The Umayyad Amirate in Spain

Abstract

When in 75o the ‘Abbāsids signalized their accession by a general massacre of the members of the house of Umayyah,¹one of the very few who escaped was ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān ibn-Mu‘āwiyah,² a grandson of Hishām, the tenth caliph of Damascus. The story of the narrow escape of this twenty-year-old youth and of his five years’ wandering in disguise through Palestine, Egypt and North Africa, where more than once he barely escaped the vigilant eyes of ‘Abbāsid spies, forms one of the most dramatic episodes in Arabic annals. The flight began from a Bedouin camp on the left bank of the Euphrates where ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān had sought refuge. One day the black standards of the ‘Abbāsids suddenly appeared close by the camp. With his thirteen-year-old brother, ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān dashed into the river. The younger, evidently a poor swimmer, believed the pursuers’ promise of amnesty and returned from midstream, only to be slain; the elder kept on and gained the opposite bank.³