PART 1 - The Fourth Fitna
The Fourth Fitna
When Caliph al-Qadir was murdered in 795 CE his first heir and brother, Abd al-Malik ibn Salih, was still in Ruma al-Gharbiya. Due to the pro-Salihid faction’s distrust of the Baghdadi bureaucracy, for good reason, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Salih raised an army in al-Sham upon hearing the news of his uncle’s death and raced towards the capital. The Khurasani soldiers who lived in the suburbs of Baghdad had already occupied the city however and barred entry to everyone. When the young Abd al-Rahman arrived outside Baghdad he told the garrison that he was there to secure the city until his father’s arrival. Wazir Yahya ibn Khalid al-Baramika dispatched messengers to the prince claiming that the Khurasanis were acting under his orders, and that they too were only awaiting Abd al-Malik’s arrival. What Abd al-Rahman didn’t know was that since the Khurasani occupation began, and while he was waiting outside, pro-Salihid bureaucrats and courtiers were being arrested and some were even executed. The wazir ordered the Salihid army to return to al-Sham; they refused and camped outside of the city. Shortly afterwards a Khurasani army commanded by Asram ibn Abd al-Hamid al-Ta’i arrived at Baghdad with the intention of reinforcing the city’s garrison. The army from al-Sham moved to stop the Khurasanis, whereupon a violent argument between the two commanders escalated into a battle. The Khurasani garrison sallied out and took the Salihid force from the rear resulting in a devastating defeat for Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd al-Malik, who was among the fatalities. The Fourth Fitna had begun.
The Salihid soldiers fleeing from the Battle of Baghdad were mercilessly hunted down by Khurasani cavalry, so as to prevent news of the battle from reaching the west. They were mostly successful and so set about preparing their forces for the oncoming war. Musa ibn Isa al-Rashid travelled to Makran to convince Abu Ya’qub Ishaq ibn Sulayman al-Abbasi to renounce his allegiance to Abd al-Malik; surrounded as he was by the enemies of the Banu Salih, Ishaq ibn Sulayman had no choice but to agree. When he asked who he was to give bay’ah to, Musa ibn Isa al-Rashid stated that a shura would be convened once the hostilities were over. The anti-Salihid faction raised an army; though a plurality of the soldiers were Arabs and Iranians from Khurasan, there were Arabs from Iran and southern Iraq, Iranians from Iran and Fararud, and Oghuz, Karluk, and Khazar Turkish mercenaries and slaves. Most of the recruits were Muslim but restrictions on dhimmi recruitment were unofficially relaxed so as to counter the potentially greater manpower of al-Sham and Misr. The tributary dhimmi rulers in Daylam, Fararud, and eastern Khurasan also provided troops. Musa ibn Isa al-Rashid, who was by then the de-facto contender for the khilafah, appointed Harthama ibn A’yan to overall command of the army.
Abd al-Malik arrived in al-Sham at about the same time as news of his son’s defeat and death reached the Banu Salih. The would-be caliph was understandably furious and he swore vengeance on those responsible, that is, the Khurasani faction and their apparent leader Yahya ibn Khalid al-Baramika. The Banu Salih began to muster an army from the Arabs of al-Sham and Misr, but they were confronted with a serious problem. During their governorship of the old Umayyad heartlands, the Salihids had favoured the Qahtan tribes over the Qays. The latter did not outright rebel when recruitment commenced, but instead demanded concessions and greater representation in governing the region. Deeply affected by the death of son however, Abd al-Malik disregarded the advice of his relatives to accept the demands and instead declared the Qays leaders to be traitors. The Qahtan tribes eagerly went to war against the Qays, while the Banu Salih were compelled to aid the former in order to bring the conflict to a prompt conclusion. What appeared to be the Abbasid state repressing the Qays caused the rebellion to spread to their cohorts in Misr, extending the conflict well into 796 CE. During this time the Khurasani faction had secured al-Jazira and conquered Arminiya from the Salihid-leaning ostikan (Muslim governor) Yazid ibn Mazyad al-Shaybani. The Khurasani conquest had been aided by the Armenian nobility under ishkhan Vahan Mamikonian.[1] Yazid ibn Mazyad had not only greatly increased the tax burden on the Armenians, but had also encouraged Arab migration into Arminiya; the Armenian nobility were thus glad to support the Khurasani campaign against him.
