The Berber Revolt or the Kharijite Revolt of 740–743 AD (122–125 AH in the Islamic calendar) took place during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik and marked the first successful secession from the Arab Caliphate (then ruled from Damascus). Inspired by Kharijite puritan preachers, the Berber revolt against their Umayyad Arab rulers began in Tangier in 740 and was led initially by Maysara al-Matghari. The revolt soon spread throughout the rest of the Maghreb and across the Strait of Gibraltar to Al-Andalus.
Although the Berbers managed to end Umayyad rule in the western Maghreb following the Battle of Badgoura and Battle of the Nobles, the Umayyads scrambled and managed to prevent the core of Ifriqiya (Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and western Libya) and al-Andalus (Spain and Portugal) from falling into rebel hands, notably securing victory in the decisive Battle of al-Asnam. However, the rest of the Maghreb was never brought back to the Umayyads as their control in North Africa collapse. After the revolt, several independent Berber states were established.
The Berber revolt was probably the largest military setback in the reign of Caliph Hisham. From this revolt emerged the first Berber and non-Arab Caliphate.
Background
The underlying causes of the revolt were the policies of the Umayyad governors in Kairouan, Ifriqiya, who had authority over the Maghreb (all of North Africa west of Egypt) and Al-Andalus.
Since the Muslim conquest of North Africa, Arab commanders had treated non-Arab (notably Berber) auxiliaries inconsistently, and often rather shabbily. When they arrived in North Africa, the Umayyads faced a Christian-majority population in Africa Proconsularis (which became Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia), and Christians, pagans, and Jewish minorities in the Maghreb al-Aqsa (modern-day Morocco). Some Berbers of the Maghreb quickly converted and participated in the region's growth of Islam, but Arab authorities continued to treat them as second-class people.
Causes of the Revolt
There are several causes for the Berber Revolt. One of the these causes was the due to Ubayd Allah b. al-Habhàb, who was the Umayyad governor of North Africa. Despite the Berber's having converted to Islam, the Umayyads enslaved a fifth of some of the Muslims Berbers on the reason that they were originally meant to be enslaved and that the caliph had never gotten his share of slaves. Furthermore the Umayyads continued to enslave the berbers and sent a constant supply of slaves, particularly girls, was sent to the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus. According to Al-Tabari the most beautiful Berber girls were taken arbitrarily to be slaves even though they were Muslims. It is not known how widespread this was or whether it was centrally authorized. Either way this caused a great amount of hatred for the Berbers against the Umayyads.
Although Berbers had undertaken much of the fighting in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, they were given a lesser share of the spoils and frequently assigned to the harsher duties (e.g. Berbers were thrown into the vanguard while Arab forces were kept in the back; they were assigned garrison duty on the more troubled frontiers). Although the Ifriqiyan Arab governor Musa ibn Nusayr had cultivated his Berber lieutenants (most famously, Tariq ibn Ziyad), his successors, notably Yazid ibn Abi Muslim, had treated their Berber forces particularly poorly.
As a result, resentful Berbers grew receptive to radical Kharijite activists from the east (notably of Sufrite and later Ibadite persuasion) which had begun arriving in the Maghreb in the 720s. The Kharijites preached a puritan form of Islam, promising a new political order, where all Muslims would be equal, irrespective of ethnicity or tribal status, and Islamic law would be strictly adhered to. The appeal of the Kharijite message to Berber ears allowed their activists to gradually penetrate Berber regiments and population centers. Revolts by Berbers (e.g. under Munuza in Cerdanya, Spain, in 729–731) were put down with difficulty. One Ifriqiyan governor, Yazid ibn Abi Muslim, who openly resumed the jizya and humiliated his Berber guard by branding their hands, however he was assassinated in 721.
