Berber Revolt against the Umayyads
Provoked by the extortionate taxation of Muslim Berbers by Umayyad governors and inspired by Kharijite preachers who taught the equality of all believers, the Berber tribes of the western Maghreb rose in 740, took Tangier and destroyed two Arab armies. The caliphate saved Kairouan and al-Andalus, but the western and central Maghreb never returned to caliphal rule and broke up into some of the first Muslim states outside the caliphate.
- Date
- between 739 and 740 – between 742 and 743exact date unknown: an interval is given · duration: ≈ 3 years
- Place
- Tangiertoday: Tangier, Morocco · Africa
- Participants
- Umayyad Caliphate, Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, Maysara al-Matghari, Miknasa
- Threads
- Africa (6th–10th c.)
- Also known as
- Great Berber Revolt; Kharijite Revolt; Battle of the Nobles; Battle of Bagdoura; Battle of al-Asnam; Великое берберское восстание; Хариджитское восстание; Битва знати; Битва при Багдуре
The Berbers had supplied much of the manpower for the conquest of the Maghreb and of Spain but were treated as second-class Muslims: governors went on levying from converts the extraordinary taxes and the tribute of slaves due from non-Muslims. From the 720s Kharijite activists of the Sufri and later the Ibadi persuasion, arriving from the east, found ready listeners among them. In the 730s the governor of Kairouan, Ubayd Allah ibn al-Habhab, sharply increased these exactions to cover the cost of failed campaigns — among them the expeditions into Gaul repulsed by Charles Martel — and his deputy in Tangier reportedly declared the Berbers a conquered people.
In early 740, when the army of Ifriqiya had sailed against Sicily, the Berbers of western Morocco — the Ghomara, Barghawata and Miknasa — chose the Matghara chief Maysara as their leader, stormed Tangier and killed its governor. Maysara, said to have taken the title of caliph, was soon deposed and killed by his own followers, but his successor Khalid ibn Hamid al-Zanati annihilated the Arab cavalry near Tangier in the ‘Battle of the Nobles’ (autumn 740). Caliph Hisham sent an army of about 30,000 men from Syria and Egypt; in October–November 741 it was routed by the Berbers at Bagdoura on the Sebou, where the governor Kulthum ibn Iyad fell. In 742 two Berber armies converged on Kairouan, but the new governor, Hanzala ibn Safwan, defeated them at al-Qarn and al-Asnam; historians such as Khalid Yahya Blankinship regard the 120,000–180,000 Berbers said to have fallen at al-Asnam as a gross exaggeration.
The revolt spread to al-Andalus, where the Berber garrisons rose in 741 and were crushed only with the help of the surviving Syrian troops, who then settled in the south of the peninsula; Alfonso I of Asturias used the confusion to seize the abandoned north-western frontier. By wasting the Syrian army on which Umayyad power rested, the revolt contributed to the fall of the dynasty a few years later. The western and central Maghreb never returned to caliphal control: in the following decades they were divided among the Barghawata, the Sufri town of Sijilmasa, the Ibadi imamate of Tahert and, from 788–789, the Idrisids.
Connections
Causes and preconditions
- Arab conquest of the Maghreb647–709 · Africathe Berbers, enrolled en masse in the conquering armies, resented their status as second-class Muslims
Consequences
- Founding of Sijilmasabetween 757 and 758 · Africaal-Bakri says that the first settlers were Sufri Kharijites from the revolts against the Umayyads
Related events
- Battle of Vescera: Kusaila defeats Uqba ibn Nafibetween 682 and 683 · Africasixty years earlier the Berber chief Kusaila had already defeated and killed Uqba ibn Nafi
- Battle of Akroinon740 · Balkans and AnatoliaAkroinon coincided with the outbreak of the Berber revolt in North Africa; Khalid Blankinship counts both among the simultaneous defeats on distant fronts that overstretched the caliphate and brought down the Umayyads
- Abbasid Revolution9 June 747 – between July and August 750 · Middle East and Egyptthe revolt destroyed the Syrian army on which the Umayyads relied and helped to bring about their fall
- Abd al-Rahman I founds the Emirate of Córdobabetween 14 May and 15 May 756 · Western and Central EuropeThe revolt spread to al-Andalus, and the feuds it left behind eased Abd al-Rahman’s seizure of power
- Rustamid imamate at Tahertbetween 776 and 778 · Africathe Kharijite movement that had inspired the Berber revolt produced the independent imamates of the central Maghreb
- Idris I founds the Idrisid statebetween 788 and 789 · Africathe far Maghreb had been beyond caliphal control since the Berber revolt
Adjacent events in the thread
- Arabs take and destroy Carthage698 · Africa
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within a year of this event
Western and Central Europe
- Mission of Boniface in Germany15 May 719 – 5 June 754
Eastern Europe
- Second Arab–Khazar War: from Balanjar to Marwan’s campaign to the Volga722–737
- Volyntsevo culture: the Slavs of the Dnieper Left Bank in the Khazar agebetween 700 and 750 – between 813 and 833
- The Khazar rulers adopt Judaismbetween 740 and 861
Balkans and Anatolia
- Battle of Akroinon740
- The Ecloga: law code of Leo III and Constantine Vbetween 726 and 741
- Byzantine Iconoclasmbetween 726 and 730 – 11 March 843
Middle East and Egypt
- Abu Hanifa and Malik: the oldest surviving Sunni schools of lawbetween 737 and 738 – 795
Central and Northern Asia
South Asia
- Lalitaditya Muktapida rules Kashmir: the Sun temple of Martandbetween 724 and 725 – between 760 and 761
- Indian kings repel the Arab raids from Sind: Nagabhata I and the battle of Navsari723 – between 738 and 739
East Asia
- Emperor Shōmu’s Great Buddha of Tōdai-ji6 November 743 – 26 May 752
- Reign of Emperor Xuanzong: the Kaiyuan and Tianbao eras8 September 712 – 12 August 756
North America
- The Late Woodland period in eastern North Americac. 500 – c. 1000
- Plum Bayou Mounds: a planned ceremonial centre in the Arkansas valleyc. 650 – c. 1050
- Basketmaker III: pottery, beans and the bow on the Colorado Plateauc. 500 – c. 750
Latin America
- Quiriguá captures and beheads the king of Copánbetween 21 April and 29 April 738
- Wari culture and the Middle Horizon state in the Central Andesc. 600 – c. 1000
- Tiwanaku culture at its height by Lake Titicacac. 600 – c. 1000
- Nazca culture and the Nazca Linesbetween 200 and 100 BC – between 500 and 800
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Berber Revolt
- Wikipedia (English): Maysara al-Matghari
- Wikipedia (English): Battle of Bagdoura
- Wikipedia (English): Battle of the Nobles
- Wikipedia (Russian): Берберское восстание
- Blankinship K. Y. The End of the Jihâd State: The Reign of Hishām ibn ʻAbd al-Malik and the Collapse of the Umayyads. — Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
- Abun-Nasr J. M. A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period. — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
- Wikidata: Q759998