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130-775: The Abbasid revolution ( Arabic : الثورة العباسية , romanized :  ath-thawra al-ʿAbbāsiyya ), also called the Movement of the Men of the Black Raiment ( حركة رجال الثياب السوداء ḥaraka rijāl ath-thiyāb as-sawdāʾ ), was the overthrow of the Umayyad caliphate (661–750 CE), the second of the four major caliphates in Islamic history , by the third, the Abbasid caliphate (750–1517 CE). The Abbasid revolt originated in

260-460: A Muslim from the large, flat area of the eastern Muslim empire" gave no meaningful information about him personally. Even today, although scholars are sure he was one real, consistent individual, there is broad agreement that all concrete suggestions of his actual identity are doubtful. Abu Muslim himself discouraged inquiries about his origins, emphasizing that his religion and place of residence were all that mattered. Whoever he was, Abu Muslim built

390-521: A chance to prepare. During the raid, al-Ta'i himself was finally killed in battle. Despite the loss, al-Fazari was routed and fled with his forces to Wasit . The Siege of Wasit took place from that August until July 750. Although a respected military commander had been lost, a large portion of the Umayyad forces were essentially trapped inside Wasit and could be left in their virtual prison while more offensive military actions were made. Concurrently with

520-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

650-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

780-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

910-519: A distinctly Persian character, as opposed to the Arab character of the Umayyads. Rulers became increasingly autocratic, at times claiming divine right in defense of their actions. An accurate and comprehensive history of the revolution has proven difficult to compile for a number of reasons. There are no contemporary accounts known to have survived, and most sources were written more than a century after

1040-436: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

1170-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

1300-606: A more cosmopolitan empire centered around the new, ethnically and religiously diverse city of Baghdad. The Abbasids were essentially puppets of secular rulers starting from 945, though their rule over Baghdad and its surroundings continued until 1258 when the Mongols sacked Baghdad, while their lineage as nominal caliphs lasted until 1517, when the Ottomans conquered Egypt (the seat of the Abbasid caliphate after 1258) and claimed

1430-600: A new era of Islamic governance. By the 740s, the Umayyad Empire found itself in critical condition. A succession crisis in 744 led to the Third Fitna , which raged across the Middle East for three years. The very next year, al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Shaybani initiated a Kharijite rebellion that would continue until 746. Concurrent with this, a rebellion broke out in reaction to Marwan II 's decision to move

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1560-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

1690-966: A revolt of his own. On 9 June 747 (Ramadan 25, 129AH), Abu Muslim successfully initiated an open revolt against Umayyad rule, which was carried out under the sign of the Black Standard . Close to 10,000 soldiers were under Abu Muslim's command when the hostilities officially began in Merv . On 14 February 748 he established control of Merv, expelling Nasr ibn Sayyar less than a year after the latter had put down Ibn Surayj's revolt, and dispatched an army westwards. Newly commissioned Abbasid officer Qahtaba ibn Shabib al-Ta'i , along with his sons Al-Hasan ibn Qahtaba and Humayd ibn Qahtaba , pursued Ibn Sayyar to Nishapur and then pushed him further west to Qumis , in western Persia. That August, al-Ta'i defeated an Umayyad force of 10,000 at Gorgan , South East of Caspian Sea. Ibn Sayyar regrouped with reinforcements from

1820-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

1950-700: A secret network of pro-Abbasid sentiment based among the mixed Arab and Iranian military officers along the Silk Road garrison cities. Through this networking, Abu Muslim ensured armed support for the Abbasids from a multi-ethnic force years before the revolution even came out in the open. These networks proved essential, as the officers garrisoned along the Silk Road had spent years fighting the ferocious Turkic tribes of Central Asia and were experienced and respected tacticians and warriors. The victors desecrated

2080-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

2210-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

2340-473: A universal world religion. This led to a great cultural and scientific exchange known as the Islamic Golden Age , with most achievements taking place under the Abbasids. What was later known as Islamic civilization and culture was defined by the Abbasids, rather than the earlier Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates. New ideas in all areas of society were accepted regardless of their geographic origin, and

