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The Third Civil War
Sa‘id established himself in Dayr Hind, a suburb of al-Hira, but the
Kalbi majority of the garrison continued to support Ibn ‘Umar in al-
Hira. For several months there were skirmishes between the two, but
then the appearance of a Kharijite threat reduced this contest
between the factions in the Syrian army to secondary importance.
10
This Kharijite threat had developed first among the Rabi‘a tribes,
technically ‘northerners’ but hostile to the Mudar and Qays, in
northern Mesopotamia. Especially prominent was the tribe of
Shayban. Their own appointed caliph, Dahhak b. Qays, gathered
support among those soldiers of the Mesopotamian frontier who did
not support Marwan and in 745 he appeared with a large force in
Iraq. There he decisively defeated the rival Umayyad governors and
while Nadr b. Sa‘id seems to have fled to join Marwan in Syria, Ibn
‘Umar and some of his Kalbis were shut up in Wasit. The spring and
summer of 745 then saw the remarkable sight of the capitulation of
Ibn ‘Umar and his men, among them Mansur b. Jumhur al-Kalbi, to
Dahhak b. Qays, their acceptance of Kharijism and of the non-
Qurashi Dahhak as caliph (Ibn ‘Umar, of course, was a Qurashi and
an Umayyad), and the appointment of Ibn ‘Umar as governor of
Wasit, eastern Iraq and western Persia on behalf of Dahhak b. Qays.
This appointment again brought Ibn ‘Umar into contact with ‘Abd
Allah b. Mu‘awiya. Here it should be remarked that in spite of their
respective Shi‘ite and Kharijite colourings, the movements of Ibn
Mu‘awiya and Dahhak b. Qays seem relatively flexible and able to
absorb adherents of different viewpoints—one doubts whether Ibn
‘Umar and Mansur b. Jumhur were fervent converts to Kharijism.
Dahhak governed the western part of his territories from Kufa
but, probably in the spring of 746, he returned to Mesopotamia to
take advantage of Marwan’s difficulties in Syria. Occupying Mosul,
his high wages attracted a large following to his cause, including
Sulayman b. Hisham with those of his Dhakwaniyya whom he had
saved from the earlier defeat at Marwan’s hands. This was the time
when Marwan was engaged in his second siege of Hims, but he was
able to order his son ‘Abd Allah, who was still at Harran, to prevent
Dahhak’s further advance. ‘Abd Allah got as far as Nisibis where he
was trapped, but Marwan himself, having subdued Hims, was now
free to enter the field against Dahhak. In the ensuing battle at
Kafartuta, Dahhak was killed and the Kharijite forces had to
abandon Mosul.
11
It was not until the next year, 747, however, that the Kharijites,
now having chosen Abu Dulaf as their caliph, and on the advice of
The Third Civil War
101
Sulayman b. Hisham having withdrawn to the eastern bank of the
Tigris, were finally driven out and their threat ended. The stalemate
which followed Marwan’s victory at Kafartuta was ended when,
after having established his control over Iraq, the Umayyad caliph
was able to withdraw troops from there for use against Abu Dulaf
and his men. Faced with this, the latter had to evacuate their position
and withdrew through the mountains further east.
It was Yazid Ibn Hubayra who had finally established control over
Iraq for Marwan. In the early summer of 747 he had defeated the
Kharijite governor of Kufa, under whom Mansur b. Jumhur fought,
captured the town and had then gone on to take Wasit and make Ibn
‘Umar prisoner. At this juncture ‘Abd Allah b. Mu‘awiya alone
remained as a focus for opposition to Marwan, and he was joined in
western and south-western Persia by a conglomeration of disparate
elements opposed to the Umayyad caliph—Shi‘ites, Kharijites,
Kalbis, Umayyads and even some ‘Abbasids. The alliance, however,
was clearly a fragile one and in 747 it suffered defeat at the hands of
an army under one of Ibn Hubayra’s generals. Ibn Mu‘awiya himself
fled to Khurasan, where he was murdered on the orders of the rising
power there, Abu Muslim, who would tolerate no rival; Sulayman b.
Hisham and Mansur b. Jumhur fled to India where they later met
their deaths; the members of the ‘Abbasid family who had joined
Ibn Mu‘awiya merely returned to their home in Jordan where they
awaited further developments.
12
Already before the defeat of Ibn Mu‘awiya, Marwan had returned
to his court at Harran, now having the most important provinces
under his control. He may have been worried by the Byzantines who
had taken the opportunities presented by the third civil war to extend
their eastern borders. During this period too he had been receiving
appeals for help from the governor of Khurasan, Nasr b. Sayyar,
who was faced with dangerous developments in his province, but
Marwan had been unable to heed such appeals. In fact the movement
had already begun in Khurasan which was soon to destroy
everything which Marwan had achieved and bring about the final
ruin of the Umayyad caliphate.
The collapse of the Umayyad caliphate so soon after the close of
the civil war, however, was not merely the fortuitous result of the
fact that the rising of Abu Muslim and the Hashimiyya had begun at
the same time. It seems clear that the civil war had itself been the
culmination of changes which had been taking place in the nature of
the state during the Marwanid period and that it brought these
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