Al-Mansur's Rebuilding of Malatya

بناء المنصور لملطية

c. 757 CE · c. 140 AH

Malatya (Melitene)

In al-Baladhuri: in year 139 al-Mansur wrote to Salih ibn Ali ordering Malatya rebuilt and fortified, then resolved to send Abd al-Wahhab ibn Ibrahim al-Imam as governor of the Jazira and its frontier — he set out in year 140 with al-Hasan ibn Qahtaba among the Khurasani armies, proclaiming a levy on the people of Syria and the Jazira until seventy thousand converged, and camped on Malatya having gathered labourers from every land; al-Hasan ibn Qahtaba would carry stone to hand the builder, and a camel of his went round feeding the people from his own purse with field-kitchens deployed — Abd al-Wahhab envied this and wrote to Abu Ja'far accusing him of out-feeding the state in a bid to prolong and corrupt the work by extravagance and vainglory, and of having callers summon people to his food; Abu Ja'far wrote back: 'O boy! Al-Hasan feeds from his own money, and you feed from mine — nothing comes of you but smallness of worth, littleness of ambition and foolishness of opinion,' and wrote to al-Hasan: feed, but keep no caller — so al-Hasan would say 'whoever reaches my awning first gets such-and-such'; the men worked hard and finished Malatya and its mosque in six months; for the garrison each 'arafa — ten to fifteen men — received two lower houses, two upper chambers and a stable; he built a muslaha thirty miles out and another on the river called Qubaqib that feeds the Euphrates; al-Mansur settled four thousand Jaziran fighters in Malatya, it being of their frontier, with ten dinars added to every man's pay and a hundred-dinar allowance besides the camel the tribes engaged between them; he deposited its armoury, granted the soldiers farms and built the fortress of Qaludhiya — and Constantine the tyrant came on with over a hundred thousand as far as Jayhan, heard of the Arabs' numbers and held back.