2470-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

2600-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

2730-643: Is Sunni sources and the latter in Shia sources. Hasan and Husayn are recognized as the second and the third Imams in Shia Islam , their descendants being known as the Hasanids and the Husaynids , respectively. They are revered by all Muslims as the progeny of Muhammad and honored by nobility titles such as Sharif and Sayyid . Ali and Fatima also had two daughters, namely, Zaynab and Umm Kulthum . After

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2860-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

2990-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

3120-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

3250-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

3380-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

3510-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

3640-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

3770-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

3900-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

4030-530: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

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4160-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

4290-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

4420-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

4550-532: The Emirate of Córdoba . This is considered an extension of the Umayyad Dynasty, and ruled from Cordoba from 756 until 1031. The Abbasid revolution has been of great interest to both Western and Muslim historians. According to State University of New York professor of sociology Saïd Amir Arjomand , analytical interpretations of the revolution are rare, with most discussions simply lining up behind either

4680-515: The Third Fitna in the Levant , with the revolt of al-Harith ibn Surayj in Khurasan and Central Asia occurring concurrently with the revolution itself. The Abbasids spent their preparation time watching as the Umayyad Empire was besieged from within itself in all four cardinal directions, and School of Oriental and African Studies Professor Emeritus G. R. Hawting has asserted that even if

4810-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

4940-401: The death of Fatima in 632 CE , Ali remarried and had more children. Among them, the lineage of Ali continued through Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiya , Abbas ibn Ali , and Umar al-Atraf , their descendants were honored by the title Alawi ( lit.   ' of Ali ' ). Respectively, they were born to Khawla al-Hanafiyya , Umm al-Banin , and Umm Habib bint Rabi'a (al-Sahba). Mu'awiya seized

5070-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

5200-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

5330-827: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Alids In addition to seventeen daughters, various sources report that Ali had eleven or fourteen, or eighteen sons. His first marriage

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5460-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

5590-571: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

5720-834: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

5850-616: The Abbasid al-Saffah ( r.  750–754 ) declared himself caliph, as they had hoped for an Alid leader instead. The Abbasids soon turned against their former allies and persecuted the Alids and their Shia supporters. In response, Shia doctrinally limited its leadership to the Alids, many of whom revolted against the Abbasids, including the Hasanid brothers Muhammad ibn Abd-Allah ( d.  762 ) and Ibrahim. Some Alids instead took refuge in remote areas and founded regional dynasties in

5980-481: The Abbasid Dynasty itself throughout Khorasan and Kurdistan . Although Shi'ites were key to the revolution's success, Abbasid attempts to claim orthodoxy in light of Umayyad material excess led to continued persecution of Shi'ites. On the other hand, non-Muslims regained the government posts they had lost under the Umayyads. Jews, Nestorian Christians , Zoroastrians and even Buddhists were re-integrated into

6110-543: The Abbasid dynasty (in the case of the Hashimiyya), or had converted to other branches of Shi'ism and the Kaysanites ceased to exist. The Umayyad state is remembered as an Arab-centric state, being run by and for the benefit of those who were ethnically Arab though Muslim in creed. The non-Arab Muslims resented their marginal social position and were easily drawn into Abbasid opposition to Umayyad rule. Arabs dominated

6240-535: The Abbasid revolution was an early example of people of different faiths aligning with a common cause. This was due in large part to policies of the Umayyads which were regarded as particularly oppressive to anyone following a faith other than Islam. In 741, the Umayyads decreed that non-Muslims could not serve in government posts. The Abbasids were aware of this discontent, and made efforts to balance both its Muslim character as well as its partially non-Muslim constituency. The non-Muslim aristocracy around Merv supported

6370-826: The Abbasids along with the Hashimite allies slowly built up an underground resistance movement to Umayyad rule. Secret networks were used to build a power base of support in the eastern Muslim lands to ensure the revolution's success. This buildup not only took place right on the heels of the Zaydi Revolt in Iraq, but also concurrently with the Berber Revolt in Iberia and Maghreb , the Ibadi rebellion in Yemen and Hijaz , and

