Battle of al-Harra

Basaltic stony ground of the eastern desert of modern Jordan, characteristic of the wider region of ḥarras that extend from the Hauran into western Arabia

The location of the battle was the lava field of Harrat Waqim, which straddles the eastern outskirts of Medina in the Hejaz (western Arabia).[2][3] It was named after the Waqim fortress of the Banu Qurayza tribe that had been resident in the area during the pre-Islamic period and was alternatively known as Harrat Bani Qurayza or Harrat Zuhra.[4] It formed part of the vast geological system of ḥarras (basaltic deserts) which spanned the region east of the Hauran in Syria southward to Medina's environs.[5] As a result of the fame of the battle, Harrat Waqim was thenceforth referred to in Muslim sources as 'the Harra'.[3]

Under the Islamic prophet Muhammad, beginning in 622, and the first three caliphs, Abu Bakr (r. 632–634), Umar (r. 634–644) and Uthman (r. 644–656), Medina served as the capital of the early Muslim state, which by Uthman's time came to rule over an empire spanning Arabia, most of the Persian Sasanian Empire and the Byzantine territories of Syria and Egypt. The capital was moved to Kufa in Iraq by the fourth caliph, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali (r. 656–661), during the First Muslim Civil War. Ali's rival for the caliphate, the governor of Syria Mu'awiya, won the war and made Damascus capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, which he founded in 661.

Uthman ibn Muhammad was unable to control the growing opposition to Umayyad rule.[3] According to the historian al-Mada'ini (d. 843), the inaugurating act of rebellion by the Medinans occurred during a gathering in the mosque where the attendees each tossed an article of clothing, such as a turban or a shoe, an Arab custom symbolizing a severing of ties, to renounce their allegiance to Yazid.[23] According to the historian Abu Mikhnaf (d. 774), the first act of rebellion by the Medinans was giving allegiance to Ibn Hanzala.[24] Afterward, they assaulted the Umayyads and their supporters in the city, together about 1,000-strong, who fled to the quarter of their leading elder, Marwan ibn al-Hakam.[25] The latter sent urgent requests for assistance from Yazid,[25][26] who dispatched an army to suppress the opposition from both the Medinans and Ibn al-Zubayr.[10]

According to alternative accounts by al-Ya'qubi and al-Waqidi (d. 823), for up to a month leading to the battle, several attempts by the chief of Yazid's estates in Medina, Ibn Mina, to collect the crops for the caliph were disrupted by the estates' former owners, in particular from the Ansarite Balharith clan. Uthman ibn Muhammad responded by assigning a guard force to help Ibn Mina and his men gather the crops. They were met by a group of Ansar and Quraysh, who refused to allow the Umayyads' men to proceed with their work. Uthman ibn Muhammad then requested intervention by Yazid, who dispatched an expedition against the townspeople of Medina.[27] In these accounts, the Medinans expelled and pelted the Umayyads with stones in response to Uthman ibn Muhammad's rebukes to their leaders for barring the caliph's men from the estates.[28]

The caliph's expeditionary force consisted of 4,000 to 12,000 well-equipped Syrian Arab tribesmen, dominated by the Banu Kalb.[25][26] As an incentive to the troops, who anticipated an arduous campaign ahead, each soldier was paid 100 silver dirhams over their regular stipend.[26] Yazid's initial choice for the commander of this force, al-Ashdaq, refused the position out of a principle not to shed the blood of his fellow Quraysh, while Ibn Ziyad, still reeling from the fallout from his role in the death of Husayn, also refused.[26] Instead, the loyal, elderly, non-Qurayshite veteran Muslim ibn Uqba was given the command.[25][26] According to al-Ya'qubi, Ibn Uqba's forces were composed of equal numbers of troops from the five junds ('armies') of Syria: Rawh ibn Zinba al-Judhami led the men of Palestine, Hubaysh ibn Dulja al-Qayni led the men of Jordan, Abd Allah ibn Mas'ada al-Fazari led the men of Damascus, Husayn ibn Numayr al-Sakuni led the men of Homs and Zufar ibn al-Harith al-Kilabi led the men of Qinnasrin.[29]

