page_title: Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr
section_title: Claim to the caliphate
hierarchical_section_title: Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr / Revolt / Claim to the caliphate
context_page_description: Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam was the leader of a caliphate based in Mecca that rivaled the Umayyads from 683 until his death. The son of al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Asma bint Abi Bakr, Ibn al-Zubayr belonged to the Quraysh, the leading tribe of the nascent Muslim community, and was the first child born to the Muhajirun, Islam's earliest converts. As a youth, he participated in the early Muslim conquests alongside his father in Syria and Egypt, and later played a role in the Muslim conquests of North Africa and northern Iran in 647 and 650, respectively. During the First Muslim Civil War, he fought on the side of his aunt A'isha against Caliph Ali. Though little is heard of Ibn al-Zubayr during the subsequent reign of the first Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya I, it was known that he opposed the latter's designation of his son, Yazid I, as his successor. Ibn al-Zubayr, along with much of the Quraysh and the Ansar, the leading Muslim groups of the Hejaz, opposed the caliphate becoming an inheritable institution of the Umayyads.
context_section_description: Yazid's death and the subsequent withdrawal of the Umayyad army from the Hejaz afforded Ibn al-Zubayr the opportunity to realize his aspirations for the caliphate. He immediately declared himself amīr al-muʾminīn (commander of the faithful), a title traditionally reserved for the caliph, and called for the Muslims to give him their oaths of allegiance. With the other potential Hejazi candidates dead, Ibn al-Zubayr remained the last contender for the caliphate among the anti-Umayyad factions in Mecca and Medina and these groups recognized him as their leader. An exception to this came from the Banu Hashim clan to which the prophet Muhammad and the Alids belonged and whose support Ibn al-Zubayr deemed important for his own legitimacy as caliph. The leading representatives of the clan in the Hejaz, Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, the half-brother of Husayn ibn Ali, and their cousin Abd Allah ibn Abbas, withheld their oaths citing the need for a stronger consensus in the wider Muslim community. Irritated, Ibn al-Zubayr besieged the clan's neighborhood in Mecca and imprisoned Ibn al-Hanafiyya to pressure the Banu Hashim. Meanwhile, the Kharijites under Najda ibn Amir al-Hanafi in the Yamama (central Arabia) abandoned Ibn al-Zubayr once he forwarded his claim to the caliphate, an institution they rejected, and refused to embrace their doctrine.
  In the Umayyad capital Damascus, Yazid was succeeded by his young son Mu'awiya II, but the latter wielded virtually no authority and died from illness months after his accession. This left a leadership void in Syria as there were no suitable successors among Mu'awiya I's Sufyanid house. In the ensuing chaos, Umayyad authority collapsed across the caliphate and Ibn al-Zubayr gained wide recognition. Most of the Islamic provinces offered their allegiance, including Egypt, Kufa, Yemen and the Qaysi tribes of northern Syria. Likewise, in Khurasan, the de facto governor Abd Allah ibn Khazim al-Sulami offered his recognition. Ibn al-Zubayr appointed his brother Mus'ab as governor of Basra and its dependencies. In a testament to the extent of Ibn al-Zubayr's sovereignty, coins were minted in his name as far as the districts of Kerman and Fars in modern-day Iran; both were dependencies of Basra. Nonetheless, his authority outside of the Hejaz was largely nominal.
  Most of the Arab tribes in central and southern Syria remained loyal to the Umayyads and selected the non-Sufyanid Marwan ibn al-Hakam from Medina to succeed Mu'awiya II. The proclamation of Marwan as caliph in Damascus marked a turning point against Ibn al-Zubayr. Marwan's partisans, led by Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, decisively defeated the pro-Zubayrid Qaysi tribes, led by al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri, at the Battle of Marj Rahit in July 684. The surviving Qaysi tribesmen fled to the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) under the leadership of Zufar ibn al-Harith al-Kilabi, who maintained his recognition of Ibn al-Zubayr's suzerainty. However, in March 685, Ibn al-Zubayr lost the economically important province of Egypt to Marwan.
  Meanwhile, negotiations collapsed between Ibn al-Zubayr and the Kufan strongman al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi, who afterward took up the cause of the Alid family. He declared Ibn al-Hanafiyya caliph and, unprecedentedly in Islamic history, the mahdī. Al-Mukhtar's partisans drove out the Zubayrid authorities from Kufa in October 685. Al-Mukhtar later dispatched a Kufan force to the Hejaz and freed Ibn al-Hanafiyya. Mus'ab's authority in Basra and Khurasan was also beginning to waver, but was ultimately secured after he gained the backing of the powerful Azdi chieftain and military leader of Khurasan, al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra. Mus'ab also gained the defections of thousands of Kufan tribesmen and together they defeated and killed al-Mukhtar in April 687. Ibn al-Zubayr subsequently dismissed Mus'ab from office in 686/87 and appointed his own son Hamza as governor of Basra. The latter dispatched a force under Abd Allah ibn Umayr al-Laythi to drive out the Najdiyya Kharijites from Bahrayn after they overran the province, but the Zubayrids 
caption: Map of the Arabian peninsula and neighboring areas under the caliphate in the 8th century. Ibn al-Zubayr's sovereignty as caliph was recognized in the Hejaz, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq and districts of Fars and Kerman.