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

The Family of al-Muhallab and the Development of
Factionalism
The beginning of the emergence of the Mudari and Yemeni army
factions in the east in the period after al-Hajjaj is associated with the
career of Yazid b. al-Muhallab. His father, it will be remembered,
had been responsible for the defeat of the Kharijites in Iraq in the
early part of al-Hajjaj’s governorate there. Consequently, al-
Muhallab was made governor of Khurasan by al-Hajjaj in 698. He
remained in office there until his death in 702 when he was
succeeded by his son Yazid. Al-Muhallab and his family belonged to
the ‘southern’ tribe of Azd, and the rise of Azd in Khurasan, where,

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Factionalism and Islamisation
as in Basra, they allied with the Rabi‘a against the Mudar, is closely
connected with the rise to power of the Muhallabids there. The
family consciously promoted the interests of their tribe, perhaps
because the Muhallabids themselves were of fairly obscure origin
and wished to establish themselves among the leaders of Azd, and
this may help to explain Yazid’s partiality towards his relatives
among the refugees from the revolt of Ibn al-Ash‘ath who fled to
Khurasan. We are told that he only rounded up the ‘northerners’
among them to send back to al-Hajjaj for punishment.
Relations between al-Hajjaj and Yazid b. al-Muhallab worsened
and eventually, in 704, the Iraqi governor obtained the caliph’s
permission to remove Yazid from office and imprison him. In 709,
however, taking advantage of the antagonism which existed between
al-Hajjaj and the heir apparent, Sulayman, Yazid escaped from
prison and took refuge at Ramla with Sulayman, at that time
governor of Palestine.
The hostility between al-Hajjaj and Sulayman was connected
with the former’s desire for the succession to the caliphate of a son
of al-Walid rather than Sulayman, but whether this was its cause or
only a symptom is not clear. It is probably anachronistic to view al-
Hajjaj as inextricably bound up with the ‘northerners’ while
Sulayman was a supporter of the ‘southerners’. Not all of al-Hajjaj’s
appointees belonged to Mudar, and in Khurasan Qutayba b. Muslim,
who succeeded Yazid b. al-Muhallab, and who himself had no strong
tribal backing there, found himself opposed by the Mudar even
though he was regarded as al-Hajjaj’s man. It has been argued that
the Yemenis were generally in favour of assimilation with the non-
Arabs and were opposed to an expansionist policy while the Mudar
supported contrary points of view, and that the hostility of Sulayman
and al-Hajjaj is similarly to be seen as a result of disagreement on
these questions of policy.
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 Judging from what happened when
Sulayman became caliph, however, it is difficult to see him as an
‘anti-imperialist’. He, after all, launched the attack on
Constantinople, supported campaigns for the subjugation of the
Caspian provinces, and sent Syrian troops into Khurasan, apparently
for the first time. It is true that some reports suggest that he reversed
al-Hajjaj’s measures that kept the 
mawali
 out of the Iraqi garrison
towns, but one would hesitate, given the anecdotal nature of Muslim
tradition, to attempt to describe Sulayman’s rule as the pursuance of
a complete political programme. It seems more satisfactory to see
this period as one in which the factions were taking shape as the