Upon hearing of the Syrian advance, the Medinans reinforced the siege against the Umayyads of Medina before allowing them to leave after they gave oaths not to assist the incoming army.[26] On their way to Syria, the exiled Umayyads encountered Ibn Uqba's army in the Wadi al-Qura region between Syria and Medina.[30] Ibn Uqba's inquiries about Medina's defenses were rebuffed by most of the Umayyads,[30] some of whom continued on their way north,[26] but Marwan's son Abd al-Malik cooperated and offered valuable intelligence.[30] Under Marwan's leadership, most of the exiles joined the expedition.[26] In Medina, the defenders, numbering about 2,000 men,[22] dug a trench to protect a vulnerable northern corner of the city and divided themselves into four units, two of which were commanded by members of the Quraysh, including Abd Allah ibn Muti, one by Ibn Hanzala of the Ansar and the last by a non-Qurayshite and non-Ansarite, Ma'qil ibn Sinan al-Ashja'i.[30]

For three days, starting on 23 August, Ibn Uqba attempted negotiations with the Medinan leaders. He appealed for unity and promised two annual payments to the Medinans from Yazid and a significant price reduction on corn.[26] Yazid may have offered these or similar terms before the expedition to a representative of the Medinans, Ali's nephew Abd Allah ibn Ja'far.[21] According to the historian Laura Veccia Vaglieri, this indicates that economic concerns contributed to the Medinan opposition of the Umayyads.[26]

Plan of Medina in the early 19th century

The negotiations between Ibn Uqba and the Medinans faltered, and clashes ensued.[26] The Medinan horsemen marched against Ibn Uqba in the Harra,[30] and may have advanced as far as Ibn Uqba's litter,[31] from which he commanded his troops.[26] Upon their approach, Ibn Uqba confronted them on horseback and actively participated in the fighting.[26] The Medinans gained an early advantage,[26] but were ultimately overtaken by the Syrians and several Ansarite and Qurayshite notables were slain, including Ibn Hanzala, eight of his sons and a handful of other men from the Medinan elite.[31]

Squadrons of Medinan mawali, fighting under the command of the mawla Yazid ibn Hurmuz, defended a large section of the ditch, and held off an assault by the Syrians, refusing demands to surrender.[32] The historians Wahb ibn Jarir (d. 822) and al-Samhudi (d. 1533) held that Medinan lines were compromised by the defection of the Banu Haritha, whose members gave Marwan and his horse riders access through their quarter in Medina, enabling them to assault the Medinans at the Harra from the rear.[31] The Quraysh under Ibn Muti fled the battlefield and headed for safety to Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca.[26] According to al-Waqidi, the battle concluded on 26 August 683.[31] The fighting lasted less than a day.[22]

Conflicting accounts abound regarding the aftermath of the Syrian victory. According to Abu Mikhnaf and al-Samhudi, Ibn Uqba gave his troops free rein to pillage Medina for three days.[31] The number of Medinan casualties incurred during the battle and immediate aftermath range from 180 to 700 members of the Ansar and Quraysh, and 4,000 to 10,000 other Medinans.[26] Al-Samhudi further claimed that as a result of the alleged rape of Medinan women by Ibn Uqba's troops, 1,000 illegitimate children were later born by them as a result.[33]

The account of the historian Awana ibn al-Hakam (d. 764) describes a more orderly capture, in which Ibn Uqba summoned the notables of Medina to give allegiance to Yazid at the Quba Mosque and used the occasion to execute several prominent leaders of the opposition movement, including a number from the Quraysh and Ma'qil ibn Sinan al-Ashja'i.[31] The latter had been a close friend and belonged to the same Ghatafan tribal grouping as Ibn Uqba but was nonetheless executed for his disavowal of Yazid.[34] A son of Caliph Uthman (r. 644–656), a member of the Umayyad clan, had his beard cut as punishment for suspected collusion with the Medinans, though Ali ibn al-Husayn, a son of Husayn, was well-treated on the personal instructions of Yazid.[26] Wahb ibn Jarir likewise did not make a note of a three-day plunder of Medina, and Wellhausen doubts that it occurred.[35]

The accounts of Abu Mikhnaf and Awana agree that following the ordering of affairs in Medina, Ibn Uqba left to subdue Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca but fell ill and died on the way in al-Mushallal.[33] As ordered by Yazid, he left as second-in-command Husayn ibn Numayr al-Sakuni, who proceeded to besiege Mecca in September.[33]

