The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate ad 661-750

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

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68
‘Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj
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

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‘Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj 
69
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 
(im
a
tat al-sal
a
t),
 and the battle cry of the
qurra’
 at Dayr al-Jamajim, ‘revenge for the ritual prayer’ 
(y
a
 thar
a
t
al-?sl
a
t),
 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