6500-535: The Abbasids as well. Historiographical surveys often focus on the solidifying of Muslim thought and rites under the Abbasids, with the conflicts between separated classes of rulers and clerics giving rise to the empire's eventual separation of religion and politics. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

6630-465: The Abbasids hid not only their identities but also their preparation and mere existence. As-Saffah would go on to become the first Abbasid caliph, but he did not come forward to receive the pledge of allegiance from the people until after the Umayyad caliph and a large number of his princes were already killed. Abu Muslim al-Khorasani , who was the primary Abbasid military commander, was especially mysterious; even his name, which literally means "father of

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6760-598: The Abbasids was ignited in Iraq and Bahrain in the mid-ninth century by Ali ibn Muhammad Sahib al-Zanj, who claimed descent from Abbas ibn Ali. The poetry by descendants of Abbas ibn Ali is collected in al-Awraq , compiled by the Turkic scholar al-Suli ( d.  946–947 ). One of his descendants was Abbas ibn al-Hasan al-Alawi, who reached fame as a poet and scholar during the reigns of Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun. Several dynasties have claimed descent from Ali, often through his son Hasan. The Hasanid dynasties include

6890-569: The Abbasids, and thus retained their status as a privileged governing class regardless of religious belief. Beginning around 719, Hashimiyya missions began to seek adherents in Khurasan . Their campaign was framed as one of proselytism . They sought support for "a member of the House of the Prophet who shall be pleasing to everyone", without making explicit mention of the Abbasids. These missions met with success both among Arabs and non-Arabs, although

7020-542: The Abbasids. Their followers also believe that the birth of their twelfth imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi , was hidden for fear of Abbasid persecution and that he remains in occultation by divine will since 874, until his reappearance at the end of time to eradicate injustice and evil. They became known as the Twelvers . Meanwhile, the only historic split among the Imamites happened after the death in 765 of their sixth imam,

7150-656: The Arabs referred to them, were often better educated and more civilised than their Arab masters. The new converts, on the basis of equality of all Muslims, transformed the political landscape. Previté-Orton also argues that the feud between the Arabs in Syria and the Arabs in Mesopotamia further weakened the empire. The revolution led to the enfranchisement of non-Arab people who had converted to Islam, granting them social and spiritual equality with Arabs. With social restrictions removed, Islam changed from an Arab ethnic empire to

7280-706: The Caliph at Rey near today's Capital "Tehran", only for that city to fall as well as the Caliph's commander; once again, Ibn Sayyar fled west and died on 9 December 748 while trying to reach Hamedan in south Western Persia. Al-Ta'i rolled west through Khorasan, defeating a 50,000 strong Umayyad force at Isfahan in Central Persia in March 749. At Nahavand south western Persia, the Umayyads attempted to make their last stand in Persia. Umayyad forces fleeing Hamedan and

7410-423: The Imamites were also probably killed by the Abbasids. For example, their seventh imam, Musa al-Kazim ( d.  799 ), spent years in the Abbasid prisons and died there, possibly poisoned by order of Caliph Harun al-Rashid ( r.  786–809 ), who also had "hundreds of Alids" killed. Caliph al-Ma'mun ( r.  813–833 ) later attempted a reconciliation by appointing in 816 as his heir Ali al-Rida ,

7540-453: The Iranic or Arabic interpretation of events. Frequently, early European historians viewed the conflict solely as a non-Arab uprising against Arabs. Bernard Lewis , professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University , points out that while the revolution has often been characterized as a Persian victory and Arab defeat, the caliph was still Arab, the language of administration

7670-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

7800-698: The Muslim community would agree. Many Shi'ites naturally assumed that this meant an Alid ruler, a belief which the Abbasids tacitly encouraged to gain Shi'ite support. Though the Abbasids were members of the Banu Hashim clan, rivals of the Umayyads, the word "Hashimiyya" seems to refer specifically to Abd-Allah ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah , a grandson of Ali and son of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah . According to certain traditions, Abd-Allah died in 717 in Humeima in