In Kister's observation, the rebellion in Medina lacked a political program, in contrast to the revolt of Ibn al-Zubayr, who called for a shura (consultation) to decide the caliphate. The Medinans felt assured of victory in any confrontation with the Syrians. In organizing the defense of their city, they adopted Muhammad's tactics at the Battle of the Trench, where he repulsed a siege against Medina by digging ditches to prevent the entry of enemy horsemen. At al-Harra, the Medinans lacked horses and weapons of their own, as indicated by counsel Marwan gave to Ibn Uqba, where he further advised that the Medinans were not warlike and few would have the resolve to fight. The survivors among Medina's leaders lamented the quick defeat of their pious men at the Harra, contrasting it to the successful six-month resistance against the Syrian army by Ibn al-Zubayr and his smaller coterie of supporters in Mecca.[36] Kister considers the release of the besieged Umayyads, instead of their effective use as hostages, "heedless" and the rebels' belief that the Umayyads would not aid the Syrians or convince them to turn back "credulous".[36]

The alleged cruelty against the townspeople of Medina by the Umayyad army became a cause célèbre that was invoked by future generations.[37] Ibn Uqba was thenceforth known as 'Musrif', a play on his name 'Muslim', which meant "he who exceeds all bounds of propriety".[37] The historian Michael Lecker considers the reports of Syrian atrocities in Medina as "undeniably anti-Umayyad and probably exaggerated".[38] Moreover, Wellhausen dismisses the depiction by later Muslim and western sources of Ibn Uqba as a brutal heathen with a deep hatred for Islam, in general, and the people of Medina, in particular, as a falsity that developed over time and is unsupported by the early and more credible Muslim sources.[39] In Wellhausen's assessment, the suppression of the Medinan revolt was not the cause of the significant decline of the city's political status; this had already been precipitated by the assassination of Caliph Uthman in 656, the aftermath of which marked Medina's end as the capital of the nascent Muslim state.[11] The city continued to be a center for religious scholarship, Arab high culture, and a redoubt for poets and singers.[11] Vaglieri counters Wellhausen's doubts about the extent of the army's pillage, asserting that the "[traditional Muslim] sources are unanimous on this point".[26]

• Anthony, Sean W. (2016). "The Meccan Prison of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Zubayr and the Imprisonment of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya". In Pomerantz, Maurice A.; Shahin, Aram A. (eds.). The Heritage of Arabo-Islamic Learning: Studies Presented to Wadad Kadi. Leiden and Boston: Brill. pp. 3–27. ISBN 978-90-04-30590-8.
• Biesterfeldt, Hinrich; Günther, Sebastian (2018). The Works of Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī (Volume 3): An English Translation. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-35621-4.
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• Hawting, Gerald R. (2000). The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661–750 (Second ed.). London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-24072-7.
• Howard, I. K. A., ed. (1990). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XIX: The Caliphate of Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah, A.D. 680–683/A.H. 60–64. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-0040-1.
• Kister, M. J. (1977). "The Battle of the Ḥarra: Some Socio-Economic Aspects". In Myriam Rosen Ayalon (ed.). Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet. Jerusalem: Institute of Asian and African Studies. pp. 33–49.
• Lassner, Jacob (1986). Islamic Revolution and Historical Memory: An Inquiry Into the Art of ʻAbbāsid Apologetics. American Oriental Society.
• Lecker, Michael (1985). "Muhammad at Medina – A Geographical Approach". Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam. 6: 29–62.
• Lecker, Michael (2011). "The Jewish Reaction to the Islamic Conquests". In Krech, Volkhard; Steinicke, Marion (eds.). Dynamics in the History of Religions Between Asia and Europe: Encounters, Notions, and Comparative Perspectives. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-18500-5.
• Lewis, B.; Ménage, V. L.; Pellat, Ch. & Schacht, J., eds. (1971). "Ḥarra". Encyclopaedia of Islam. Volume III: H–Iram (2nd ed.). Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 226. OCLC 495469525.
• Smith, G. Rex, ed. (1994). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XIV: The Conquest of Iran, A.D. 641–643/A.H. 21–23. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-1293-0.
• Vaglieri, L. Veccia (1971). "Al-Ḥarra". In Lewis, B.; Ménage, V. L.; Pellat, Ch. & Schacht, J. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam. Volume III: H–Iram (2nd ed.). Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 226–227. OCLC 495469525.
• Wellhausen, Julius (1927). The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall. Translated by Margaret Graham Weir. Calcutta: University of Calcutta. OCLC 752790641.

• Bewley, Aisha (2000). The Men of Madina by Muhammad Ibn Sa'd, Vol. 2. Ta-Ha Publishers. ISBN 978-1897940907.