Teresa Bernheimer

The revolt of ‘Abdallah b. Mu‘awiya, AH 127–130: a reconsideration through the coinage

‘Abdallāh b. Mu‘āwiya b. ‘Abdallam h b. Ja‘far b. Abī Tālib, great-grandson of ‘Alīs brother Ja‘far, rose up in Kufa in Muharram of 127/October 744. He was defeated by Umayyad forces in 130 (747–748), and killed by Abū Muslim in Khurāsaān. During the two years of his uprising, Ibn Mu‘āwiya established himself in the Jibāl and Fārs, where he appointed governors, collected taxes and struck his own coins. Ibn Mu‘āwiyas coinage is an important source for the revolt, which is among the most important uprisings of the late Umayyad period. It presents evidence for a strong and unified movement, and corroborates the interpretation of a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the ‘Abbāsid Revolution. This article suggests some alternatives regarding the chronology and geography of Ibn Mu‘āwiyas revolt through a re-examination of textual sources and new coinage, and shows the usefulness of numismatics for the historical study of early Islam.

Shared Sanctity: Some Notes on Ahl al-Bayt Shrines in the Early Ṭālibid Genealogies*

This article examines some of the earliest literary evidence for Ahl al-Bayt shrines, contained in the so-called Ṭālibid genealogies. First written in the midto late-9th century, nearly contemporaneously with the development of the earliest shrines themselves, these sources were often written by (and perhaps mainly for) the Ahl al-Bayt themselves, providing a picture that the family itself sought to preserve and convey. According to these sources, by the end of the 9th century there clearly were burial places of the Ahl al-Bayt, and especially of the ʿAlid family, that were visited. Such sites were associated with a number of ʿAlids who were not Shiʿite imams, but “regular” members of the family; thus they were not places of pilgrimage for the Shiʿa only, but sites of veneration that could be shared and even developed regardless of sectarian affiliation. The sites, moreover, became focal points for the Ahl al-Bayt, many of whom settled around them, and came to benefit from their waqf arrangements and the pilgrimage “traffic” around them. Over all, the paper argues that the appearance of—or increased attention to—the Ahl al-Bayt shrines from the 9th century onwards had little to do with Shiʿism or Shiʿite patronage; instead, it may be seen as consistent with the wider development of the socio-religious rise of the Ahl al-Bayt: the development of “ʿAlidism”. To this day, the ubiquity of mausolea and shrines in all parts of the Islamic world is striking to any traveller: from the Taj Mahal in Agra, to the grand structures in Bukhara and Samarqand, to the famous Mamluk and Ayyubid