All of the oppression by the Umayyads against the Berbers caused them to send Maysara Matghari, who would go onto become the first Caliph of the Berber Caliphate and leader of the Berber Revolt, along with a delegation to the Caliph Hisham in Damascus. This action tends to confirm that Maysara al-Madghari was a member of the caliphal army in North Africa. As he was the initiator of the revolt, the planning for it then started in the Berber units of the caliphal army. Due to the Umayyad need for soldiers, the caliphate had created a monster for itself by arming and training a large number of Berbers, while at the same time oppressing the Berbers. At the end of it the Berber delegation was not even received by the caliph which eventually set the seeds of the rebellion.
Revolt
Revolt in the Maghreb
The zeal of the Umayyad tax-collectors finally broke Berber patience. It is reported that following Ubayd Allah ibn al-Habhab's instructions to extract more revenues from the Berbers, Omar ibn al-Moradi, his deputy governor in Tangiers, decided to declare the Berbers in his jurisdiction a "conquered people" and consequently set about seizing Berber property and enslaving persons, as per the rules of conquest, the "caliphal fifth" was still owed to the Umayyad state (alternative accounts report he simply doubled their tribute).
This was the last straw. Inspired by the Sufrite preachers, the North African Berber tribes of western Morocco – initially, the Ghomara, Berghwata and Miknasa – decided to break openly into revolt against their Arab overlords. As their leader, they chose Maysara al-Matghari, alleged by some Arab chroniclers to be a lowly water-carrier (but more probably a high Berber chieftain from the Matghara tribe).
The only question was timing. The opportunity arose sometime in early 740 (122 AH), when the powerful Ifriqiyan general Habib ibn Abi Ubayda al-Fihri, who had recently been imposing his authority on the Sous valley of southern Morocco, received instructions from the Kairouan governor Ubayd Allah to lead a large expedition across the sea against Byzantine Sicily. Gathering his forces, Habib ibn Abi Obeida marched the bulk of the Ifriqiyan army out of Morocco.
As soon as the mighty Habib was safely gone, Maysara assembled his coalition of Berber armies, heads shaven in the Sufri Kharijite fashion and with Qura'nic inscriptures tied to their lances and spears, and brought them bearing down on Tangier. The city soon fell into rebel hands and the hated governor Omar al-Moradi was killed. It was at this point that Maysara is said to have taken up the title and pretences of amir al-mu'minin ("Commander of the Faithful", or "Caliph"). Leaving a Berber garrison in Tangier under the command of Christian convert, Abd al-Allah al-Hodeij al-Ifriqi, Maysara's army proceeded to sweep down western Morocco, swelling its ranks with new adherents, overwhelming Umayyad garrisons clear from the Strait of Gibraltar down to the Sous. One of the local governors killed by the Berbers was Ismail ibn Ubayd Allah, the very son of the Kairouan emir.
The Berber revolt surprised the Umayyad governor in Kairouan, Ubayd Allah ibn al-Habhab, who had very few troops at his disposal. He immediately dispatched messengers to his general Habib ibn Abi Obeida al-Fihri in Sicily instructing him to break off the expedition and urgently ship the Ifriqiyan army back to Africa. In the meantime, Ubayd Allah assembled a cavalry-heavy column, composed of the aristocratic Arab elite of Kairouan. He placed the nobles under the command of Khalid ibn Abi Habib al-Fihri, and dispatched it to Tangiers, to keep the Berber rebels contained, while awaiting Habib's return from Sicily. A smaller reserve army was placed under Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Mughira al-Abdari and instructed to hold Tlemcen, in case the Berber rebel army should break through the column and try to drive towards Kairouan.
Maysara's Berber forces encountered the vanguard Ifriqiyan column of Khalid ibn Abi Habib somewhere in the outskirts of Tangiers After a brief skirmish with the Arab column, Maysara abruptly ordered the Berber armies to fall back to Tangier. The Arab cavalry commander Khalid ibn Abi Habiba did not give pursuit, but just held his line south of Tangier, blockading the Berber-held city, while awaiting the reinforcements from Habib's Sicilian expedition.
