Episode 44: The ghost of Abu Muslim

One of al Mansur’s first acts as caliph was to lure Abu Muslim to his court and assassinate the powerful and popular governor. This led to immediate turmoil in the East, leaving him to contend with sporadic upheavals for almost an entire decade. The caliph proved up to the task: his adept management of all these challenges helped him emerge from the chaos with more control over the region than any of his predecessors.

Glossary

• Sunpadh: the first rebel we hear about in our sources following the execution of Abu Muslim is from the noble Sassanid house of Karan. He first emerged in Khurasan and headed west into Isfahan. He looted the treasury at Rayy during his rebellion, winning the great stores of tax revenue which Abu Muslim had left there before his journey west into Iraq. Sunpath was defeated and killed about a year into his movement, in 755.
• Is’haq al Turk: another Khurasani rebel mentioned in our sources, albeit very lightly. If he existed at all, he was notable for trying to leverage his good relations with foreign troops in his fight against the caliphate. His supposed connection to Abu Muslim was self-professed, as Is’haq is said to have claimed to be Abu Muslim’s successor.
• Hashem al Muqanna’: yet another Khurasani rebel, about whom even less is known. His name translates as Hashem the masked, which supposedly refers to the fact that his supporters only ever saw him fully masked since they believed his face was too holy to behld. I think this one was purely fantasy, as his story bears all the hallmarks of Islamic myth-making of the period. He claims to be a successor of not only Abu Muslim, but also the prophet before him. Jorge Luis Borges and Napoleon Bonaparte have both written small pieces of fiction about this romantic figure.
• Rawandia: a mysterious movement of several hundred zealots which is remembered strangely in Arab history. Our sources make it sound like they were a crowd of misguided believers who thought the caliphs was god himself, and they had to be put down after they endangered al Mansur by crowding him too violently. The explanation makes no sense, but the danger they put the caliph in was real, so it is more likely that they were a mob up to no good.
• Ustadhsis: the final eastern rebel against the caliphate, he caused significant damage to the Arab position in Khurasan. Ustadhsis allied with as many local powers as he could and brought them together in a coalition of sorts to fight the umma. He was immensely successful for a few years, and his movement posed the greatest threat the caliphate had seen from the restive area in a long time. 
• Khurshid: the Ispahbad of Tabaristan was a local king in the mountainous southern coast of the Caspian. His family had been in and out of power for centuries, and Tabaristan had been a part or vassal of the Sassanid empire before its fall. It maintained a similar relationship with the caliphate since it first burst out on the scene, with some notable periods of non-compliance, usually whenever the umma was too busy to send armies to enforce the payment of tribute. The Ispahbad lost his kingdom after Al Mansur ordered his son al Mahdi to invade Tabaristan around 760.
• Mulabbad al Shaibani: a kharijite leader from Mesopotamia who defeated several armies sent against him, allowing the situation in the East to get worse while he held back the umma’s forces. He was ultimately defeated by the legendary Khazem ibn Khuzaima.
• Ibn Marrar: the commander sent by the caliph to deal with Sunpath. He was victorious against the Zoroastrian noble, but soon had a falling out with the caliph and fresh armies were sent to punish with his disobedience. He lost his battles against them a couple times and eventually died in distant Azerbaijan.
• Abu Dawud: the man who succeeded Abu Muslim as governor of Khurasan had been his deputy for many years in the region. This made Abu Dawud a great choice for the job as he could count on the loyalty of his men.
• Abduljabbar bin Abdulrahman al Azdi: the man chosen as Abu Dawud’s replacement in Khurasan took too many liberties with his newfound power and was quickly regarded as a threat by the caliph.
• Aseed al Khuza’i: Abduljabbar’s replacement was another old loyalist of Abu Muslim’s, so more in the vein of Abu Dawud than his predecessor. His connections to the people of Merv kept the peace in Khurasan all the way until Ustadhsis’s rebellion years down the line.
• Hameed ibn Qahtaba: one of the prominent sons of Qahtaba, the original commander of the Abbasid revolution’s forces from Khurasan. He and his brother Hasan were regular commanders of Abbasid forces throughout their lives, although their service record has some mixed results. Hameed was defeated by the kharijite Mulabbad al Shaibani so badly that he had to pay a ransom of 100,000 pieces of silver in order to be allowed to retreat.
• Khazem ibn Khuzaima: one of the umma’s most capable generals at this point in its history. Khazem hailed from the Khurasani capital of Merv where he had been a supporter of the da’wa back before it took over the caliphate. His creativity and energy on the battlefield helped him best many of the caliph’s enemies; Mulabbad al Shaibani, Omani kharijites, Khurshid, and Ustadhsis are but a few. 
• Mohammad al Mahdi: the caliph’s son plays a major part in the east after al Mansur sends him there to bolster his credentials in the umma. He leads the armies against the renegade governor of Khurasan Abduljabbar, and gets the invasion of Tabaristan started. After that he made his residence in Rayy at the very western edge of Khurasan, a position he maintained for several years, no doubt at the behest of his father.