Pro-ʿAlid Rebellions

Zaydī Rebellion in the ‘Long Eighth Century CE’. A Prosopographical and Socio-Historical Study, c.740–820 CE

A large number of the numerous revolts in the early Islamic period were carried out in the name of the ʿAlid family, or otherwise demanded ʿAlid hegemony over the caliphate, i.e., the rule of a descendant of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 661). The ʿAlids were the “most important focus of opposition within the Muslim community” (Kennedy 1981: 198) in the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid periods. However, a detailed study of (pro-)ʿAlid contention remains a desideratum. Furthermore, the scarce scholarship on (pro-)ʿAlid revolts is often overlaid with questions about the development of the Shīʿa or the broader context of (proto-)Shīʿī millenarianism and heresy. The turn in some scholarship towards understanding the ʿAlids as a socio-political and socio-economic group that was dominant in the urban centres of 7th- and 8th-century ʿIrāq and the Ḥijāz has not yet had any impact upon the study of revolts labelled as (pro-)ʿAlid. As such, existing scholarship neglects the socio-political and economic contexts of individual revolts and so presents a reductionist view.

My PhD project addresses this research gap by studying the revolts ascribed to a specific group of (pro-)ʿAlids: the so-called Zaydīs, named after Zayd b. ʿAlī (d. 740). In what follows, ‘Zaydī revolts’ refer to the revolt of Zayd b. ʿAlī and his descendants as well as revolts of ʿAlids associated with Zayd, his alleged doctrine and/or his supporters. Zayd b. ʿAlī’s revolt in Kūfa in 740 serves as the starting point of this research project, which spans a period of approximately fifty years. This will include the rebellions of Zayd’s son Yaḥyā (d. 743), the Jaʿfarid ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya (d. 748/9), Muḥammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya (d. 762) and his brother Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh (d. 763), al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī Ṣāḥib Fakhkh (d. 786) as well as the two brothers Idrīs b. ʿAbdallāh (d. 791) and Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh (d. 803). Finally the work will also give an outlook to the larger cluster of pro-ʿAlid uprising in the early 9th century that started with the rebellion of Abū l-Sarāyā (d. 815) and Ibn Ṭabāṭabā (d. 815).

Objectives

Little is known about the individual revolts and there is as yet no comprehensive study of the phenomenon of Zaydī rebellion from a historical perspective. The proposed PhD project focuses on and investigates Zaydī revolts as collective political activities supported by diverse groups. The perspective taken here adopts the premise that these revolts were part of more general socio-political developments that shaped the Islamic caliphate throughout the long 8th century. The decision to rebel or to support a rebel is thus understood as an act influenced at least as much by socio-political and economic interests as by religious considerations.

This project thus seeks to uncouple the revolts of Zayd b. ʿAlī and his ‘successors’ from the later development and understanding of Zaydī Shīʿism as a distinct religious denomination, which is the dominant perspective of later Zaydī literature as well as of modern scholarly discourse. In contrast to most scholarship on (pro-)ʿAlid/Zaydī revolts, these uprisings are thus considered as historical events situated within broader socio-political contexts and not merely as evolutionary stages in the development of Zaydism. This means that the project will focus primarily on the composition of the revolts’ support networks to understand

1. the overarching patterns of the supporters’ backgrounds, such as their tribal affiliation;
2. the possible motivations or aims of the supporters – which might not always have been congruent with those of the rebel leaders; and
3. the connections between different revolts through their respective supporters and leaders, which will shed light on the composition of broader contentious milieus in the urban centres of the caliphate.