7930-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

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8060-413: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

8190-456: The Shia uprising of al-Mukhtar in 685 on behalf of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiya. Many more Shia revolts followed afterward, led not only by the Alids but also by other kinsmen of Muhammad. The main movements in this period were the now-extinct Kaysanites and the Imamites. Named after a commander of al-Mukhtar, the Kaysanites energetically opposed the Umayyads and were led by various relatives of Muhammad. Their majority followed Abu Hashim ,

8320-422: The Shia, but also gave both Shias and Sunnis in Iraq and Persia a common rallying cry. At the same time, the capture and murder of the primary Shi'ite opposition figures rendered the Abbasids as the only realistic contenders for the void that would be left by the Umayyads. The Abbasids kept quiet about their identity, simply stating that they wanted a ruler from the descendant of Muhammad upon whose choice as caliph

8450-404: The Silk Road, he registered them based not on their tribal or ethno-national affiliations but on their current places of residence. This greatly diminished tribal and ethnic solidarity and replaced both concepts with a sense of shared interests among individuals. The Abbasid revolution provides an early medieval example of the effectiveness of propaganda. The Black Standard unfurled at the start of

8580-484: The Umayyad commander at Wasit, held out even after the defeat of Marwan II in January. The Abbasids promised him amnesty in July, but immediately after he exited the fortress they executed him instead. After almost exactly three years of rebellion, the Umayyad state came to an end. Militarily, the unit organization of the Abbasids was designed with the goal of ethnic and racial equality among supporters. When Abu Muslim recruited mixed Arab and Turks and Iranian officers along

8710-490: The Umayyad rulers had been aware of the Abbasids' preparations, it would not have been possible to mobilize against them. In 746, Ibn Surayj began his revolt at Merv without success at first, even losing his secretary Jahm bin Safwan . After joining forces with other rebel factions, Ibn Surayj drove Umayyad governor Nasr ibn Sayyar and his forces to Nishapur ; the two factions double-crossed each other shortly thereafter, with Ibn Surayj's faction being crushed. Western Khorasan

8840-443: The Umayyads. There were a total of seventy propagandists throughout the province of Khorasan, operating under twelve central officials. The Abbasid revolution was distinguished by a number of tactics which were absent in the other, unsuccessful anti-Umayyad rebellions at the time. Chief among them was secrecy. While the Shi'ite and other rebellions at the time were all led by publicly known leaders making clear and well-defined demands,

8970-443: The aftermath. Khorasan's expansive size and low population density meant that the Arab denizens – both military and civilian – lived largely outside of the garrisons built during the spread of Islam into Persia. This was in contrast to the rest of the Umayyad provinces, where Arabs tended to seclude themselves in fortresses to avoid interacting with the locals. Arab settlers in Khorasan left their traditional lifestyle and settled among

9100-448: The banner of restoring rule to the Prophet's family. The revolutionaries adopted black as their color and advanced westward, defeating Umayyad forces. The decisive Battle of the Zab in 750 CE saw the Abbasid army triumph over the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II. This victory led to the fall of the Umayyad dynasty and the establishment of Abbasid rule, marking a significant shift in the caliphate's power base from Syria to Iraq and ushering in

9230-509: The bureaucracy and military, and were housed in fortresses separate from the local population outside of Arabia. Even after converting to Islam, non-Arabs or Mawali could not live in these garrison cities. The non-Arabs were not allowed to work for the government nor could they hold officer positions in the Umayyad military and they still had to pay the jizya tax for non-Muslims. Non-Muslims under Umayyad rule were subject to these same injunctions. Racial intermarriage between Arabs and non Arabs