When it became clear that the Abbasid Caliphate was in a state of civil war, the province of Ifriqiya erupted into violence also. Wali Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn al-Mansur fled to al-Qayrawan with the intention to raise an army of Arabs to aid his Banu Salih allies in the centre of the Dar al-Islam. In response to the governor’s flight, the Khurasani garrison of Tunis seized control of the city and the docked Abbasid fleet. The Arabs of Ifriqiya were as yet unaware of the renewed Qays-Qahtan conflict and so reluctantly cooperated against their common foe. The other major coastal cities of the wilaya fell under the control of the Khurasani garrisons, while the towns of the interior remained within Abu Abdallah Muhammad’s nominal control. Regaining the fleet was his main objective however; otherwise his army would have to march the extreme distance through Barqah and into Misr. The difficulty of besieging any of the coastal cities was not lost on Abu Abdallah Muhammad though; the prince’s grand plan was to divide his forces and besiege Banzart [Bizerte] to the north of Tunis, while a contingent lay in wait to besiege the provincial capital. His hope was that the Khurasanis would ferry reinforcements from Tunis to the besieged Banzart, which would be taken along with the newly-arriving ships. The strategy was a failure in that even though the Khurasanis did reinforce their position in Banzart, the fleet left immediately after and returned to Tunis. Abu Abdallah Muhammad did conquer Banzart but the venture was costly in both time and manpower, and resulted in no tangible gain for the nominal governor. Exacerbating the situation was the onset of an invasion by Kharijite Berber tribes from southern Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. After Maysara al-Matghari’s death decades earlier, no succeeding Imam was elected and so there was no cohesion to the latest Berber incursion.
With the Qays finally subdued in 796 CE, the Salihid faction could begin to focus properly on their real enemy: the Khurasanis. The Salihid army converged at Hims and from there marched towards al-Raqqah. To the west of the city they encountered the enemy’s cavalry vanguard; although horse archery had been common throughout the pre- and early Islamic armies of Western Asia, the cavalry of this force was comprised entirely of Turkish horse archers. The small number of Arab horse archers and melee cavalry in the Salihid army were insufficient to challenge the Turks, while the speed of the latter was too much for the mass of Arab foot archers to keep up with. As a result the large, slow-moving Salihid army suffered disproportionately heavy losses as they attempted, and failed, to pursue the fast-moving Turkish cavalry. As the Salihids neared al-Raqqah, the main force of the pro-Khurasani army appeared; knowing that his men were in no state to fight a regular battle against equal forces, Abd al-Malik reluctantly ordered a retreat back to al-Sham. Most of the army returned to Hims and prepared the city for a siege, while the rest did the same at Dimashq. The Khurasanis obliged Abd al-Malik’s preference for a siege, but the Turkish cavalry, accompanied by heavily armed and armoured horsemen reminiscent of the cataphracts of the Roman and Sasanian empires, ranged south and ravaged the undefended settlements of al-Sham.
