Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022): 516-553

Abstract
This article addresses the rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj, which occurred between 116 and 128 AH (734–46 CE) in 
Umayyad Khurasan. Combining Bactrian documents, Chinese, Arabic, and Persian narratives, and numismatic 
evidence, it highlights the local aspect of this rebellion. It shows that in the frontier region of Khurasan, the 
Umayyads were only one political group among many other local and regional powers, all with different political 
priorities. Al-Ḥārith b. Surayj successfully united Arab soldiers, Sogdian converts, and local western Bactrian 
rulers by appealing to their political priorities and by mobilizing local cultural symbols against the Umayyads. 
The role of Bactrian local rulers in the initial success but also in the downfall of al-Ḥārith’s rebellion turns out 
to have been crucial. 

Introduction

In the year 116/734, an unprecedented anti-Umayyad rebellion started in the garrison of 
Andkhud,1 an area west of Balkh in the frontier region of Khurasan. The rebellion was led 
by al-Ḥārith b. Surayj (d. 128/746), an Arab Muslim notable of Tamīm, an important tribe in 
Khurasan, who was the commander of the Umayyad troops in the garrison. He declared that 
he was fighting for the Qurʾān (al-kitāb), the Prophet’s tradition (al-sunna), and allegiance 

* This research was supported by the European Research Council under grant number 683194. I would like 
to thank Petra Sijpesteijn, Alon Dar, and Edmund Hayes, the reviewers, and editors of the journal for their 
valuable comments and suggestions for revising this article. I am also grateful to Jonathan Lee for his insightful 
comments and for editing the draft of this article.

1.  That is modern Andkhui, located in northwestern Afghanistan on the Turkmenistan border.

The Rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj (116–28/734–46):  
The Local Perspective*

Said Reza HuSeini
Cambridge University

(sh2170@cam.ac.uk)

© 2022 Said Reza Huseini. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 
License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and 
only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.

mailto:sh2170%40cam.ac.uk?subject=


517  •  Said Reza HuSeini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

to the leadership of the “Elected One” (al-bayʿa li-l-riḍā).2 His rebellion weakened Umayyad 
rule in the region and facilitated the Abbasid takeover that started there a few years after 
al-Ḥārith’s death. Unexpectedly, al-Ḥārith was able to unite Muslims and non-Muslims, 
Arabs and non-Arabs in his uprising.3 Further, this was the only time that Arab Muslim 
forces turned against the Umayyad government while allying with a strong non-Muslim 
enemy—namely, the Türgesh Turks, who themselves were challenging Umayyad rule in 
the east. Although the rebellion of al-Ḥārith is a well-known event in the history of late 
Umayyad Khurasan, its local context, and particularly the role played by Bactrian rulers, 
has been understudied.4

Accounts of the rebellion of al-Ḥārith appear in later Arabic sources. Using Bactrian 
documents alongside Arabic, Persian, and Chinese narratives and numismatic data, this 
article places al-Ḥārith’s rebellion in the very complex context of the frontier region of 
Khurasan. Such a local perspective offers a nuanced understanding of the forces and motives 
that gave rise to this revolt. Making use of regional accounts and material sources, other 
scholars have already provided insight on the history of early Islamic Khurasan, where local 
interests and motives played at least as important a role in the unfolding of events as did 
imperial politics initiated in capitals thousands of kilometers away.5 This study builds on 
their methodology by applying it to the rebellion of al-Ḥārith.6

To be able to study this rebellion from a local perspective, we need to understand the 
situation “on the ground” in Bactria at the time of the rebellion. Non-Arabic sources do 
not contain any direct references to al-Ḥārith’s rebellion, but they do provide essential 
background information about social and economic conditions as well as political relations 
in the region before and after the uprising; the former, as we will see, played a crucial 

2.  Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1879–81), 
9:1566–67.

3.  These terms are not straightforward and are used here in their general meaning. For discussion of this 
terminology, see P. Webb, Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh 
University Press, 2016). 

4.  For a short overview on al-Ḥārith, see M. J. Kister, “Al-Ḥārith b. Suraydj,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd 
ed., ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill Online).

5.  See, for instance, K. Athamina, “Taxation Reforms in Early Islamic Khurasan,” Der Islam 65 (1988): 272–78; ʿ A. 
F. al-ʿAfnān, “al-Qabāʾil al-ʿarabiyya fī Khurāsān wa-bilād Mā warāʾ al-nahr” (PhD diss., Umm al-Qura University 
of Mecca, 1413/1993); P. Pourshariati, “Iranian Tradition in Ṭus and the Arab Presence in Khurasān” (PhD diss., 
Columbia University, 1995); M. D. Luce, “Frontier as Process: Umayyad Khurāsān” (PhD diss., University of 
Chicago, 2009); P. Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); A. Azad, Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting 
the “Faḍāʾil-i Balkh” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); É. de La Vaissière, “The ʿAbbāsid Revolution in 
Marw: New Data,” Der Islam 95, no. 1 (2018): 110–46; R. Haug, The Eastern Frontier: Limits of Empire in Late 
Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2019). This is not, of course, a full bibliography 
on this subject. 

6.  In its effort to understand early Islamic Khurasan, especially its function as a frontier zone of geographically 
and culturally diverse people and rulers, this article fits into the larger project of my forthcoming doctoral 
thesis, which examines the Arab conquest of Bactria with special attention to the role of local actors: S. R. 
Huseini, “Framing the Conquest: Bactrian Local Rulers and the Early Muslim Domination of Bactria (31–128 
AH/651–746 CE)” (PhD diss., Leiden University, 2022).



