page_title: Zanj Rebellion
section_title: Ali ibn Muhammad
hierarchical_section_title: Zanj Rebellion / Ali ibn Muhammad
caption_attribution_description: English: Iraq - Marshes - Former Marshes and Water Diversion Projects in Southeastern Iraq
context_page_description: The Zanj Rebellion was a major revolt against the Abbasid Caliphate, which took place from 869 until 883. Begun near the city of Basra in present-day southern Iraq and led by one Ali ibn Muhammad, the insurrection involved enslaved Bantu-speaking people who had originally been captured from the coast of East Africa and transported to the Middle East, principally to drain the region's salt marshes. It grew to involve slaves and freemen, including both blacks and Arabs, from several regions of the Caliphate, and claimed tens of thousands of lives before it was finally defeated.
  Several Muslim historians, such as al-Tabari and al-Mas'udi, consider the Zanj revolt to be one of the "most vicious and brutal uprisings" of the many disturbances that plagued the Abbasid central government. Modern scholars have characterized the conflict as being "one of the bloodiest and most destructive rebellions which the history of Western Asia records," while at the same time praising its coverage as being among the "most fully and extensively described campaign[s] in the whole of early Islamic historical writing."
context_section_description: The leader of the revolt was a Ali ibn Muhammad, an individual of uncertain background. Little is known about his family or early life due to a scarcity of information and conflicting accounts. According to one version, his paternal grandfather was descended from the Abd al-Qays and his paternal grandmother was a Sindhi slave woman, while his mother, a free woman, was a member of the Banu Asad ibn Khuzaymah. Some later commentators have presumed him to have been of Persian rather than Arab background, but other historians consider this to be unlikely. Ali himself claimed to have been descended from Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and fourth caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, but this was largely rejected by Muslim historians of the era as false.
  Regardless of his origins, Ali appears to have spent at least a part of his youth living in the area of Rayy, and at an unspecified date he moved to the Abbasid capital of Samarra, where he mixed with some of the influential slaves of Caliph al-Muntasir (861-62). In 863, he made his way from Samarra to Bahrain (modern eastern Arabia), where he pretended to be Shi'i and started to rouse the people into rebellion against the caliphate. Support for his cause quickly grew. A large number of Bahranis submitted to his authority and the kharaj (land taxes) were collected in his name. Despite this, his rebellion eventually failed due to opposition from the local inhabitants, whereupon Ali abandoned the region and relocated to the city of Basra in southern Iraq in 868.
  In Basra Ali sought to take advantage of disturbances caused by the city's rival groups, the Bilaliyyah and Sa'diyyah, and attempted to secure the support of one of the factions. Eventually he proclaimed a new revolt, but no one in the city rallied to his side and he was forced to flee to the marshlands of southern Iraq. There he was arrested by the provincial authorities and sent to Wasit. He was quickly able to secure his freedom and went to Baghdad, where he remained for the next year. During his time in Baghdad he claimed to be a Zaydi by being related to the grandson of Zayd ibn Ali and won over additional followers for his movement.
  When Ali heard news about another scuffle between Basra's factions in 869, he returned to the region and "began to seek out black slaves working in the Basra marshes and to inquire into their working conditions and nutritional standards." He began a campaign to liberate and recruit Zanj and other slaves, promising them freedom and wealth in exchange for their support. A large number of people quickly joined his cause, and Ali soon came to be known by the title Sāhib az-Zanj, meaning "Chief of the Zanj". However, Ali's movement attracted not only Zanj but many other socially downtrodden peoples. These included "semi-liberated slaves, clients of prestigious families, a number of small craftsmen and humble workers, some peasantry and some Bedouin peoples who lived around Basrah."
  While he was gaining followers for his rebellion, Ali adopted slogans of the egalitarian doctrine of the Kharijites, who "preached that the most qualified man should reign, even if he was an Abyssinian slave." He inscribed his banner and coins with Kharijite expressions and started off his Friday sermons with the slogan "God is great, God is great, there is no God but God, and God is great; there is no arbitration except by God," which was "the war cry used by the Kharijites when they defected from the ranks of Ali ibn Abi Talib during the battle of Siffin." At the same time, however, Ali did not completely abandon the pretense of being an Alid and maintained the claim that he was a Zaydi.
caption: A modern map of the Mesopotamian Marshes.
exif: {}