At the same time, a study of Zaydī/pro-ʿAlid rebellion also promises to contribute to our knowledge of early Islamic history in the long 8th century. In this sense, the proposed project is also likely to complement new research findings regarding certain aspects of early Islamic history. Among those aspects are, for example, questions concerning the increasing number of revolts throughout the empire during the rule of Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 786-809) and the reasons for this seemingly widespread discontent. Another aspect to which the proposed project might contribute is the role of provincial elites in the context of revolts: are there additional factors beyond new marital patterns and ʿAbbāsid policies of integration to explain the elites’ support or lack of support? Finally, the results of the proposed project will also present a more nuanced definition of the term zaydiyya, which is used in some early Islamic narrative sources to refer to the revolts’ supporters, and its possible relationship with the later Zaydī community. Questions of ritual and doctrine with regard to the Zaydī revolts, on the other hand, will play a marginal role.

Research Methods and Sources

In order to achieve its objectives, the proposed project will adopt a prosopographical approach to Zaydī rebellion. The analysis will put a special focus on the followers and supporters of Zaydī rebels. Given the fact that all ʿAlid leaders of the revolts described above were retrospectively acknowledged as Zaydī imams, the representation of their aims and intentions is subject to historiographical and hagiographical bias. Their supporters, in contrast, were often people who were less important from a religious and political perspective. Therefore, it is very likely that the information preserved about them in the narrative sources is different and above all less contested than that which is contained of the leaders. A synopsis of the revolts’ support networks is likely to give less biased information about the revolts’ dynamics and goals.

The centrepiece of the proposed PhD project will be a prosopographical study of the network of supporters of the revolts mentioned above. Recent prosopographical studies such as the works of Ahmed (201), Elad (2016), and Robinson (2020) have shown that this approach can usefully complement and substantiate our current understanding of the early Islamic period. Although the merits of prosopography have been recognized in the field of Islamic studies since the 1970s, most contributions are rather recent, which may be connected to the increase in digital tools that facilitate such studies.

As a first step, a database of supporters will be created. This database will be based on a broad corpus of Arabic written sources, mainly historiographical and biographical works from the non-Zaydī and Zaydī traditions. Finally, the preliminary lists of supporters of Zayd b. ʿAlī, Muḥammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyya, Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh, and Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh collected in the appendices of van Arendonk’s Les débuts will also be used to complement the database, as well as Elad’s survey of supporters.

As a second step, I will use Jedli and OpenITI, to trace the supporters across the vast Arabo-Islamic literary tradition in order to learn more about their backgrounds. Both these tools facilitate (contextual) text searches within a corpus of several thousand digitized Arabic sources across a variety of genres and periods. It thus complements the close reading of the written sources to add more information about Zaydī supporters to the database.

As a third step, the database will serve to analyse the tribal, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, familial relations, socio-political positions, and geographical distribution of the supporters of Zaydī revolts. The results of this analysis will provide insight into the interrelated networks behind Zaydī rebellion over the long 8th century. This third step will also be facilitated by the use of digital tools for social network analysis, such as ORA. In this sense, the proposed project brings together traditional social analysis, which focusses on the attributes of individuals to define social structure, and social network analysis, which adopts a more structuralist approach by focusing on the different ties between individuals. The combination of these two approaches facilitates a consideration of both the micro and the macro levels of Zaydī rebel networks.

Finally, the results of the analysis will be studied against their wider historical context. It is the aim of this final step to situate the major patterns and composition of pro-ʿAlid/Zaydī support within broader socio-political developments. In addition to the written sources mentioned above, the proposed project will also make use of material sources, especially coins. Several of the above-mentioned revolt leaders, such as Ibn Muʿāwiya, Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh, Idrīs b. ʿAbdallāh, and Abū l-Sarāyā/Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Zayd, issued their own coinage, which served to propagate their claims to power. Coins will thus furnish additional information about the geographical dispersion of the revolts as well as their leaders’ claims to power and ideological orientations. This wider perspective will contribute not only to a better understanding of the mechanisms and developments of revolts and their supporter networks, but also to more general questions pertaining to the history of the early Islamic empire and the development of the early Zaydīs as a group.

This sub-project is conducted by Natalie Kontny-Wendt.