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role in the revolt. First, there are documents written in Bactrian, the only Middle Iranian 
language that uses the Greek alphabet.7 They date to between the early fourth and the 
late eighth century CE and offer important insights into the concerns and activities of 
the Bactrian inhabitants of the region. The political fragmentation of the region—the 
continuing dominance of the Turkic Qaghān even as the Umayyads sought to establish their 
authority—comes out clearly in the Bactrian documents. It is also clear that local Bactrian 
rulers in this period remained powerful, controlled local resources, and even had their own 
military forces. In addition, the documents show that worshippers of old Iranian deities and 
Buddhists coexisted in the region. Finally, the documents reflect the limits of conversion on 
the ground, as well as the gradual changes in the political structure of Bactria during the 
Umayyad period.8 

7.  The Bactrian documents contain administrative, economic, and legal documents as well as official and 
private letters reflecting the sociopolitical circumstances in Bactria. However, they do not cover the entire 
Bactrian region and were mostly produced in Rob in the south, Guzgan (modern Juzjan) and Gaz (possibly 
Darray-i Gaz, south of Balkh) in the west, and Samingan (modern Samangan), Kadagstan (possibly in modern 
Baghlan), and Warnu (probably Qala-i Zal or Qunduz) in the east of Bactria. No Bactrian document has thus 
far been found from the Balkh oasis. The information these documents yield is limited to the areas where the 
documents were produced and circulated. Nevertheless, they display a continuity in their form and formulas 
that implies administrative and cultural continuity despite regime changes over the long time span that they 
cover. The documents have been translated and published by Nicholas Sims-Williams in several publications: 
N. Sims-Williams, “New Documents in Ancient Bactrian Reveal Afghanistan’s Past,” IIAS Newsletter 27 (2002): 
12–13; “Nouveaux documents bactriens du Guzgan (New Bactrian Documents from Guzgan),” Comptes rendus 
des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 146, no. 3 (2002): 1047–58; “Bactrian Letters from the 
Sasanian and Hephthalite Periods,” in Proceedings of the 5th Conference of the Societas Iranologica Europæa, 
Ravenna, 6–22 October 2003, vol. 1, Ancient and Middle Iranian Studies, ed. A. Panaino and A. Piras, 701–13 (Milan: 
Mimesis, 2006); Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan, vol. 2, Letters and Buddhist Texts (London: 
Nour Foundation and Azimuth Editions, 2007); Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan, vol. 1, Legal 
and Economic Documents, rev. ed. (Oxford: Nour Foundation, Azimuth Editions, and Oxford University Press, 
2012); N. Sims-Williams and F. de Blois, Studies in the Chronology of the Bactrian Documents from Northern 
Afghanistan, with contributions by H. Falk and D. Weber (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der 
Wissenschaften, 2018). There is a long list of publications on the Bactrian documents, but this article is not the 
place to mention all of them. 

8.  These documents have been available for more than two decades but have still not made the impact on 
historiography that their importance deserves. Interest in this material has, however, taken flight in recent 
years. For earlier studies, see G. Khan, “The Pre-Islamic Background of Muslim Legal Formularies,” ARAM 6 
(1994): 193–224; K. Rezakhani, “The Bactrian Collection: An Important Source for Sasanian Economic History,” 
Sasanika 13 (2008): 1–14; idem, “Balkh and the Sasanians: Economy and Society of Northern Afghanistan as 
Reflected in the Bactrian Economic Documents,” in Ancient and Middle Iranian Studies, ed. M. Macuch, D. Weber, 
and D. Durkin-Meisterernst, 1–21 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010); K. Van Bladel, “The Bactrian Background of 
the Barmakids,” in Islam and Tibet: Interactions along the Musk Routes, ed. A. Akasoy, C. Burnett, and R. Yoeli-
Tlalim, 43–88 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011); R. Payne, “The Making of Turan: The Fall and Transformation of 
the Iranian East in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Late Antiquity 9, no. 1 (2016): 4–41; A. Azad, “Living Happily Ever 
After: Fraternal Polyandry, Taxes and ‘the House’ in Early Islamic Bactria,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental 
and African Studies 79, no. 1 (2016): 33–56. For more recent work, see K. Rezakhani, ReOrienting the Sasanians: 
East Iran in Late Antiquity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); A. Azad, “The Beginning of Islam 
in Afghanistan: Conquest, Acculturation and Islamization,” in Afghanistan’s Islam from Conversion to the 
Taliban, ed. Nile Green, 41–55 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017); H. Sheikh, “Studies on the Bactrian 
Legal Documents” (PhD diss., Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 2017); S. R. Huseini, “Acts of Protection 



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Apart from the Bactrian documents, the personal accounts and travelogues of Chinese and 
Korean Buddhist pilgrims who visited Bactria before and after the Arab Muslim conquests 
provide valuable information. From their descriptions of encounters, observations, and 
reflections on what they came across on their travels, much can be deduced about the 
region and its population.9 A number of multilingual coins minted in Anbir (modern Sari-i 
Pul) in Guzgan in the Umayyad period are also included in this study. They were part of a 
hoard identified in Kabul in the early nineteenth century, which was then bought by various 
museums and private collections in the United Kingdom and France.10 In addition, there are 
the monolingual silver dirhams issued by al-Ḥārith—the only local source discussed here 
that directly references his revolt—which are crucially important to understanding his 
uprising as they reflect his political agenda and his use of religious vocabulary.11 Finally, a 
Persian narrative contains some unique information that seems to have a local provenance; 
this makes it a useful source despite its late composition.12

Together, these sources give us an impression of the conditions in the region, especially 
the competing political groups operating in it that form the background against which 
al-Ḥārith’s revolt took place. The sources show that the Umayyads were not the sole 
political power in the region, but one among many. Reading the Arabic narratives that offer 
the most complete reports on the events with this local perspective in mind sheds light on 
the complex political and social dynamics that help explain both the initial success and the 
ultimate failure of al-Ḥārith’s rebellion. 

Among the Arabic sources that discuss the revolt, al-Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-ashrāf 
(Genealogies of elites) and al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk (History of prophets and 
kings) offer the most extensive accounts of the rebellion.13 Other Arabic sources written 
before al-Ṭabarī either do not include this rebellion or provide only a meager amount of 
information.14 The Arabic narratives written after him mostly summarize the story and do 

Represented in Bactrian Documents,” Annales islamologiques 54 (2021): 107–24; idem, “The Idea and Practice of 
Justice Represented in Bactrian Documents,” Association for Iranian Studies Newsletter 41, no. 2 (2020): 28–31; 
idem, “Between Turks and Arabs: Household, Conversion and Power Dynamics in Early Abbasid Bactria (700–
772),” in The Ties that Bind: Mechanisms of Social Dependency in the Early Islamic Empire, ed. E. Hayes and P. 
M. Sijpesteijn (forthcoming).

9.  See SI-YU-KI: Buddhist Records of the Western World, trans. S. Beal (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 
1906); Hye Ch’o, The Hye Ch’o Diary: Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India, trans. Y. Han-Sung 
et al. (Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1984), 52. 