9360-402: The caliphate for themselves. The period of actual, direct rule by the Abbasids lasted almost exactly two-hundred years. One grandson of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik , Abd ar-Rahman I , survived and established a kingdom in Al-Andalus ( Moorish Iberia ) after five years of travel westward. Over the course of thirty years, he ousted the ruling Fihrids and resisted Abbasid incursions to establish

9490-403: The capital from Damascus to Harran , resulting in the destruction of Homs – also in 746. It was not until 747 that Marwan II was able to pacify the provinces; the Abbasid revolution began within months. Nasr ibn Sayyar was appointed governor of Khorasan by Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik in 738. He held on to his post throughout the war of succession, being confirmed as governor by Marwan II in

9620-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

9750-460: The eastern province of Khorasan in the mid-8th century, fueled by widespread discontent with Umayyad rule. The Abbasids, claiming descent from Muhammad's uncle Abbas, capitalized on various grievances, including discrimination against non-Arab Muslims ( mawali ), heavy taxation, and perceived impiety of Umayyad rulers. Led by Abu Muslim Khorasani , the rebellion united diverse groups, including Persians, disaffected Arabs, and Shi'a supporters, under

9880-481: The eighth imam of the Imamites. But other Abbasids revolted in opposition in Iraq , which forced al-Ma'mun to reverse his policies and Ali al-Rida died around that time, likely poisoned. Ali al-Hadi ( d.  868 ) and Hasan al-Askari ( d.  874 ), the tenth and eleventh imams of the Imamites, were held in the capital Samarra under strict surveillance. Most Imamite sources report that both were poisoned by

10010-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

10140-537: The emergence of societal institutions that were Islamic rather than Arab began. Though a class of Muslim clergy was absent for the first century of Islam, it was with the Abbasid revolution and after that the Ulama appeared as a force in society, positioning themselves as the arbiters of justice and orthodoxy. With the eastward movement of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, the Abbasid Empire eventually took on

10270-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

10400-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

10530-529: The feelings of Arab racial superiority cultivated by the Umayyads. Much of the discontent this caused led to the Shu'ubiyya movement, an assertion of non-Arab racial and cultural equality with Arabs. The movement gained support among Egyptians , Arameans and Berber people , though this movement was most pronounced among Iranian people . The early Muslim conquest of Persia was coupled with an anti-Iranian Arabization policy which led to much discontent. Up until

10660-557: The forces of Abdallah ibn Ali and Abu Awn Abd al-Malik ibn Yazid march on Mosul (in today's Northern Iraq). At this point Marwan II mobilized his troops from Harran (Today's South Central Turkey) and advanced toward Mesopotamia. On 16 January 750 the two forces met on the left bank of a tributary of the Tigris in the Battle of the Zab , and nine days later Marwan II was defeated and his army

10790-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

10920-469: The goal of replacing the Umayyads with an Alid ruling family. To an extent, rebellion against the Umayyads bore an early association with Shi'ite ideas. A number of Shi'ite revolts against Umayyad rule had already taken place, though they were open about their desire for an Alid ruler. Zayd ibn Ali fought the Umayyads in Iraq, while Abdallah ibn Mu'awiya even established temporary rule over Persia. Their murder not only increased anti-Umayyad sentiment among

11050-547: The grandson of Muhammad , and his kin and companions by the Umayyad army in 680 CE, the Shias used this event as a rallying cry of opposition against the Umayyads. The Abbasids also used the memory of Karbala extensively to gain popular support against the Umayyads. The Hashimiyya movement (a sub-sect of the Kaysanites Shia ) was largely responsible for starting the final efforts against the Umayyad dynasty, initially with

11180-474: The house of Mohammad ibn Ali Abbasi , the head of the Abbasid family, and before dying named Muhammad ibn Ali as his successor. Although the anecdote is considered a fabrication, at the time it allowed the Abbasids to rally the supporters of the failed revolt of Mukhtar al-Thaqafi , who had represented themselves as the supporters of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya. By the time the revolution was in full swing, most Kaysanite Shia had either transferred their allegiance to

