ثورة ابن الأشعث على الحجاج

ثورة ابن الأشعث على الحجاج

81 ھ

In 81 people gathered to 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath to depose al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, and he was the first to declare it. One of them said that if al-Hajjaj was deposed, then 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who had appointed him, was deposed too ¹. The title of the report in the index to volume six is 'The dispute of Ibn al-Ash'ath with al-Hajjaj' ². According to al-Mas'udi, al-Hajjaj appointed 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath over Sijistan, Bust and al-Rukhkhaj. He fought there against kinds of Turks called the Uzz and the Khalj, and against the kings of India who ruled those lands, such as Ratbil. He then renounced obedience to al-Hajjaj, and 'Abd al-Malik wrote to him: 'By my life, he has broken obedience to God with his right hand and to his authority with his left, and has gone out of religion naked' ³. The book also mentions that the army of the Tawawis was readied in 80 AH on al-Hajjaj's orders and reached some forty thousand men, twenty thousand from Kufa and as many from Basra; that the outlay on it reached two million dirhams apart from the stipends; and that 'Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Ash'ath was chosen as its commander. ⁴