10.  J. Cribb, “Coinage in Afghanistan during the Period of Islamic Conquest, c. AH 70–150 [AD 690–767],” 
paper presented at the workshop “Contesting Empires: Sogdiana, Bactria and Gandhara between the Sasanian 
Empire, the Tang Dynasty and the Muslim Caliphate (ca. 600–1000 CE),” Leiden, September 17, 2020. I am grateful 
to the author, who provided me with a draft of the paper.

11.  S. D. Sears, “The Revolt of al-Ḥārith ibn Surayj and the Countermarking of Umayyad Dirhams in Early 
Eighth Century CE Khurāsān,” in The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner, ed. P. Cobb, 
377–405 (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Thanks to Mehdy Shaddel, who provided me with this article.

12.  ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. Zaḥāk Gardīzī, Zayn al-akhbār, ed. ʿA. Ḥ. Habībī (Tehran: Dunyā-yi Kitāb, 1363/1984).
13.  Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1417/1996).
14.  Other authors, including Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ (d. 240/854), Aḥmad b. Dāwūd al-Dināwarī (d. 290/902), 

Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī (d. 279/892), Aḥmad b. Abī Yaʿqūb b. Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī (d. 292/905?), and Ibn 



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not offer any new details.15 These narratives are, of course, well known and have been used 
in previous studies of the revolt. But this article offers a rereading of the Arabic narratives 
that focuses on the local conditions and gives special attention to the role of Bactrians 
and Khurasanis in the rebellion. For this purpose, al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīkh is a central source 
of information. Al-Ṭabarī’s narratives of the revolt come mostly from ʿAlī b. Muḥammad 
al-Madāʾinī (d. 228/843), who is said to have composed several books on Khurasan.16 
Al-Ṭabarī includes information on certain local Bactrian rulers, their locations, and their 
positions in the rebellion that is not mentioned in any other Arabic source. It is only 
al-Ṭabarī who informs us which Bactrian rulers supported al-Ḥārith and which ones did not. 
Further, his reports include local voices, which adds to the importance of his work as far 
as this article is concerned. His Taʾrīkh corroborates the picture of political fragmentation 
under Turkic overlordship painted by the Bactrian documents and pilgrims’ reports. 

Combining all these sources to fully comprehend the rebellion in its local and regional 
context, I argue that this rebellion successfully united both Muslim and non-Muslim and 
both Arab and local followers who all had different motives but one common purpose: 
repelling Umayyad authority from the east. Indeed, the Arab Muslims were only one political 
group among many that joined the revolt. I show that local Bactrian rulers played a crucial 
role, their actions dictated by their own interests and shifting political circumstances. In 
this sense, the rebellion fit into regional power dynamics in the east that had been in place 
already prior to al-Ḥārith’s revolt and that continued into the Abbasid period.

To provide an overview on the rebellion, I start with an evaluation of previous studies. I 
then explain al-Ḥārith’s early career in Khurasan and discuss what might have motivated him 
to take up arms against Umayyad forces. This part also considers why al-Ḥārith’s message 
appealed to the Arab Muslim troops and their leaders against the background of Umayyad-
Türgesh fighting in the region. Turning to the local conditions of the revolt, I examine the 
controversy over the poll tax (jizya) and its relation to the rebellion, including al-Ḥārith’s 
support among Sogdian converts. I then discuss al-Ḥārith’s local allies, particularly Bactrian 
rulers and the reasons for their support of him. Finally, I examine Umayyad responses to 
the rebellion and the role of Bactrian rulers therein.

Aʿtham al-Kūfī (d. 314/926), wrote before al-Ṭabarī. However, Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s and Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī’s 
reports on al-Ḥārith’s rebellion are very short and do not provide any details about his local supporters. 
Al-Dināwarī’s narratives on late Umayyad Khurasan do not even mention the rebellion. See Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, 
Taʾrīkh Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, ed. A. Z. al-ʿUmarī (Riyadh: Dār Ṭayba, 1405/1985), 346–48; Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī, Kitāb 
al-Futūḥ, ed. ʿA. Shīrī (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1411/1991), 8:282–83; Aḥmad b. Dāwūd al-Dināwarī, Kitāb al-Akhbār 
al-ṭiwāl, ed. V. Gergas (Leiden: Brill, 1888), 318–30. Al-Yaʿqūbī provides some information on the reign of Caliph 
Hishām (r. 105–25/723–42), but he does not discuss the rebellion of al-Ḥārith; see Aḥmad b. Abī Yaʿqūb b. Wāḍiḥ 
al-Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh al-Yaʿqūbī, ed. ʿA. A. Muhannā (Beirut: Shirkat al-ʿĀlamī li-l-Maṭbuʿāt, 1431/2010); idem, 
Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. T. G. J. Juynboll (Leiden: Brill, 1860).

15.  See, for instance, ʿIzz al-Dīn b. al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī al-taʾrīkh, ed. A. F. ʿA. A. al-Qāḍī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub 
al-ʿIlmiyya, 1407/1987); Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab fi funūn al-adab, ed. S. ʿA. F. 
ʿĀshūr (Cairo: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa wa-l-Irshād al-Qawmī, 1963); Ismāʿīl b. Kathīr al-Dimashqī, al-Bidāya wa-l-
nihāya, ed. ʿA. Shīrī (Beirut: Dār al-Iḥyāʾ wa-l-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1408/1988); Sibṭ b. al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt al-zamān fī 
tawārīkh al-aʿyān, ed. M. Barakat, K. al-Kharāt, and A. Rayḥāwī (Damascus: Dār al-Risāla al-ʿĀlamiyya, 1434/2013).

16.  U. Sezgin, “Al-Madāʾinī,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.



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Previous Studies

Various reasons have been proposed in previous studies to explain the response to 
al-Ḥārith’s call for revolt. These include his religious piety, the Umayyads’ decision to 
impose jizya on recent converts in Sogdiana and the protests this decision raised, and 
Umayyad changes in the military and political organization of Khurasan, which various 
local power holders saw as threatening. I will discuss these explanations one by one and 
offer my evaluation of the arguments put forward. 