Harthama ibn A’yan dispensed with the customary offer for the defenders of Hims to surrender and instead immediately began the siege of the city in late 796 CE. The walls that had been demolished on the orders of Umayyad Caliph Marwan had since been rebuilt by the Banu Salih. The defenders could only hold out for so long though; far inland and surrounded by the enemy, the chance of resupply was near to non-existent. Harthama ibn A’yan ordered the construction of siege engines, including mangonels, battering rams, and siege towers. Usually Muslim armies had been content to wait for the besieged to surrender or the besiegers to breach the gates of a city, but Harthama was concerned that a drawn-out siege would give time for the Salihids to gather more forces in al-Sham and Misr. Furthermore, the longer the civil war lasted the more likely the far-flung frontiers of the caliphate would be able to escape the control of the central government. The besieging forces finally broke into the city the following year and subjected it to a ruthless sacking. Abd al-Malik was captured and brought to Harthama ibn A’yan; the would-be khalifah and the other surviving Salihid commanders were swiftly executed. Overall command of the Salihid cause thus fell on Ibrahim ibn Salih ibn Ali; when he heard the news of his brother’s death he resolved to march his army against the Khurasanis and fight them on the field rather than wait to be besieged in Dimashq. Just like the earlier advance into al-Jazira the Salihid army was harried along the way by Turkish horse archers, but this time Ibrahim ordered his troops to continue their advance. The horse archers had been covering the advance of the Khurasanis however. Outnumbered and under near-constant attack from the horse archers, the Salihid army’s losses were almost absolute. Once again the captured members of the Banu Salih and their allies from the old Arab tribes were executed without a second thought.
Most of the Khurasani army embarked upon a fleet at Akka to travel to Ifriqiya, while a portion of the army, which included most of the cavalry, marched west into Misr. The only instance of Salihid resistance in Misr was a cavalry skirmish near Dumyat [Damietta], after which the garrisons of al-Iskandariyya, al-Askar, and al-Fustat surrendered to the Khurasani army. Meanwhile in Ifriqiya, Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn al-Mansur had spent most of his time repelling the Kharijite Berber raids rather than besieging Tunis. He had, through necessity, even conducted raids of his own into the Maghreb; cut off from the central government and its funding for the military, the Abbasid prince looked to plunder to pay his soldiers. Besides, taking the fight to the enemy, any enemy, was better for his men’s morale than waiting in a costly siege. When the Khurasani fleet arrived at Tunis in the latter half of 797 CE, Abu Abdallah Muhammad marched to the city and attempted to surrender to them; news from the east had not been encouraging and the expedition’s arrival all but confirmed the Khurasani victory. His army aimed to continue fighting however and mutinied when they discovered Abu Abdallah Muhammad’s plan. The Abbasid prince was seized and a group of the most virulently anti-Khurasani soldiers executed him without consulting their comrades. Consequently a skirmish broke out amongst the Salihid army, exacerbated by the traditional Qays-Qahtan rivalry, and it was at that moment the Khurasanis marched forth and engaged. In disarray and suffering multiple desertions, what had been the Salihid army was easily defeated and pursued back to al-Qayrawan. The city was successfully conquered in the spring of 798 CE.
The European provinces of the caliphate, al-Andalus and Ruma al-Gharbiya, had relatively little involvement in the Fourth Fitna. Abd al-Malik took a small army with him to al-Sham when he left Rabina, which included some native converts, but native converts as a whole were at best ambivalent to the conflict at the centre of the Dar al-Islam. The dhimmi population were even more indifferent to a change in the khilafah as they surmised, correctly as it happened, that their status would remain unchanged. On the other hand, the increased demand for manpower resulted in increased sales of military-age male slaves, further enriching the centres of the slave trade in Ruma al-Gharbiya and elsewhere in Christian Italia. The military of the wilaya of al-Andalus was in a state of readiness, as both the Banu Fihr and Muhammad Qarulamun ibn Baban al-Qarula had pledged to support the Banu Salih. However Abd al-Malik had departed with such haste that they were left without instructions; when Harthama ibn A’yan’s army arrived in Ruma al-Gharbiya in 798 CE it was obvious to the erstwhile Salihid allies that the war was over and so they reaffirmed their loyalty to the Abbasid Caliphate. In the later stages of the civil war refugees from the central Dar al-Islam mostly travelled west and settled in the coastal cities of the European provinces; an unlucky few were sold into slavery and sent back east to fight.
[1] OTL, Caliph al-Mansur’s government repressed the Armenians to such a degree that they revolted in 774-775 CE; the Armenians lost and the Mamikonian family was decimated. Without al-Mansur’s close involvement in government ITTL the Armenians continue on with their Umayyad-era arrangement of relative autonomy under a presiding prince (ishkhan).