11310-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

11440-469: The jizya tax stipulated by the Qur'an for non-Muslims, the empire would go bankrupt. This lack of civil and political rights eventually led the non-Arab Muslims to support the Abbasids, despite the latter also being Arab. Even as the Arab governors adopted the more sophisticated Iranian methods of governmental administration, non-Arabs were still prevented from holding such positions. Non-Arabs were not even allowed to wear Arabian style clothing, so strong were

11570-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

11700-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

11830-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

11960-521: The latter may have played a particularly important role in the growth of the movement. A number of Shi'ite rebellions – by Kaysanites, Hashimiyya and mainstream Shi'ites – took place in the final years of Umayyad rule, just around the same time that tempers were flaring among the Syrian contingents of the Umayyad army regarding alliances and wrongdoings during the Second and Third Fitna . At this time Kufa

12090-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

12220-517: The native Iranian peoples . While intermarriage with non-Arabs elsewhere in the Empire was discouraged or even banned, it slowly became a habit within eastern Khorasan; and the Arabs began adopting Persian dress and as the two languages influenced one another, the ethnic barriers gradually eroded. Support for the Abbasid revolution came from people of diverse backgrounds, with almost all levels of society supporting armed opposition to Umayyad rule. This

12350-782: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

12480-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

12610-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

12740-448: The pacification of any rebel elements in the east and the surrender of Nahavand in the west, the Abbasids were the undisputed rulers of Khorasan. The Abbasids wasted no time in continuing from Persia into Mesopotamia. In August 749, Umayyad commander Yazid ibn Umar al-Fazari attempted to meet the forces of al-Ta'i before they could reach Kufa . Not to be outdone, the Abbasids launched a nighttime raid on al-Fazari's forces before they had

12870-458: The quiescent Ja'far al-Sadiq , who played a key role in formulating Imamite doctrines. Some claimed that his designated successor was his son Isma'il , who had actually predeceased al-Sadiq. These followers permanently separated and later formed the Isma'ilites . Some of them denied the death of Isma'il but their majority accepted the imamate of his son Muhammad ibn Isma'il . His death around 795

13000-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

13130-526: The remainder of Ibn Sayyar's men joined with those already garrisoned. Qahtaba defeated an Umayyad relief contingent from Syria while his son al-Hasan laid siege to Nahavand for more than two months. The Umayyad military units from Syria within the garrison cut a deal with the Abbasids, saving their own lives by selling out the Umayyad units from Khorasan who were all put to death. After almost ninety years, Umayyad rule in Khorasan had finally come to an end. At

13260-405: The revolution succeeded, Abu Muslim was accused of heresy and treason by the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur . Abu Muslim was executed at the palace in 755 despite his reminding al-Mansur that it was he (Abu Muslim) who got the Abbasids into power, and his travel companions were bribed into silence. Displeasure over the caliph's brutality as well as admiration for Abu Muslim led to rebellions against

13390-442: The revolution's open phase carried messianic overtones due to past failed rebellions by members of Muhammad's family, with marked eschatological and millennial slants. The Abbasids – their leaders descended from Muhammad's uncle Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib – held vivid historical reenactments of the murder of Muhammad's grandson Husayn ibn Ali by the army of the second Umayyad ruler Yazid I , followed by promises of retribution. Focus

13520-489: The revolution. Because most historical sources were written under Abbasid rule, the description of the Umayyads must be taken with a grain of salt; such sources describe the Umayyads, at best, as merely placeholders between the Rashidun and Abbasid caliphates. The historiography of the revolution is especially significant due to Abbasid dominance of most early Muslim historical narratives; it was during their rule that history

13650-481: The rule after the assassination of Ali in 661 and founded the Umayyad Caliphate , during which the Alids and their supporters were heavily persecuted. After Ali, his followers ( shi'a ) recognized as their imam his eldest son Hasan. After his death in 670, they turned to his brother Husayn, but he and his small caravan were massacred by the Umayyads in the Battle of Karbala in 680. Soon followed

