline and organisation of the Umayyads and their largely Syrian support and the lack of these qualities among their opponents in spite of, or perhaps rather because of, the more righteous and religious flavour of the opposition. Eventually, al-Hajjaj was able to enter Kufa where he pardoned those who would submit, providing they would admit that in revolting they had renounced Islam, while he executed those who would not make this admission.
The remnants of Ibn al-Ash‘ath’s army fled first to Basra then to Khuzistan in southwest Persia, where the Syrians pursued and defeated them thanks to a surprise night attack through the marshes. The survivors, including Ibn al-Ash‘ath, now fled east back to Sistan, and the revolt was mopped up. When the Umayyad pursuers arrived in Sistan, many of the rebels tried to flee north to Herat but were rounded up by the governor of Khurasan, Yazid b. al-Muhallab, son of al-Hajjaj’s general who had defeated the Kharijites in Iraq. Yazid, however, treated the Yemenis among the rebels fairly leniently and only sent the Mudaris to al-Hajjaj in Wasit. The fate of Ibn al-Ash‘ath himself is somewhat obscure. We are told that he took refuge with Zunbil, but the latter was persuaded by al-Hajjaj’s representative to surrender him. Some say he committed suicide in order to prevent this, others that Zunbil killed him and handed his head over to the Umayyad authority in Sistan.17
Ibn al-Ash‘ath’s revolt was fundamentally a revolt of the Iraqi soldiery and especially the ashraf against what they perceived as an Umayyad attempt to supplant them. It was not, as some nineteenth-century scholars argued, brought about by the mawali and their grievances against the Umayyad government, although it is clear that the mawali supported it. Neither was it an expression of the factionalism which was to become so important later. The fact that Ibn al-Ash‘ath and most of his supporters were Yemenis merely reflects the fact that the Yemenis were the dominant tribal element in Kufa, and, although al-Hajjaj as a Thaqafi was genealogically a ‘northerner’, the commander of his Syrian troops was a ‘southerner’ of Kalb. Regarding the religious polemic used by both sides, most of it is stereotyped, unspecific and to be found in other contexts. The accusation made by the rebels that the government had caused the death of the ritual prayer (imatat al-salat), and the battle cry of the qurra’ at Dayr al-Jamajim, ‘revenge for the ritual prayer’ (ya tharat al-?slat), however, seem more specific and may indicate that conduct of the ritual prayer was one of the issues between the government and the religious supporters of Ibn al-Ash‘ath.
Although not primarily a movement of the mawali, the participation in the revolt by the mawali and the qurra’ indicates that it was not only the Iraqi soldiery who had grievances against the government, and it was the combination of forces against al-Hajjaj which made the revolt so dangerous. The participation of the mawali, many of whom were included among the qurra’, is associated with a phenomenon which first becomes important during the time of al-Hajjaj’s governorship in Iraq—the influx into the garrison towns of large numbers of former non-Arab cultivators who now abandon their lands and attempt to enter Islam by becoming the clients (mawali) of Arabs in the garrison towns. These mawali are to be distinguished from the prisoners of war and others who had earlier been prominent among the supporters of Mukhtar. Among their motives in leaving their fields and villages at this particular time, the desire to escape taxation and the hope of finding a new livelihood in the towns, most likely by enrolment in the army, were undoubtedly to the forefront. A similar phenomenon is attested in Egypt, where, however, the peasants sought to avoid taxation by leaving their own tax districts and fleeing to another or into a monastery (monks initially having exemption from taxation). It seems that the early Marwanid period, with its increased centralisation, saw a greater efficiency in tax collection and that the cultivators regarded flight from their lands as the only means of escape. The question of the nature of the taxes involved will be taken up later.
Al-Hajjaj, faced with a decline in the revenue from taxation, reacted by rounding up the mawali in the towns, driving them out and forcing them to pay their taxes, stamping their hands as a token of the tax having been paid (in Egypt ‘passports’ have been found which indicate that the bearer has paid his taxes). The result was the hostility not only of the mawali who were treated in this way, but also of the religious opponents of the Umayyads who saw the policy as an attack on the principle of an Islam open to all and conferring equality of rights. This was the first sign of the conflict between the demands of Islam and the need of the government for revenue which was to become increasingly important for the Umayyads.18
1. See Genealogical Table 3.
2. J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 183, 188–90; A.A.Dixon, Umayyad caliphate, 124–28; G.Rotter, Bürgerkrieg, 166–9; article “Amir b. Sa‘id al-Ashdak’ in EI2.
3. I.Goldziher, Muslim Studies, ii, 44 ff.; K.A.C.Cresswell, A short account of early Muslim architecture, 17 ff.; S.D.Goitein, ‘The sanctity of Jerusalem and Palestine in early Islam’ in his Studies in Islamic history and institutions; O.Grabar, ‘The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’, Ars Orientalis, 3 (1959); for the argument that the inscription date refers to the beginning of the building, see G. Rotter, Bürgerkrieg, 227–30.
4. M.A.Cook and P.Crone, Hagarism, 18 and note 25; C.Kessler, “Abd al-Malik’s inscription in the Dome of the Rock: a reconsideration’, JRAS, (1970).
5. P.Crone, Slaves on horses, 37–41, 49–57.
6. J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 371–3; P.Crone, Slaves on horses, 37–40.
7. Article ‘Diwan’ in EI2; M.Sprengling, ‘Persian into Arabic’, AJSL (1939 and 1940).
8. Article ‘Barid’ in EI2; for the late Roman cursus publicus, in which system the saddle horses used for the express post were called veredi, see A.H.M.Jones, The later Roman Empire, 284–602, 830–34. See also F.Dvornik, Origins of intelligence services (I owe this reference to Dr D.O.Morgan).
9. J.Walker, A catalogue of the Arab-Byzantine and the post-reform Umaiyad coins; P.Grierson, ‘The monetary reforms of ‘Abd al-Malik’, JESHO, 3 (1960).
10. K.A.C.Cresswell, A short account of early Muslim architecture, 43 ff.; J. Sauvaget, La mosquée omeyyade de Medine.
11. Article ‘al-Hadjdjadj b. Yusuf in EI2.
12. J.Wellhausen, Religio-political factions, 61–83; A.A.Dixon, Umayyad caliphate, 169–98.
13. Article ‘Wasit’ in EI1; K.A.C.Cresswell, A short account of early Muslim architecture, 40–2; O.Grabar, ‘Al-Mushatta, Baghdad and Wasit’, in J.Kritzeck and R.Bayly Winder (ed.), The world of Islam. Studies in honour of Philip K.Hitti, London, 1959, especially 103 ff.
14. J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 228–31; A.A.Dixon, Umayyad caliphate, 143–51.
15. For a detailed discussion withextensive references to sources, see Redwan Sayed, Die Revolte des Ibn al-As‘at und die Koranleser.
16. For an attempted redefinition of the qurra’, see M.A.Shaban, New interpretation, 23; G.H.A.Juynboll, ‘The qurra’ in early Islamic history’, JESHO, 16 (1973), and his subsequent articles on the same theme in JSS, 19 (1974) and ZDMG, 125 (1975).
17. J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 254 ff.; A.A.Dixon, Umayyad caliphate, 151– 68; M.A.Shaban, New interpretation, 110–11; article ‘Ibn al-Ash‘ath’ in EI2; for the background to the sending of Ibn al-Ash‘ath to Sistan, see C.E.Bosworth, “Ubaidallah b. Abi Bakra and the “army of destruction” in Zabulistan’, Isl., 50 (1973).
18. J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 279–80, 285–6.