When Caliph al-Qadir was murdered in 795 CE his first heir and brother, Abd al-Malik ibn Salih, was still in Ruma al-Gharbiya. Due to the pro-Salihid faction’s distrust of the Baghdadi bureaucracy, for good reason, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Salih raised an army in al-Sham upon hearing the news of his uncle’s death and raced towards the capital. The Khurasani soldiers who lived in the suburbs of Baghdad had already occupied the city however and barred entry to everyone. When the young Abd al-Rahman arrived outside Baghdad he told the garrison that he was there to secure the city until his father’s arrival. Wazir Yahya ibn Khalid al-Baramika dispatched messengers to the prince claiming that the Khurasanis were acting under his orders, and that they too were only awaiting Abd al-Malik’s arrival. What Abd al-Rahman didn’t know was that since the Khurasani occupation began, and while he was waiting outside, pro-Salihid bureaucrats and courtiers were being arrested and some were even executed. The wazir ordered the Salihid army to return to al-Sham; they refused and camped outside of the city. Shortly afterwards a Khurasani army commanded by Asram ibn Abd al-Hamid al-Ta’i arrived at Baghdad with the intention of reinforcing the city’s garrison. The army from al-Sham moved to stop the Khurasanis, whereupon a violent argument between the two commanders escalated into a battle. The Khurasani garrison sallied out and took the Salihid force from the rear resulting in a devastating defeat for Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd al-Malik, who was among the fatalities. The Fourth Fitna had begun.
The Salihid soldiers fleeing from the Battle of Baghdad were mercilessly hunted down by Khurasani cavalry, so as to prevent news of the battle from reaching the west. They were mostly successful and so set about preparing their forces for the oncoming war. Musa ibn Isa al-Rashid travelled to Makran to convince Abu Ya’qub Ishaq ibn Sulayman al-Abbasi to renounce his allegiance to Abd al-Malik; surrounded as he was by the enemies of the Banu Salih, Ishaq ibn Sulayman had no choice but to agree. When he asked who he was to give bay’ah to, Musa ibn Isa al-Rashid stated that a shura would be convened once the hostilities were over. The anti-Salihid faction raised an army; though a plurality of the soldiers were Arabs and Iranians from Khurasan, there were Arabs from Iran and southern Iraq, Iranians from Iran and Fararud, and Oghuz, Karluk, and Khazar Turkish mercenaries and slaves. Most of the recruits were Muslim but restrictions on dhimmi recruitment were unofficially relaxed so as to counter the potentially greater manpower of al-Sham and Misr. The tributary dhimmi rulers in Daylam, Fararud, and eastern Khurasan also provided troops. Musa ibn Isa al-Rashid, who was by then the de-facto contender for the khilafah, appointed Harthama ibn A’yan to overall command of the army.
Abd al-Malik arrived in al-Sham at about the same time as news of his son’s defeat and death reached the Banu Salih. The would-be caliph was understandably furious and he swore vengeance on those responsible, that is, the Khurasani faction and their apparent leader Yahya ibn Khalid al-Baramika. The Banu Salih began to muster an army from the Arabs of al-Sham and Misr, but they were confronted with a serious problem. During their governorship of the old Umayyad heartlands, the Salihids had favoured the Qahtan tribes over the Qays. The latter did not outright rebel when recruitment commenced, but instead demanded concessions and greater representation in governing the region. Deeply affected by the death of son however, Abd al-Malik disregarded the advice of his relatives to accept the demands and instead declared the Qays leaders to be traitors. The Qahtan tribes eagerly went to war against the Qays, while the Banu Salih were compelled to aid the former in order to bring the conflict to a prompt conclusion. What appeared to be the Abbasid state repressing the Qays caused the rebellion to spread to their cohorts in Misr, extending the conflict well into 796 CE. During this time the Khurasani faction had secured al-Jazira and conquered Arminiya from the Salihid-leaning ostikan (Muslim governor) Yazid ibn Mazyad al-Shaybani. The Khurasani conquest had been aided by the Armenian nobility under ishkhan Vahan Mamikonian.[1] Yazid ibn Mazyad had not only greatly increased the tax burden on the Armenians, but had also encouraged Arab migration into Arminiya; the Armenian nobility were thus glad to support the Khurasani campaign against him.
