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Ask the Battle of Qudayd: Victory and Identity in the Holy Cities
Abstract
This paper listens to the voice of the Ibadi poet, ‘Amr al-Husayn al-‘Anbari, in the flush of Mukhtar b. `Awf al-Azdi Abu Hamza’s victory over the Umayyad Madinans at the Battle of Qudayd in 130 A.H./748 A.D. This twenty-eight verse ba’iyya poem in the kamil meter, recorded in al-Isfahani’s al-Aghani, represents forces of alliance, argumentation, conviction, and conflict forming a backdrop to the final attempts to replace Umayyad authority undertaken by the Ibadi Shurat/Kharijite leader ‘Abdullah b. Yahya, known as Talib al-Haqq, in the Holy Cities of Makka and Madina toward the end of Marwan II’s caliphate. The poet presents the Battle of Qudayd itself as a persona encapsulating physical, spiritual, and political elements in an ambiguous song of temporal victory, with references to Qur’anic views of the Day of Judgment. Herein al-‘Anbari engages crucial identity issues for the Shurat/Kharijites in general, and for the Ibadis in particular. I intend to map nuances of sacrifice or exchange/shara, and Exchangers/Shurat, as the poet iterates them, in light of armed and unarmed practices among the Ibadis. He bemoans his own survival: “I did not fulfill my desire for sacrifice with the Shurat contingent.” It is in his final verse that al-‘Anbari urges the listener to ask the battle about its events, presenting the battle itself as an individual person. I will examine components of the battle that relate to personal characteristics in light of physical realities – of the human body, geography, time changes and environment, as well as spiritual atmospheres – of human hopes, religious beliefs, social status, and the impetus for change. With historical hindsight, I will also make reference to the changed trajectories in the same poet’s lengthy elegy for Abu Hamza in the bloodbath that decimated the Ibadis at Wadi al-Qura shortly after Qudayd. The ba’iyya, the poem of victory, provides insights into significant points on the time and ideology-lines of Ibadi identity before and after these tumultuous, defining events. I am using works of al-Baladhuri, al-Isfahani, al-Jahiz, al-Mubarrad, al-Shahrastani, al-Tabari, Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih, and others among primary Arabic sources, as well as identity theory, and literary and historical analyses in secondary sources, including recent publications from Syria, Tunisia, and Oman.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Arabian Peninsula
Sub Area
7th-13th Centuries