According to Gerlof van Vloten, al-Ḥārith was a “pious Muslim, ascetic and reformer.”17 
He thus suggests a specific religious appeal behind the revolt. Others, too, have sought the 
reason for al-Ḥārith’s success in his religious character. Al-Ḥārith is thereby often referred 
to as murjiʾī.18 The Murjiʾa was a religious movement that stressed faith over actions and 
was active in Khurasan.19 Saleh Said Agha has argued that the murjiʾī character of al-Ḥārith’s 
rebellion and his “uncompromising puritan posturing” are the reasons behind Muslim and 
non-Muslim support for the uprising.20 Al-Ḥārith’s relationship with Jahm b. Ṣafwān (d. 
128/746) seems to have been the main factor that prompted these scholars to identify him 
as a murjiʾī.21 Jahm’s identity as a murjiʿī leader in Khurasan is, however, not undisputed.22 
Moreover, although opponents of the Umayyads regularly couched their dissatisfaction in 
religious terms, this tendency does not mean they shared a sectarian program. Al-Ḥārith’s 
interest in debate with his Umayyad rivals on the issue of the application of the Qurʾān and 
the sunna, as well as his military operations against the Umayyads, may create a temptation 
to connect his cause with that of the Kharijites, the military groups that challenged Umayyad 
authority in Iraq and in the central and eastern parts of Iran. However, the evidence is too 
weak to identify him as a Kharijite.23 Using religious slogans and taking up arms against 

17.  Cited in H. A. R. Gibb, The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1923), 78.
18.  Wellhausen mentions that al-Ḥārith appeared as a murjiʾī; J. Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall, 

trans. M. Graham Weir (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1927), 464.
19.  For details on the Murjiʾa in Khurasan, see W. Madelung, “The Early Murjiʾa in Khurasan and Transoxiana 

and the Spread of Ḥanafism,” Der Islam 59, no. 1 (1982): 1–39; K. Athamina, “The Early Murjiʾa: Some Notes,” 
Journal of Semitic Studies 35, no. 1 (1990): 109–30; Ḥ. ʿAṭwān, al-Murjiʾa wa-l-Jahmiyya bi-Khurāsān fī al-ʿaṣr 
al-umawī (Beirut: Dār al-Jil, 1413/1993). For more information, see P. Crone and F. Zimmermann, The Epistle of 
Salim ibn Dhakwan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 219–50, and V. L. Novak, “The Delineation between 
Believer, Rebel and Heretic” (MA thesis, University of Maryland, 2012). 

20.  S. S. Agha, The Revolution which Toppled the Umayyads (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 154. 
21.  The association between these two characters is mentioned in most of the studies. For instance, see 

Wellhausen, Arab Kingdom, 464–65; Madelung, “Early Murjiʾa,” 33–35; Athamina, “Early Murjiʾa,” 124–25; M. 
Parvīsh and M. Tabārakī, “Aużāʿ-i sīyāsī Khurāsān az vurūd-i islām tā payān-i Khilāfat-i Umaviyān,” Khiradnāma 
22 (1390sh/2011): 33–34; M. Bihishtī Sirisht and M. M. Pūr, “Rīshahā-yi qiyām-i Ḥārith b. Surayj va natāyij-i ān,” 
Taʾrīkh dar āyina-yi pazhūhish 9, no. 2 (1390–91sh/2012–13): 31; E. Urban, “The Early Islamic Mawālī: A Window 
onto Processes of Identity Construction and Social Change” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2012), 128.

22.  For detail on Jahm’s thought, see J. van Ess, “Jahm b. Ṣafwān,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, online ed., ed. 
E. Yarshater, updated April 10, 2012, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/jahm-b-safwan; Kh. al-ʿUlā, “Jahm b. 
Ṣafwān wa-makānatuhu fī al-fikr al-islāmī” (MA thesis, Baghdad University, 1965).

23.  Al-Ḥārith is called a khārijī in Ḥabībī’s edition of Gardīzī’s Zayn al-akhbār, 257, but this description could 
have been added later by a copyist. Moshe Sharon rejected al-Ḥārith’s identification as a khārijī in Revolt: The 

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/jahm-b-safwan


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the Umayyads were commonplace in this period.24 Most importantly, viewing al-Ḥārith’s 
actions in an exclusively ideological and theological vein fails to appreciate fully the social 
and political context in which his rebellion occurred. 

This context has, however, been taken up by some other scholars. Julius Wellhausen, 
for example, regards the revolt as having been directed against the imposition of jizya tax 
on Sogdian converts, and he portrays al-Ḥārith as an advocate for the rights of indigenous 
converts.25 Vasily Barthold discusses al-Ḥārith’s revolt in the same context and argues that 
it did not have an “anti-dynastic character” at the beginning.26 However, Khalid Blankinship 
notes that the Sogdian converts on whom the Umayyads imposed the jizya had already 
voiced their resentment before al-Ḥārith’s revolt. Al-Ḥārith’s revolt then incorporated and 
built on these protests. Blankinship argues that “the ties of many of al-Harith’s followers to 
the earlier reform movement prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the later movement 
was a continuation of the previous one.”27 Nevertheless, he points out that this “movement 
must have been the product of extreme tensions of local provenance.”28 Awad Mohammad 
Khleifat effectively rejects any connection between the jizya and al-Ḥārith’s rebellion 
because of the absence of any evidence that the revolt was aimed at the defense of converts’ 
rights.29 Unfortunately, Khleifat does not offer an alternative explanation. The arguments 
that seek to connect al-Ḥārith’s revolt with the converts’ protests might have been valid if 
the rebellion had taken place in Sogdiana, where the movement against the jizya had arisen 
some years before. As I will argue, however, al-Ḥārith’s mission began instead in Andkhud 
in Bactria, where the jizya was not imposed on the local population as it was in Sogdiana. 

Similarly, al-Ḥārith is presented as the champion of the rights of mawālī, or clients.30 
Elizabeth Urban has questioned that relation. In a discussion of the rebellion in the 
context of factionalism in Umayyad Khurasan, she assigns al-Ḥārith a religious program, 
emphasizing his religious slogans and ascribing a murjiʿī sectarian identity to him.31

Social and Military Aspects of the ʿAbbāsid Revolution (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1990), 30–31.
24.  See H.-L. Hagemann, “Was Muṭarrif b. al-Mughīra al-Thaqafī a Khārijite? Rebellion in the Early Marwānid 

Period” in the present issue. For al-Ḥārith’s emphasis on the Qurʾān, the sunna, and shūrā, see P. Crone and M. 
Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1986), 59–65; see also P. Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 
277–78. On the significance of al-Ḥārith’s call for shūrā and the leadership of the Elected One, see P. Crone, “On 
the Meaning of the ʿAbbasid Call to al-Riḍā,” in The Islamic World from Classical to Modern Times: Essays in 
Honor of Bernard Lewis, ed. C. E. Bosworth et al., 95–111 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). 