In this breathing space, the Berber rebels got reorganized and undertook an internal coup. The Berber tribal leaders swiftly deposed (and executed) Maysara and elected the Zenata Berber chieftain, Khalid ibn Hamid al-Zanati as the new Berber "caliph". The reasons for Maysara's fall remain obscure. Possibly the sudden cowardice shown before the Arab cavalry column proved him military unfit, possibly because the puritan Sufrite preachers found a flaw in the piety of his character, or maybe simply because the Zenata tribal chieftains, being closer to the Ifriqiyan frontline, felt they should be the ones leading the rebellion.
The new Berber leader Khalid ibn Hamid al-Zanati opted to immediately attack the idling Ifriqiyan column before they could be reinforced. The Berber rebels under Khalid ibn Hamid overwhelmed and annihilated the Arab cavalry of Khalid ibn Abi Habiba in an encounter known as the Battle of the Nobles, on account of the veritable massacre of the cream of the Ifriqiyan Arab nobility. This is tentatively dated around c. October–November, 740.
The immediate Arab reaction to the disaster shows just how unexpected this reversal was. Upon the first news of the defeat of the nobles, the reserve army of Ibn al-Mughira in Tlemcen fell into a panic. Seeing Sufrite preachers everywhere in the city, the Umayyad commander ordered his nervous Arab troops to conduct a series of round-ups in Tlemcen, several of which ended in indiscriminate massacres. This provoked a massive popular uprising in the hitherto-quiet city. The city's largely Berber population quickly drove out the Umayyad troops. The frontline of the Berber revolt now leaped to the middle Maghreb (Algeria).
The Sicilian expeditionary army of Habib ibn Abi Obeida arrived too late to prevent the massacre of the nobles. Realizing they were in no position to take on the Berber army by themselves, they retreated to Tlemcen, to gather the reserves, only to find that city too was now in disarray. There, Habib encountered Musa ibn Abi Khalid, an Umayyad captain who had bravely stayed behind in the vicinity of Tlemcen gathering what loyal forces he could find. The state of panic and confusion was such that Habib ibn Abi Obeida decided to blame the guiltless captain for the entire mess and cut off one of his hands and one of his legs in punishment.
Habib ibn Abi Obeida entrenched what remained of the Ifriqiyan army in the vicinity of Tlemcen (perhaps as far back as Tahert), and called upon Kairouan for reinforcements. The request was forwarded to Damascus.
Caliph Hisham, hearing the shocking news, is said to have exclaimed: "By God, I will most certainly rage against them with an Arab rage, and I will send against them an army whose beginning is where they are and whose end is where I am!"
Coup in al-Andalus
It is sometimes reported that the Andalusian governor Uqba ibn al-Hajjaj dispatched an Andalusian army across the straits to support the Ifriqiyan column around Tangiers, only to be similarly defeated by the Berber rebels in late 740. But this story has been discounted by modern historians, as it is sourced principally from later al-Andalus chronicles; there is nothing in contemporary accounts referencing any such expedition.
Nonetheless, the news of the Berber victory in Morocco echoed through al-Andalus. Berbers heavily outnumbered Arabs in al-Andalus. Fearing the Berber garrisons in their own lands might take inspiration from their Moroccan brethren, the Andalusian Arab elite quickly deposed Obeid Allah's deputy, Uqba ibn al-Hajjaj, in January 741 and reinstated his predecessor, Abd al-Malik ibn Qatn al-Fihri, a more popular figure among local Arabs and Berbers alike.
Syrian expedition
In February, 741, the Umayyad caliph Hisham appointed Kulthum ibn Iyad al-Qushayri to replace the disgraced Obeid Allah as governor in Ifriqiya. Kulthum was to be accompanied by a fresh Arab army of 30,000 – 27,000 raised from the regiments (junds) of Syria and an additional 3,000 to be picked up in Egypt. Caliph Hisham appointed Kulthum's nephew Balj ibn Bishr al-Qushayri as his lieutenant and designated successor, and the Jordanian commander Tha'laba ibn Salama al-Amili as his second successor (should tragedy befall the prior two).