Episode 41: Al Saffah

The Abbasid revolution showed what it took to overthrow a dynasty; establishing a new one brought a whole other set of challenges. The clan’s first caliph, al Saffah, took an aggressive posture to scare off any would-be challengers to his power. Legitimacy was his chief concern, and he found the best way to attain it was to assert his claim as fiercely as possible.

Glossary

• Qahtaba: the original commander of the Abbasid forces out of Khurasan died during his knight raid against the Iraqi armies led by Marwan’s governor of the province, Yazid ibn Hubayra. His sons Hasan and Hamid both go on to play major roles in the new dynasty, with Hasan for example leading the army after his father’s death.
• Abu Muslim al Khurasani: the mysterious figure who first got the rebellion started in the East. His masterful performance in that province made him an obvious choice of governor for the first caliph. He maintained a powerful hold on its people, who seem to have loved him and regarded him as one of their own. While his actual ancestry is contested, this leads many to assume that he was ethnically from Khurasan. 
• Mansur ibn Jamhur il Kalbi: the hyper-Qahtani Mansur was one of the main conspirators blamed for killing Yazid III, the Umayyad caliph who was usurped by his cousin. His story is pretty interesting, especially considering how he leveraged his lineage to gain influence in Sindh. There’s even a long aside about his brother, who was also there with him, being betrayed by another famous reject from the Umayyad dynasty, but it leaves no impact on the caliphate, so there’s no reason to get into any of it.
• Yazid ibn Hubayra: Marwan II’s governor of Iraq was still around after his defeat at the hands of Qahtaba’s revolutionary army. He fortified himself with tens of thousands of men in Wasit, a canton city too well protected to be assaulted, and too well supplied to be besieged. The Abbasids had a difficult time dealing with him, but ultimately the caliph’s half-brother managed to negotiate an end to the stand-off.
• Abu Ja’far: the caliph’s brother and successor was in charge of the center of the caliphate, from Basra in the south all the way to Armenia in the north. I guess there were other Abbasids in charge of many of Iraq’s cities, but somehow Abu Ja’far was ultimately responsible. He relied on many capable deputies to take care of his various domains, and we’ll get into his own actions in more detail soon.
• Abdallah ibn Ali: the caliph’s uncle had led the Abbasid armies at Zab, defeating Marwan’s forces and ushering in the new dynasty. He is remembered more for his executions of the Umayyads, and quelling their Syrian domains. The army he started with was the one Qahtaba had originally led west, augmented with a few Iraqi and Arabian tribes from the region. More Syrian tribes trickled into his forces as he pacified those lands, and his already impressive marital power grew even further.