The last Umayyad prince fled across the known world and founded Córdoba's emirate
When the Abbasids toppled his family in Damascus, the 20-year-old prince Abd al-Rahman swam the Euphrates to escape pursuing horsemen and spent five years on the run through Egypt and North Africa. He landed in al-Andalus in 755 and founded a dynasty that ruled from Córdoba for nearly three centuries.
Abd al-Rahman was born on 7 March 731 near Damascus, at Palmyra, a grandson of the caliph Hisham. Later Andalusi historians say his mother was a Berber woman named Rah, possibly a concubine from the Nafza tribe, though no source from his own century confirms it. The Abbasid Revolution of 748 to 750 destroyed Umayyad rule, and he fled with a brother, his young son, some sisters and a loyal Greek freedman named Bedr.
The flight became legend. Cornered by Abbasid riders, he, his brother Yahya and Bedr leapt into the Euphrates. The horsemen promised safety if they came back; Yahya, perhaps afraid of drowning, turned around despite his brother's pleas and was killed on the bank. Abd al-Rahman and Bedr pressed on through Palestine, Sinai and Egypt towards the Maghreb, his mother's homeland. In Ifriqiya the governor, Ibn Habib, first tolerated Umayyad exiles and then hunted them; when soldiers searched a friendly Berber camp in Kabylie, the chieftain's wife, Tekfah, hid the prince under her belongings.
By 755 he was near Ceuta, looking across at an al-Andalus torn by feuds between Arab factions and tension between Arabs and Berbers. Bedr crossed ahead to sound out old Umayyad clients among the Syrian regiments. Rebuffed by the powerful commander al-Sumayl, they turned to the rival Yemeni chiefs, who were unhappy with the emir Yusuf al-Fihri. Abd al-Rahman landed in September 755, greeted by an escort of 300 cavalry, and supporters streamed to him in Málaga. He is remembered for handing back a slave girl offered to him as a gift.
The emir and al-Sumayl tried to buy him off with a marriage and riches, but he would take nothing less than the emirate. In 756 he won it, becoming the first emir of Córdoba and earning the nicknames the Immigrant and the Falcon of Quraysh. He ruled until his death on 30 September 788.
Source: Abd al-Rahman I