When it became clear that the Abbasid Caliphate was in a state of civil war, the province of Ifriqiya erupted into violence also. Wali Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn al-Mansur fled to al-Qayrawan with the intention to raise an army of Arabs to aid his Banu Salih allies in the centre of the Dar al-Islam. In response to the governor’s flight, the Khurasani garrison of Tunis seized control of the city and the docked Abbasid fleet. The Arabs of Ifriqiya were as yet unaware of the renewed Qays-Qahtan conflict and so reluctantly cooperated against their common foe. The other major coastal cities of the wilaya fell under the control of the Khurasani garrisons, while the towns of the interior remained within Abu Abdallah Muhammad’s nominal control. Regaining the fleet was his main objective however; otherwise his army would have to march the extreme distance through Barqah and into Misr. The difficulty of besieging any of the coastal cities was not lost on Abu Abdallah Muhammad though; the prince’s grand plan was to divide his forces and besiege Banzart [Bizerte] to the north of Tunis, while a contingent lay in wait to besiege the provincial capital. His hope was that the Khurasanis would ferry reinforcements from Tunis to the besieged Banzart, which would be taken along with the newly-arriving ships. The strategy was a failure in that even though the Khurasanis did reinforce their position in Banzart, the fleet left immediately after and returned to Tunis. Abu Abdallah Muhammad did conquer Banzart but the venture was costly in both time and manpower, and resulted in no tangible gain for the nominal governor. Exacerbating the situation was the onset of an invasion by Kharijite Berber tribes from southern Ifriqiya and the Maghreb. After Maysara al-Matghari’s death decades earlier, no succeeding Imam was elected and so there was no cohesion to the latest Berber incursion.
With the Qays finally subdued in 796 CE, the Salihid faction could begin to focus properly on their real enemy: the Khurasanis. The Salihid army converged at Hims and from there marched towards al-Raqqah. To the west of the city they encountered the enemy’s cavalry vanguard; although horse archery had been common throughout the pre- and early Islamic armies of Western Asia, the cavalry of this force was comprised entirely of Turkish horse archers. The small number of Arab horse archers and melee cavalry in the Salihid army were insufficient to challenge the Turks, while the speed of the latter was too much for the mass of Arab foot archers to keep up with. As a result the large, slow-moving Salihid army suffered disproportionately heavy losses as they attempted, and failed, to pursue the fast-moving Turkish cavalry. As the Salihids neared al-Raqqah, the main force of the pro-Khurasani army appeared; knowing that his men were in no state to fight a regular battle against equal forces, Abd al-Malik reluctantly ordered a retreat back to al-Sham. Most of the army returned to Hims and prepared the city for a siege, while the rest did the same at Dimashq. The Khurasanis obliged Abd al-Malik’s preference for a siege, but the Turkish cavalry, accompanied by heavily armed and armoured horsemen reminiscent of the cataphracts of the Roman and Sasanian empires, ranged south and ravaged the undefended settlements of al-Sham.