25.  Wellhausen, Arab Kingdom, 465.
26.  W. Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), 190–91.
27.  K. Y. Blankinship, The End of the Jihād State: The Reign of Hishām Ibn ʿAbd al-Malik and the Collapse of 

the Umayyads (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 177.
28.  Blankinship, End of the Jihād State, 177.
29.  A. M. Khleifat, “The Caliphate of Hisham b. ʿAbd al-Malik (105–125/724–743) with Special Reference to 

Internal Problems” (PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1973).
30.  E. Urban discusses these studies in “Early Islamic Mawālī,” 128–35.
31.  Ibid.



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The final group of arguments takes a regional focus, pointing to the impact of the 
settlement of Umayyad forces on the local balance of power, which led to a struggle for 
power and control between the Arab newcomers and local power holders. H. A. R. Gibb 
argues that al-Ḥārith’s revolt was primarily a fight for control over Khurasan between the 
Umayyads and Türgesh forces. He notes that the Umayyad governor’s administrative and 
military mismanagement in Khurasan provoked resentment, including al-Ḥārith’s, and 
that “it may even be questioned whether he [al-Ḥārith] and his small personal following 
were not rather the tools than the leaders of the elements making for the overthrow of 
the Umayyad administration in Khurāsān.”32 M. A. Shaban has viewed al-Ḥārith’s rebellion 
as a reaction to the reorganization of Arab settlements in Khurasan by Hishām b. ʿAbd 
al-Malik (r. 105–25/723–42). The movement of troops in Khurasan was aimed at keeping 
potentially disloyal forces far from Marw and occupied in fighting the empire’s enemies, 
especially the Türgesh, while retaining the fighters who were loyal to the caliph in Marw. 
This reorganization was not acceptable to the Arab tribesmen sent on these missions, who 
saw it as “an unfair reward for their obedience to the government to be sent from Marw, 
which they considered their home, to new locations which virtually amounted to exile.”33 
ʿAbd Allāh Mahdī al-Khaṭīb discusses the rebellion in the context of competition between 
local eastern Iranian leaders and newly emerging Arab elites in Khurasan.34 Likewise, Kurūsh 
Ṣālihī and Javād Bahrāminiyā maintain that al-Ḥārith’s goal was to implement economic 
and social reforms to benefit local people living under Umayyad authority.35 

Robert Haug places the rebellion in the context of a frontier region in which various 
political groups coexisted and reacted differently to the Umayyad incorporation of eastern 
Iranian territories.36 Haug questions the presumed centrality of religion to the rebellion 
and instead focuses on al-Ḥārith’s opposition to the Marwānids, which attracted Arabs 
and non-Arabs alike.37 Recently, Stuart Sears has drawn attention to another local aspect 
of the revolt on the basis of numismatic evidence. He analyzes a group of silver coins 
issued by al-Ḥārith in Balkh and the silver dirhams countermarked by the Hephthalites 
of Bactria in support of al-Ḥārith. The participation of the Hephthalites in this rebellion 
was already discussed by Shaban,38 but Sears is the first to use numismatic evidence for 
this purpose.39 One more scholar should be mentioned here, although his study deals with 
the Abbasid revolution that took place after al-Ḥārith’s revolt had already been subdued. 
Étienne de La Vaissière highlights the sociopolitical situation in the region of Marw where 

32.  Gibb, Arab Conquests, 78.
33.  M. A. Shaban, The ʿAbbāsid Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 118. 
34. ʿ A. M. al-Khaṭīb, Ḥukūmat-i Banī Umayya dar Khurāsān, trans. B. Musavī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Tūkā, 

1357/1978). Agha has similar ideas about the role of Iranians in the Abbasid revolution; see Agha, Revolution. 
35.  K. Ṣālihī and J. Bahrāminiyā, “Muṭāliʿa-yi taṭbīqī qiyāmahā-yi ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ashʿas va Ḥārith b. 

Surayj,” Pazhūhishnāma-yi taʾrīkh-i islām 10 (1392sh/2013): 79–105.
36.  These territories were Bactria, Sogdiana, and Khwarazm. 
37.  Haug, Eastern Frontier, 141–43.
38.  Shaban, ʿAbbāsid Revolution, 6–14.
39.  Sears, “Revolt of al-Ḥārith ibn Surayj,” 377–405. 



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The Rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj   •  524

Abū Muslim (d. 137/755) rose to power. As La Vaissière shows, Abū Muslim successfully 
managed local politics for his own ends, which culminated in his domination of the region. 
He convincingly argues that Abū Muslim formulated his mission using local vocabulary 
and symbols, particularly the black garments that were such an important symbol to the 
indigenous population and that had already been used by al-Ḥārith before him.40 As I argue 
below, it is exactly this awareness of local sentiments and concerns, including the use of 
black garments, that explains the support received by al-Ḥārith’s movement. 

My reconstruction of the rise and fall of al-Ḥārith’s movement, therefore, builds on the 
work of scholars who have already considered the local context from one or more points 
of view. It is, for instance, indebted to Haug’s emphasis on fragmentation within Khurasani 
society due to the region’s position as a frontier. In fact, it was precisely al-Ḥārith’s ability 
to appeal to different groups for different reasons that explains his initial success. In that 
sense, my study also follows the approach applied by La Vaissière in explaining the very 
successful, albeit later, efforts of Abū Muslim to drum up local support for his revolutionary 
movement. For al-Ḥārith, it was such local support, I contend, that played a crucial role in 
the course of the revolt, and it was the withdrawal of this local support that marked the 
beginning of the end of his uprising. By contrast, I will show that some of the explanations 
proposed for his revolt, including al-Ḥārith’s religious identity and the idea that his 
movement was motivated by fiscal discrimination against converts, are unfounded.