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Factionalism and Islamisation 
75
soldiers formed parties among themselves in pursuit of their
economic and other interests, and individuals like Yazid b. al-
Muhallab sought to use these for their own ends.
When Sulayman became caliph he installed Yazid b. al-Muhallab
as governor of Iraq and the east, and Yazid appointed his own men,
Yemenis, to the offices previously filled by al-Hajjaj’s appointees.
He persuaded Sulayman to let him govern from Khurasan, rather
than from the usual seat of the governor, Iraq. The sources explain
this as resulting from a desire to get out of the clutches of a financial
intendant, a 
mawla,
 whom Sulayman had appointed with a small
military force of his own to supervise the finances of Iraq. It may be
too that Yazid foresaw greater opportunities for profit and the
prospect of stronger support in the frontier province. In Khurasan,
he led the campaigns against the Caspian provinces, which had been
imperfectly subdued in the first wave of conquests, and it was during
this period that Syrian troops were introduced into Khurasan.
However, when ‘Umar II became caliph in 717, he deposed Yazid
and had him imprisoned, allegedly for too blatant feathering of his
own nest while governor.
Either just before or just after the death of ‘Umar in February
720, Yazid b. al-Muhallab escaped from his prison and fled to Basra
where he was able to gain a body of support for a revolt. Possibly he
knew what to expect under the new caliph Yazid b. ‘Abd al-Malik
who was descended on his mother’s side from al-Hajjaj. In Basra the
Muhallabids’ own tribe of Azd was strong and, although the
Umayyad governor was at first able to organise resistance against
Yazid b. al-Muhallab, the resistance soon crumbled. This was partly
a result of the rivalries among the different families and groups in
the town, and partly because the governor was unable to match the
material incentives offered by Yazid b. al-Muhallab. As a result, the
latter took over the town and imprisoned its governor.
In his propaganda Ibn al-Muhallab is said to have called for a holy
war against the Syrians and to have summoned the Basrans to ‘the
Book of God and the 
Sunna
 of His Prophet’. It is clear that he had
some success in harnessing the religious opposition to the Umayyads,
and among his supporters is named al-Sumayda’ al-Kindi who is
described as a supporter of the Kharijites. Although the basis of
Yazid’s support was his own Azdi kinsmen, he also obtained backing
from many Mudaris, the more so after his capture of Wasit when he
was joined by Mudaris from Kufa. It is not possible to align the
supporters and opponents of Ibn al-Muhallab on a purely tribal basis,

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Factionalism and Islamisation
and, indeed, we hear that some Azdis were opposed to him. There
seems to have been no Syrian garrison in Wasit at this time—it may
have been withdrawn in connection with the siege of Constantinople.
From Basra in the summer of 720 Ibn al Muhallab extended his
control over Khuzistan, Kirman and Fars. In order to confront him the
Umayyad army of Mesopotamia and the Syrian frontier was brought
south under the command of Maslama b. ‘Abd al-Malik. Now the
religious element in the support of Ibn al-Muhallab proved a liability
for, rather in the manner of ‘Ali’s pious followers at Siffin, it impeded
the pressing home of any advantage. It was argued that the Syrians
should be given a chance to accept the Book of God and the 
Sunna
 of
the Prophet before they were attacked. In the event, when the fighting
started towards the end of August the Muhallabid forces proved
unreliable, especially the Mudar of Kufa who abandoned the field.
Yazid b. al-Muhallab was killed in the battle and other members of the
family fled as far afield as India. There, however, most of them were
hunted down and either killed or taken captive until ransomed by their
Azdi relatives.
The importance of the career of Ibn al-Muhallab lies in its
intensification of the factional schism. His defeat was followed by the
installation of Qaysis and other ‘northerners’ into the key offices in
Iraq and the east, as a reaction to the identification of Ibn al-Muhallab
with the Azd. To Iraq as governor there came a Qaysi, ‘Umar b.
Hubayra, a former governor of Mesopotamia. Furthermore, the army
which put down the revolt in Iraq was the army of the Syrian-
Mesopotamian frontier, and this was basically Qaysi in composition
since its area of operation had been settled by ‘northerners’. Previous
Syrian troops in Iraq and the east, being drawn from south and central
Syria, were predominantly Kalbi and Yemeni, and this may explain
why there seems to have been some support for Ibn al-Muhallab
among the troops of the Umayyad governor of Iraq. The defeat of Ibn
al-Muhallab came to be seen by the Yemenis as one of their major
humiliations at the hands of the Umayyads and one of the slogans of
the Yemenis from Khurasan who helped the Hashimiyya to overthrow
the Umayyads in 749–50 was ‘revenge for Banu Muhallab’.
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