'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr
Son of al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Asma bint Abi Bakr, born at Medina about 624. The people of Mecca and Iraq gave him allegiance as caliph, and al-Hajjaj besieged him at Mecca until he was killed in 73/692; al-Mas'udi gives fifty nights from Dhu al-Qa'da 72, while the Encyclopaedia of Islam gives more than six months. 'Uthman placed him on the commission that copied the codices, with Zayd ibn Thabit, Sa'id ibn al-'As and 'Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Harith.
Rival claim · Zubayrid Caliphate · no. 1 in the chain · 683–692 CE
Claimed the caliphate against the standing caliphate
Events of the reign
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Killing of Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr
Abd al-Malik sent al-Hajjaj with forty thousand against Ibn al-Zubayr; he besieged him in Mecca for months and cast mangonels at him until his men deserted to al-Hajjaj, who took and killed him and crucified the body — Tuesday, 17 Jumada I or II of year 73. Muhammad ibn Zayd ibn Abdullah ibn Umar was atop Abu Qubays when the mangonel was planted and saw a lightning bolt like a red veil burn some fifty of its crew. Ibn al-Zubayr had been praying within the Hijr while mangonel stones clipped the edge of his garment and he never turned.
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Ibn al-Zubayr's rebuilding of the Ka'ba
Ibn al-Zubayr renewed the Ka'ba's fabric, giving it two doors upon Abraham's foundations and restoring six cubits of the Hijr into it — following what his aunt Aisha had related of the Prophet: 'were your people not fresh from unbelief I would have razed the Ka'ba to the ground, made it an eastern and a western door, and added six cubits of the Hijr, for Quraysh scanted it when they built it'. One account makes him also the first to clothe it in dibaj, its coverings before having been hides and striped cloth.
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Siege of Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca
The Harra army marched on Mecca to fight Ibn al-Zubayr — its commander dying on the road — and besieged him, fighting and casting mangonels in Safar 64; sparks from their fires burned the Ka'ba's curtains and roof and the horns of the ram ransomed for Ishmael which had been kept in the ceiling. Yazid perished in mid-Rabi' I of that year and the news came while the fighting ran on — 'people of Syria, your tyrant has perished', called Ibn al-Zubayr, and they broke away humbled and were plucked off one by one. Ibn al-Zubayr then summoned to his own bay'a and was titled caliph, while the Syrians pledged Mu'awiya ibn Yazid.
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Siege of Mecca
Draft card for the Siege of Mecca in 683, Yazid's army's blockade that set the sanctuary aflame; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Siege of Mecca
Draft card for the Siege of Mecca in 692, al-Hajjaj's catapult blockade of the sanctuary that ended with Ibn al-Zubayr's death; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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The Battle of al-Harra
In year 63 the Medinese deposed Yazid and rose against him for his excesses — Abdullah ibn Hanzala, son of the Ghassil, said 'we did not march out until we feared stones raining from heaven'. Yazid sent a dense army with orders to fight them then march on Mecca against Ibn al-Zubayr; the battle of the Harra fell on Medina's very gate — 'by God, scarcely one escaped', said al-Hasan; many Companions and others were killed, the city was pillaged, a thousand maidens violated, and the slain of Quraysh and the Ansar numbered three hundred and six.