13780-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

13910-599: The same time that al-Ta'i took Nishapur Located in North Eastern Khorasan, Abu Muslim was strengthening the Abbasid grip on the Muslim North East. Abbasid governors were appointed over Transoxiana and Bactria (Parts of today's Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan), while the rebels who had signed a peace accord with Nasr ibn Sayyar were also offered a peace deal by Abu Muslim only to be double crossed and wiped out. With

14040-588: The siege in 749, the Abbasids crossed the Euphrates and took Kufa. The son of Khalid al-Qasri – a disgraced Umayyad official who had been tortured to death a few years prior – began a pro-Abbasid riot starting at the city's citadel. On 2 September 749, al-Hasan bin Qahtaba essentially just walked right in to the city and set up shop. Some confusion followed when Abu Salama , an Abbasid officer, pushed for an Alid leader. Abu Muslim's confidante Abu Jahm reported what

14170-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

14300-497: The son of Ibn al-Hanafiya. When Abu Hashim died around 716, this group followed Muhammad ibn Ali ibn Abd-Allah , the great-grandson of Muhammad's uncle Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib . The Kaysanite movement thus aligned itself with the Abbasids, that is, the descendants of Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib. On the other hand, the Imamites were led by the quiescent descendants of Husayn through his only surviving son, Ali Zayn al-Abidin ( d.  713 ), their fourth imam. His son Zayd ibn Ali

14430-653: The southern shores of the Caspian sea , Yemen , and western Maghreb . For instance, the revolt of the Hasanid Husayn ibn Ali al-Abid was suppressed in 786 but his brother Idris ( d.  791 ) escaped and founded the first Alid dynasty in Morocco . Similarly, a number of Zaydite rules appeared in northern Persia and in Yemen, the latter of which has survived to the present day. Some quiescent imams of

14560-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

14690-507: The time of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan , the divan was dominated by the mawali and accounts were written using the Pahlavi script . The controversial Umayyad governor Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf forced all the mawali who had left for cities, in order to avoid paying the kharaj tax, to return to their lands. He was upset at the usage of Persian as the court language in the eastern Islamic empire, and ordered it to be changed to Arabic. Support for

14820-528: The tombs of the Umayyads in Syria , sparing only that of Umar II , and most of the remaining members of the Umayyad family were tracked down and killed. When Abbasids declared amnesty for members of the Umayyad family, eighty gathered in Jaffa to receive pardons and all were massacred. In the immediate aftermath, the Abbasids moved to consolidate their power against former allies now seen as rivals. Five years after

14950-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

15080-455: The tribe's name as that would risk pollution of perceived Arab racial purity. Rather, the non-Arab would take the last name of " freedman of al-(tribe's name)", even if they were not a slave prior to conversion. This essentially meant they were subservient to the tribe who sponsored their conversion. Although converts to Islam made up roughly 10% of the native population – most of the people living under Umayyad rule were not Muslim – this percent

15210-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

15340-510: Was an exception for he led a failed uprising against the Umayyads around 740. The followers of Zayd went on to form the Zaydites , for whom any learned Hasanid or Husaynid who rose against tyranny was qualified as imam. To overthrow the Umayyads, the Abbasids had rallied the support of the Shia in the name of the Ahl al-Bayt , that is, the family of Muhammad. But many Shias were disillusioned when

15470-497: Was carefully placed on the legacy of Muhammad's family while details of how the Abbasids actually intended to rule were not mentioned. While the Umayyads had primarily spent their energy on wiping out the Alid line of the prophetic family, the Abbasids carefully revised Muslim chronicles to put a heavier emphasis on the relationship between Muhammad and his uncle. The Abbasids spent more than a year preparing their propaganda drive against

15600-637: Was completely destroyed. The battle is regarded as what finally sealed the fate of the Umayyads. All Marwan II could do was flee through Syria and into Egypt, with each Umayyad town surrendering to the Abbasids as they swept through in pursuit. Damascus fell to the Abbasids in April, and in August Marwan II and his family were tracked down by a small force led by Abu Awn and Salih ibn Ali (the brother of Abdallah ibn Ali) and killed in Egypt. Al-Fazari,