Harthama ibn A’yan dispensed with the customary offer for the defenders of Hims to surrender and instead immediately began the siege of the city in late 796 CE. The walls that had been demolished on the orders of Umayyad Caliph Marwan had since been rebuilt by the Banu Salih. The defenders could only hold out for so long though; far inland and surrounded by the enemy, the chance of resupply was near to non-existent. Harthama ibn A’yan ordered the construction of siege engines, including mangonels, battering rams, and siege towers. Usually Muslim armies had been content to wait for the besieged to surrender or the besiegers to breach the gates of a city, but Harthama was concerned that a drawn-out siege would give time for the Salihids to gather more forces in al-Sham and Misr. Furthermore, the longer the civil war lasted the more likely the far-flung frontiers of the caliphate would be able to escape the control of the central government. The besieging forces finally broke into the city the following year and subjected it to a ruthless sacking. Abd al-Malik was captured and brought to Harthama ibn A’yan; the would-be khalifah and the other surviving Salihid commanders were swiftly executed. Overall command of the Salihid cause thus fell on Ibrahim ibn Salih ibn Ali; when he heard the news of his brother’s death he resolved to march his army against the Khurasanis and fight them on the field rather than wait to be besieged in Dimashq. Just like the earlier advance into al-Jazira the Salihid army was harried along the way by Turkish horse archers, but this time Ibrahim ordered his troops to continue their advance. The horse archers had been covering the advance of the Khurasanis however. Outnumbered and under near-constant attack from the horse archers, the Salihid army’s losses were almost absolute. Once again the captured members of the Banu Salih and their allies from the old Arab tribes were executed without a second thought.
Most of the Khurasani army embarked upon a fleet at Akka to travel to Ifriqiya, while a portion of the army, which included most of the cavalry, marched west into Misr. The only instance of Salihid resistance in Misr was a cavalry skirmish near Dumyat [Damietta], after which the garrisons of al-Iskandariyya, al-Askar, and al-Fustat surrendered to the Khurasani army. Meanwhile in Ifriqiya, Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn al-Mansur had spent most of his time repelling the Kharijite Berber raids rather than besieging Tunis. He had, through necessity, even conducted raids of his own into the Maghreb; cut off from the central government and its funding for the military, the Abbasid prince looked to plunder to pay his soldiers. Besides, taking the fight to the enemy, any enemy, was better for his men’s morale than waiting in a costly siege. When the Khurasani fleet arrived at Tunis in the latter half of 797 CE, Abu Abdallah Muhammad marched to the city and attempted to surrender to them; news from the east had not been encouraging and the expedition’s arrival all but confirmed the Khurasani victory. His army aimed to continue fighting however and mutinied when they discovered Abu Abdallah Muhammad’s plan. The Abbasid prince was seized and a group of the most virulently anti-Khurasani soldiers executed him without consulting their comrades. Consequently a skirmish broke out amongst the Salihid army, exacerbated by the traditional Qays-Qahtan rivalry, and it was at that moment the Khurasanis marched forth and engaged. In disarray and suffering multiple desertions, what had been the Salihid army was easily defeated and pursued back to al-Qayrawan. The city was successfully conquered in the spring of 798 CE.
The European provinces of the caliphate, al-Andalus and Ruma al-Gharbiya, had relatively little involvement in the Fourth Fitna. Abd al-Malik took a small army with him to al-Sham when he left Rabina, which included some native converts, but native converts as a whole were at best ambivalent to the conflict at the centre of the Dar al-Islam. The dhimmi population were even more indifferent to a change in the khilafah as they surmised, correctly as it happened, that their status would remain unchanged. On the other hand, the increased demand for manpower resulted in increased sales of military-age male slaves, further enriching the centres of the slave trade in Ruma al-Gharbiya and elsewhere in Christian Italia. The military of the wilaya of al-Andalus was in a state of readiness, as both the Banu Fihr and Muhammad Qarulamun ibn Baban al-Qarula had pledged to support the Banu Salih. However Abd al-Malik had departed with such haste that they were left without instructions; when Harthama ibn A’yan’s army arrived in Ruma al-Gharbiya in 798 CE it was obvious to the erstwhile Salihid allies that the war was over and so they reaffirmed their loyalty to the Abbasid Caliphate. In the later stages of the civil war refugees from the central Dar al-Islam mostly travelled west and settled in the coastal cities of the European provinces; an unlucky few were sold into slavery and sent back east to fight.
[1] OTL, Caliph al-Mansur’s government repressed the Armenians to such a degree that they revolted in 774-775 CE; the Armenians lost and the Mamikonian family was decimated. Without al-Mansur’s close involvement in government ITTL the Armenians continue on with their Umayyad-era arrangement of relative autonomy under a presiding prince (ishkhan).
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