A fourteen-year insurgency by Kharijite militants against Umayyad authority, distinct from the wider Second Fitna succession war though overlapping and outlasting it. Two rival Kharijite movements rose in the disorder that followed Mu'awiya I's death: the Azariqa, led first by Nafi ibn al-Azraq and later by Qatari ibn al-Fujaa, who fought from strongholds in southern Iraq and Persia and sanctioned killing the wives and children of their opponents as apostates; and the more moderate Najdat, led by Najda ibn Amir al-Hanafi, who rose in central Arabia and rejected the Azariqa's extremism. Both movements held that grave sin unmade a Muslim's standing regardless of rank, a doctrine that put them at war with the Umayyad state and with most of the wider Muslim community alike. The Umayyad governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, and his general al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra fought a long campaign of sieges and pitched battles against both groups through the 690s.
Facts
Consequences
What It SettledBoth movements were destroyed as organized military forces. The Najdat fractured through internal disputes and were suppressed earlier in the rebellion; the Azariqa fought on longest, pushed out of Iraq into Persia by al-Muhallab's campaigns, until Qatari's death and the final defeat of his loyalists in Kirman in 699 ended the Azariqa as a fighting force. Kharijite belief itself survived the rebellions' defeat in smaller, less militant offshoots, chiefly the Ibadis and the Sufriyya, and Ibadi communities persist today. 1 Religious DimensionFought over a doctrine of Kharijite origin, first voiced by the movement's founders after the First Fitna, that a Muslim who commits grave sin, including a ruler who governs unjustly, forfeits standing as a believer and may rightly be fought. The Azariqa took the doctrine furthest, treating even the wives and children of those they judged apostate as legitimate targets, a position the more moderate Najdat rejected while sharing the underlying claim that piety, not lineage or office, determined legitimate authority within the Muslim community. Both movements thereby stood opposed not only to the Umayyad state but to the broader Muslim community's own understanding of who counted as a believer. 1 The Event
When It Happened685, when the Azariqa and Najdat rose as organized rebel movements in the disorder following the Second Fitna's early years, to 699, when al-Hajjaj's commanders al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra and Sufyan ibn al-Abrad defeated Qatari ibn al-Fujaa's remaining Azariqa loyalists and destroyed the movement's forces in Kirman 1 Principal PartiesThe Azariqa under Nafi ibn al-Azraq and later Qatari ibn al-Fujaa, and the Najdat under Najda ibn Amir al-Hanafi, against the Umayyad Caliphate under Abd al-Malik, prosecuted chiefly by the caliph's governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, and his general al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra. 1 Status
Official RecognitionNot formally recognized by any body 1 Recognition BasisNo modern international body has made a determination on a seventh century rebellion; historians study it as an episode of early Islamic civil conflict rather than under that later legal vocabulary. 1 Open Questions
Death Toll AssessmentNo historian has combined the rebellions' many battles and sieges across Iraq, Persia and Arabia into one casualty figure. The surviving record describes individual engagements, the size of a besieging force, a single battle's dead, rather than a war-wide total, and Kennedy's standard narrative history of the period gives none.
Kennedy's narrative history of the early Islamic state was checked directly and combines no war-wide total for the fourteen-year Azariqa and Najdat rebellions; only individual battle and siege accounts survive. Learn More
The Kharijite Rebellions, Two Movements Against Umayyad Rule
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A fourteen-year insurgency by Kharijite militants against Umayyad authority followed the disorder that came after Mu'awiya I's death, distinct from the wider Second Fitna succession war though overlapping and outlasting it. Two rival Kharijite movements rose in that disorder: the Azariqa, led first by Nafi ibn al-Azraq and later by Qatari ibn al-Fujaa, who fought from strongholds in southern Iraq and Persia and sanctioned killing the wives and children of their opponents as apostates; and the more moderate Najdat, led by Najda ibn Amir al-Hanafi, who rose in central Arabia and rejected the Azariqa's extremism.
The Umayyad governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, and his general al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra fought a long campaign of sieges and pitched battles against both groups through the 690s. The Najdat fractured through internal disputes and were suppressed earlier in the rebellion; the Azariqa fought on longest, pushed out of Iraq into Persia, until Qatari's death and the final defeat of his loyalists in Kirman in 699 ended the movement as a fighting force. Kharijite belief itself survived the rebellions' military defeat in smaller, less militant offshoots, chiefly the Ibadis and the Sufriyya, and Ibadi communities persist today.
The Doctrine That Drove the Kharijite Rebellions
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
No historian has combined the rebellions' many battles and sieges across Iraq, Persia and Arabia into one casualty figure. The surviving record describes individual engagements, the size of a besieging force or a single battle's dead, rather than a war-wide total, and Hugh Kennedy's standard narrative history of the period gives none, so this atlas records the toll as unknown rather than adopting an unsourced estimate.
What is well attested is the doctrine both movements fought for. It held that a Muslim who commits grave sin, including a ruler who governs unjustly, forfeits standing as a believer and may rightly be fought, a doctrine of Kharijite origin first voiced by the movement's founders after the earlier First Fitna. The Azariqa took the doctrine furthest, treating even the wives and children of those they judged apostate as legitimate targets, a position the more moderate Najdat rejected while sharing the underlying claim that piety, not lineage or office, determined legitimate authority within the Muslim community. Both movements thereby stood opposed not only to the Umayyad state but to the broader Muslim community's own understanding of who counted as a believer.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Both belligerents fought as rival claims on legitimate authority and standing within Islam: the Azariqa and Najdat over who counted as a true believer and could rightly rule, the Umayyad Caliphate over its own claim to that same authority.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
What Was the Death Toll of the Kharijite Rebellions?
The surviving Arabic chronicle tradition records the rebellions as a sequence of individual battles and sieges across Iraq, Persia and Arabia rather than one accounted campaign, and no modern historian has combined the separate engagements into a war-wide casualty total.
What would resolve this A systematic tally of the individual battle and siege accounts already preserved in the early Arabic chronicle tradition, cross-checked against what independent evidence of the period's population and military scale can bear, of the kind no historian of the rebellions has yet undertaken.
Early Islamic history; Arabic chronicle source criticismHugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.