15730-608: Was controlled by Abdallah ibn Mu'awiya at the time, cutting Ibn Sayyar in the east off from Marwan II . In the summer of 747, Ibn Sayyar sued for peace , which was accepted by the remaining rebels. The rebel leader was assassinated by a son of Ibn Surayj in a revenge attack while at the same time, another Shi'ite revolt had begun in the villages. The son of the remaining rebels signed the peace accord and Ibn Sayyar returned to his post in Merv in August of 747 – just after Abu Muslim initiated

15860-713: Was denied by the majority of his followers, who awaited his return as the Mahdi, while a minority traced the imamate in his descendants. The Isma'ilites actively opposed the Abbasids, and their efforts culminated in the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate ( r.  909–1171 ) in North Africa , although some have questioned the Isma'ilite ancestry of the Fatimid caliphs. The abortive Zanj rebellion against

15990-399: Was especially pronounced among Muslims of non-Arab descent, though even Arab Muslims resented Umayyad rule and centralized authority over their nomadic lifestyles. Both Sunnis and Shias supported efforts to overthrow the Umayyads, as did non-Muslim subjects of the empire who resented religious discrimination. Following the Battle of Karbala , which led to the massacre of Husayn ibn Ali ,

16120-443: Was established in the Muslim world as an independent field separate from writing in general. The initial two-hundred year period when the Abbasids actually held de facto power over the Muslim world coincided with the first composition of Muslim history. Another point of note is that while the Abbasid revolution carried religious undertones against the irreligious and almost secular Umayyads, a separation of mosque and state occurred under

16250-452: Was happening, and the Abbasids acted preemptively. On Friday, 28 November 749, before the siege of Wasit had even finished, As-Saffah , the great-grandson of Muhammad's uncle, al-Abbas , was recognized as the new caliph in the mosque at Kufa. Abu Salama, who witnessed twelve military commanders from the revolution pledging allegiance, was embarrassed into following suit. Just as quickly as Qahtaba's forces marched from Khorosan to Kufa, so did

16380-416: Was rare. When it did occur, it was only allowed between an Arab man and a non-Arab woman while non-Arab men were generally not free to marry Arab women. Conversion to Islam occurred gradually. If a non-Arab wished to convert to Islam, they not only had to give up their own names but also had to remain a second-class citizen. The non-Arab would be "adopted" by an Arab tribe, though they would not actually adopt

16510-473: Was significant due to the very small number of Arabs. Gradually, the non-Arab Muslims outnumbered the Arab Muslims, causing alarm among the Arab nobility. Socially, this posed a problem as the Umayyads viewed Islam as the property of the aristocratic Arab families. There was a rather large financial problem posed to the Umayyad system as well. If the new converts to Islam from non-Arab peoples stopped paying

16640-420: Was still Arabic and Arab nobility was not forced to give up its land holdings; rather, the Arabs were merely forced to share the fruits of the empire equally with other races. C. W. Previté-Orton argues that the reasons for the decline of the Umayyads was the rapid expansion of Islam. During the Umayyad period, mass conversions brought Iranians , Berbers , Copts , and Assyrians to Islam. These "clients," as

16770-572: Was the center for the opposition to Umayyad rule, particularly Ali's supporters and Shias. In 741–42 Abu Muslim made his first contact with Abbasid agents there, and eventually he was introduced to the head of Abbasids, Imam Ibrahim , in Mecca . Around 746, Abu Muslim assumed leadership of the Hashimiyya in Khurasan. Unlike the Alid revolts which were open and straightforward about their demands,

16900-440: Was to Fatima , daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad , who bore Ali three sons, namely, Hasan , Husayn , and Muhsin , though the last one is not mentioned in some sources. Muhsin either died in infancy, or was miscarried after Fatima was injured during a raid on her house to arrest Ali, who had withheld his pledge of allegiance from the first Rashidun caliph Abu Bakr ( r.  632–634 ). The former report appears

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