Al-Ḥārith b. Surayj 

Al-Ḥārith belonged to the tribe of Tamīm. Surayj, his father, lived in the garrison of Basra 
in the quarter of the Banū Mujāshiʿ and is known to have received a stipend (ʿaṭā) of 700 
dirhams, which means that he was a member of the fighting forces (muqātila).41 Whether 
al-Ḥārith was born in Khurasan or was sent there is not clear. Al-Khaṭīb remarks that 
al-Ḥārith was from Dabussiya, which was an Arab Muslim garrison in Sogdiana.42 

Al-Ḥārith’s first appearance in history is as a soldier in the Arab Muslim army of Khurasan 
at the battle of Paykand, near Bukhara on the right bank of the Amu Darya, in 108/727–28. 
When Türgesh forces blocked the irrigation canal and deprived the Muslim army of drinking 
water, al-Ḥārith appears on the stage as a hero. He encourages the soldiers of Tamīm and 
Qays to fight the Turks and eventually succeeds in pushing the enemy back from the canal.43 
Not much is known about al-Ḥārith after this incident until the beginning of his revolt in 
the garrison of Andkhud. 

Al-Ḥārith started his rebellion by inviting people to the application of the Qurʾān and 
the sunna and allegiance to the leadership of the Elected One. Such leadership could have 
been legitimized only via a shūrā, or an assembly of pious Muslim leaders. The first two 
elements of al-Ḥārith’s program (adherence to the Qurʾān and the sunna) were fundamental 
religious tenets for all Muslims, but the insistence on a shūrā was highly political, as it 

40.  La Vaissière, “ʿAbbāsid Revolution,” 110–46.
41.  Al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, 12:110. 
42.  Al-Khaṭīb, Ḥukūmat-i Banī Umayya, 105. Wellhausen mentions the same thing in Arab Kingdom, 464.
43.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1513–14.



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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

called into question the very basis of Umayyad political legitimacy. Establishing a shūrā 
was thus a rebellious act, removing decision-making power from the caliph and placing it 
in the hands of an assembly of Arab Muslim elites in Khurasan, to which al-Ḥārith belonged. 
La Vaissière argues that al-Ḥārith’s call for al-riḍā was in fact a way to invoke his own 
leadership.44 According to this view, al-Ḥārith appealed for al-riḍā because it necessitated a 
shūrā, in which he would play a major role, and which would thus give him power over all 
appointments in Khurasan. Al-Ḥārith’s intention to rebel was known to some Arab notables 
already before his calling for the shūrā. When he invited people to join his cause in Balkh, 
Qaṭan b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, an Arab Muslim figure from the garrison in Balkh, responded that 
he would not trust al-Ḥārith’s words even if “[the archangel] Gabriel stands on his right and 
Michael on his left.”45 Clearly, Qaṭan did not believe al-Ḥārith’s claim that his movement 
was purely or merely a call to adherence to the Qurʾān and the sunna. Rather, he suspected 
a far more personal motive. 

The Umayyad authorities soon became aware of al-Ḥārith’s political ambitions, and he 
was punished. Al-Ṭabarī mentions that al-Ḥārith was whipped publicly in Balkh by a certain 
al-Tujībī during the governorship of Junayd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (in office 111–16/730–34).46 
Al-Balādhurī writes that he was whipped for his refusal to be a janība, or subordinate, to a 
certain Murra, who stood above al-Ḥārith in administrative rank.47 Others, however, ascribe 
the punishment to al-Ḥārith’s political ambitions. Khālid al-Qasrī (d. 126/743), the governor 
of Iraq, assumed that al-Ḥārith wanted to be caliph but dismissed this prospect, saying, 
“How remote are the means of the caliphate from a saddle?”48 The personal ambitions 
ascribed to al-Ḥārith by these historical figures in Umayyad service could very well explain 
some of al-Ḥārith’s strategic choices, such as joining forces with the Türgesh Turks and 
attaching himself to local Bactrian rulers (see below). But how did his political agenda 
appeal to the Arab Muslim soldiers of the garrison in Andkhud? 

Al-Ḥārith’s Revolt and Arab Support

The rebellion of al-Ḥārith should be considered in the context of a series of political and 
military interactions in Khurasan initiated by Umayyad attacks. These affected various local 
actors differently, laying the ground for al-Ḥārith’s clever appeal to these different local 
groups with specific arguments and programmatic points. In the early eighth century CE, 
Umayyad armies led by Qutayba b. Muslim al-Bāhilī (d. 96/715) incorporated Bactria and 
Sogdiana into the political structure of Umayyad Khurasan through campaigns of conquest. 
When the Umayyad armies reached Chach, a city located on the right bank of the Syr Darya 
river, they entered the world of the steppe, a region from where nomadic bands of warriors 
had appeared to attack sedentary societies and create nomadic empires.49 Shortly after the 

44.  La Vaissière, “ʿAbbāsid Revolution,” 136.
45.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1657. Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī calls his followers “people of corruption” in Futūḥ, 7:283.
46.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1567.
47.  Al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, 12:111.
48.  Ibid.
49.  For these nomadic empires, see C. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from 



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The Rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj   •  526

Umayyad conquests, the Türgesh Turks united under the leadership of the Qaghān Sülü (r. 
716–36 CE). They fought the Umayyads for control of Sogdiana, which led to two decades of 
war. The Türgesh defeated the Umayyad troops in the battle of the “Day of Thirst” (yawm 
al-ʿaṭsh) in 106/724 and in the battle of the “Day of the Mountain Pass” (yawm al-shiʿb) 
in 112/731.50 The nomadic nature of the Türgesh Turks and their highly mobile cavalry, 
which could operate around the year and under diverse geographic conditions, put them 
at an advantage vis-à-vis the Umayyads. The Umayyads, in turn, relied on both lightly 
and heavily armored cavalry (al-mujarrada and al-mujawwafa). The Türgesh policy of 
plundering ensured that even when the Turks lost a battle, there was not much left for the 
Umayyad forces to gain. Similarly, the Turks’ nomadic tradition meant that the Umayyads 
were unable to impose regular taxes on them even if they did conquer their territories.51 

