An enslaved saddler from Kufa helped topple an Islamic dynasty
As a young man, the Persian later known as Abu Muslim worked as an enslaved saddler in the Iraqi city of Kufa. Within a few years he had launched the revolt that overthrew the Umayyad caliphs and placed the Abbasid family in power. His reward, in 755, was execution by the very caliph he had helped enthrone.
Even his real name is uncertain; later writers gave him grand ancestries that modern scholars doubt. What is clearer is that Kufa seethed with resentment against the Umayyads, whose rule favoured Arabs over non-Arab converts and seemed to betray Islam's promise of equality. Many hoped for a leader from the Prophet's family. Jailed in 737 for mixing with radical sectarians, the young man was freed around 741 by Abbasid missionaries, who saw his talent and loyalty and gave him his nom de guerre.
They sent him east to Khurasan, a frontier province far from the Umayyad heartland in Syria. Its Arab settlers and Iranian converts had intermarried, fought side by side and shared a dislike of governors sent from Damascus. When he arrived the province was already split by a tribal feud. In 747 he raised the black banners of open revolt and took the capital, Merv, around the turn of 748. From there Abbasid armies swept across Iran into the Levant, and the Umayyad caliphate fell.
As governor of Khurasan he became enormously popular, partly through a conciliatory approach to Sunnis, Shia, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians. That popularity worried the new rulers. The first Abbasid caliph, al-Saffah, kept him in check, and his brother al-Mansur urged more drastic action. After Abu Muslim crushed a rebellion for al-Mansur, the caliph tried to move him away from his power base to Syria and Egypt. Reassured by promises and by aides, some of whom had been bribed, Abu Muslim went to meet him and was killed by the caliph's guards. The charge of secret heresy was probably a pretext.
His death stirred unrest across Iran. Rebels claimed he had not died and would return, the later rebel Babak claimed descent from him, and for centuries he was honoured as a martyr, with epic romances and local saint cults tied to his name in Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan.
Source: Abu Muslim