The continuing Türgesh-Umayyad warfare put enormous pressure on the Umayyad 
soldiers in Khurasan, which laid the foundation for al-Ḥārith’s support among the Arab 
troops. Al-Ḥārith’s plan to establish an independent government was attractive to Arab 
Muslim soldiers for several reasons. Independence would end the war in the east. The 
Arab troops were exhausted from the war with the Türgesh Turks. Moreover, the Iraqi 
soldiers, who had by now become integrated in social and economic life in Khurasan, were 
particularly disappointed by the Umayyad losses.52 Unlike the Syrian troops, who were loyal 
to the caliph, the Iraqis were more interested in retaining their socioeconomic position in 
the region. Before al-Ḥārith’s rebellion, the Iraqis of Khurasan had sent a delegation to the 
governor of Iraq to complain: “We are on a frontier, facing the enemy in an endless war. 
Each one of us wears the steel armor to the point that it is connected to his skin …, but 
you are in a province where you live in prosperity wearing colorful and exquisite dress.”53 
Al-Ḥārith’s promise to establish just government on the basis of shūrā with the aim of 
limiting the caliph’s burdensome military policies would have been an incentive for these 
troops to join his revolt.

The Local Context and the Role of Bactrian Leaders

Arab Muslim control of the frontier region of Khurasan was far from secure or 
comprehensive. This was due in part to the geography of Umayyad Khurasan, which 
belonged to the Pamir-Makran “shatter zone.”54 An important characteristic of this shatter 

the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). The most recent study on this 
subject is W. Ball, The Eurasian Steppe: People, Movement, Ideas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021). 
On the Umayyads’ reaching Chach (modern Tashkent) and its consequences, see Haug, Eastern Frontier, 111–37.

50.  Blankinship, End of the Jihād State, 126–28, 155–61. For a discussion on the battle the “Day of the Mountain 
Pass,” see S. S. Agha, “The ‘Battle of the Pass’: Two Consequential Readings,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and 
African Studies 63, no. 3 (2000): 340–55.

51.  Blankinship, End of the Jihād State, 126.
52.  Ibid., 126–28.
53.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1460–61.
54.  The Pamir-Makran shatter zone was created by a tectonic collision that formed a “massive system of 

mountain chains.” See S. R. Bowlby and K. H. White, “The Geographical Background,” in The Archaeology of 
Afghanistan from Earliest Times to the Timurid Period, ed. R. Allchin and N. Hammond, rev. ed., ed. W. Ball 



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zone is its extreme geographical diversity. The plains contain large areas of desert, marshes, 
rivers, and high hills, all situated together in one region. This terrain posed significant 
logistical difficulties for the Arab Muslim invaders, who had no experience with this kind 
of geography. Umayyad Khurasan also had a diverse population with a variety of religious 
groups.55 These factors meant that Umayyad control in the region was limited, often 
confined to garrison towns established outside existing urban spaces. 

Arabic narratives describe the trials that the Umayyads endured in their efforts to control 
Khurasan. The main challenges lay, on the one hand, in settling Arabs in Khurasan,56 keeping 
the Arab tribal leaders loyal to the Umayyad caliphs, and uniting them in defense of the 
northeastern frontier,57 and, on the other hand, in imposing Umayyad authority over local 
independent, warlike Iranian and Turkic rulers who moved between their winter capitals 
on the plains and their summer capitals in the mountains.58 Other challenges included 
maximizing provincial revenue and organizing the province’s administration.59 The difficulty 
the Umayyads experienced in dealing with these diverse issues is indicated by the frequent 
changes of governors between 86 and 130/705–4760 as well as by the eruption of intertribal 
wars among the Arabs of Khurasan61 and various rebellions led by local rulers and Arab 
Muslim elite members. The rebellion of al-Ḥārith occurred within this complicated regional 
political situation. The Umayyads were at war with the nomadic Türgesh confederation, 
which was as ambitious and expansionist as the Umayyads were. This had an impact on local 
Arab troops. Local Arab Muslim elites also resented the Umayyads’ centralizing policies, and 
they shared these resentments with Arab elites in other provinces. At the same time, the 
Umayyads had to deal with numerous Sogdian and Bactrian rulers who made alliances with 
outside powers to secure their own political priorities.

In the early eighth century CE, Bactria and Sogdiana were controlled by a number 
of local independent rulers. However, most of them recognized the overlordship of the 
Qaghān of the Western Turks.62 To protect their positions, these local rulers shifted their 

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), 16–17. 
55.  Luce, “Frontier as Process,” 12–52; Haug, Eastern Frontier, 9–14.
56.  Pourshariati, “Iranian Tradition”; E. L. Daniel, “ʿArab iii. Arab Settlements in Iran,” in Encyclopaedia 

Iranica, updated August 10, 2011, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/arab-iii.
57.  An example is the rebellion of ʿΑbd Allāh b. Khāzim and his son Mūsā and their attempt to create de facto 

rule in Khurasan (Haug, Eastern Frontier, 99–109).
58.  The best example is the attempt by Yazīd b. al-Muhallab and later Qutayba b. Muslim to subdue Ṭarkhān 

Nizak, the Hephthalite prince of Badghis (Haug, The Eastern Frontier, 119–121).
59.  The tax reforms of Ashras al-Sullāmī described by al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1507–10, offer an example.
60.  For instance, Saʿīd b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz was governor of Khurasan for only one year. He was replaced by Saʿīd 

al-Ḥarashī, who also remained in office for a year. Later, Jarrāh b. ʿAbd Allāḥ al-Ḥakamī kept his position for just 
seventeen months. 

61.  For the Arab tribal war in Balkh, see al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1472–77.
62.  La Vaissière called this situation in Sogdiana “fragmentation territoriale”; É. de La Vaissière, Samarcande 

et Samarra: Élites d’Asie centrale dans l’empire abbasside (Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études 
iraniennes, 2007), 23–36, 68–75. There are some Bactrian documents attesting to this situation in Bactria 
(documents T, Tt, U, Uu, V, X, and Y in Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:98–103, 104–5, 106–11, 113–15, 

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loyalties frequently and applied intricate political strategies. Thus, it is not a surprise that 
the Chaghān Khudā the king of Chaghaniyan in northern Bactria, invited the Umayyads into 
his territory to protect him from hostile neighboring rulers.63 Similarly, Ghūrak, the local 
ruler of Samarkand, signed a peace treaty with Qutayba b. Muslim64 but later assisted the 
Türgesh against the Umayyads.65 Ghūrak also appealed to the Tang emperor in China for 
help against the Umayyads66 but then did not hesitate to save the retreating Arab troops in 
their war with the Türgesh.67

Control over revenue collection, such as tribute and taxation, not only was a bone of 
contention between local Arab elites and central Umayyad authorities but also mobilized 
local non-Arab rulers. The provincial revenues from Khurasan came from a variety of 
sources. The main sources of income besides booty and gifts were tribute paid in cash 
(dirham ʿājila) by local rulers after negotiations and the conclusion of peace treaties (ṣulḥ) 
with the Arab Muslim conquerors, annual tribute (dirham fī kull ʿām), the poll tax, and 
later the land tax (kharāj).68 The taxation process involved Arab Muslim financial officials, 
local rulers, and taxpayers. Taxes were collected by the local rulers and delivered to the 
Umayyad financial agents. Their monopoly over tax collection benefited the local rulers 
while simultaneously preventing direct contact between the Arab Muslim agents and the 
local population, a policy that left the local rulers’ financial and political authority intact.69 

The jizya, mentioned frequently in the Arabic sources, was collected from non-Muslims 
and could become a political issue at any time. When it was imposed on converts who had 
accepted Islam in the hope that they would be released from this imposition, resistance 
and even revolt sometimes ensued.70 In a frontier zone, such an imposition was fraught 

116–25, 136–41, 142–43). 
63.  Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1866), 419–20.
64.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 7:160–62.
65.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1533–45.
66.  É. Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (Saint Petersburg: Commissionnaires de 

l’Académie impériale des sciences, 1903), 204–5.
67.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1542–43. 
68.  Al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, 447–90; Abū Yūsuf, Kitāb al-Kharāj (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1399/1979). 

The plunder of Paykand by Qutayba brought enormous wealth to the Arabs according to Abū Bakr Muḥammad 
b. Jaʿfar al-Narshakhī, Taʾrīkh-i Bukhārā, trans. A. N. A. b. M. b. N. al-Qubāvī, summarized by M. b. Zafar, ed. M. 
T. Mudarris Rażavī (Tehran: Maṭbaʿa-yi Dawlatī, 1362/1983), 61–63.

69.  Athamina, “Taxation Reforms,” 272–78. D. R. Hill provides information on the income raised by the 
conquests in The Termination of Hostilities in the Early Arab Conquests A.D. 634–656 (London: Luzac, 1971), 
144–52. A similar arrangement can be observed in Egypt. Arietta Papaconstantinou has argued that leaders of 
the Egyptian Christian community exploited their position of authority vis-à-vis the local population as long 
as they functioned as middlemen for the Arab Muslim rulers; A. Papaconstantinou, “‘Great Men,’ Churchmen, 
and the Others: Forms of Authority in the Villages of the Umayyad Period,” in Village Institutions in Egypt in 
the Roman to Early Arab Periods, ed. D. Rathbone and M. Langellotti, 178–89 (London: British Academy, 2020). 

70.  In Egypt, too, Arab officials continued levying the jizya on converts, which led to protests. People showed 
up to protest the situation at the governmental palace in Fustat; P. M. Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State: The 
World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 193–95. See also D. 
C. Dennett, Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam (1950; repr., New Delhi: Idarah-i Adabyat-i Delli, 2000), 

http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/view/creators/90004197.html


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with danger, since the discontented could join forces with the Türgesh Turks. Indeed, the 
Umayyad jizya policy angered local Sogdian converts who appealed to the Türgesh for 
help against the Arab Muslim authorities in Khurasan. But did the jizya policy in Sogdiana 
really trigger al-Ḥārith’s rebellion? As noted above, some scholars have argued that this 
was the case. However, it does not appear that the jizya issue was particularly important 
for al-Ḥārith at the beginning of his uprising, although he subsequently exploited the 
discontent around this tax when he needed local support. Before discussing that, however, 
we need to ask why these Muslim converts chose to revolt rather than negotiate with the 
Umayyad authorities. 

The Umayyad jizya policy helped al-Ḥārith gain local support for his revolt once it 
had started. But it was not the direct cause of his rebellion. The jizya was a recurring 
political issue that had plagued previous governors of Khurasan when al-Ḥārith served the 
government. It caused problems during the reign of Caliph ʿUmar II (r. 99–101/717–20), 
whose piety and justice are praised in the chronicles particularly because he abolished the 
practice of demanding the jizya from converts.71 However, lifting the jizya from converts 
in Khurasan may have been an act not of sheer piety but rather of Realpolitik. Al-Ṭabarī 
mentions that in the year 100/719, the governor of Khurasan, al-Jarrāḥ b. ʿAbd Allāh 
al-Ḥakamī (d. 111/730), sent a delegation (wafd) to the caliph. Usually, such delegations 
represented Arab Muslim elites of the province and defended their interests.72 In this case, 
however, a local mawlā (client) of the Banū Ḍubba named Ṣāliḥ b. Ṭarīf, known as Abū 
al-Ṣaydā, was part of the delegation. He was not a Sogdian, but he was a recent convert who 
was well aware of the situation in the region. He complained to the caliph: 

There are 20,000 mawālī fighting alongside Muslim soldiers without receiving a 
salary or rations (bi-lā ʿaṭā wa-lā rizq), and another 20,000 of the protected people 
(ahl al-dhimma) who converted to Islam but still have to pay the jizya. And the amir 
[al-Jarrāḥ] who came to Khurasan is a harsh man who discriminates between people 
and loves his own tribe. He is a sword of al-Ḥajjāj (sayf min suyūf al-Ḥajjāj) who rules 
by oppression and hostility.73 

In light of the presence of the Türgesh in Khurasan and their relation to the local 
population, the caliph must have been aware of the danger developing in the east. 
It highly likely (though not certain) that he declared his decision to exempt all converts 
from payment of the jizya with the eastern situation in mind.74 In a similar decision, in 
106/725 the governor of Khurasan Asad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī (d. 120/737) ordered that jizya 

104–13.
71.  See A. Borrut, “Entre tradition et histoire: Genèse et diffusion de l’image de ‘Umar II,” Mélanges de 

l’Université Saint-Joseph 58 (2005): 329–69; J. Tannous, The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, 
Society, and Simple Believers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

72.  For details on the wafd, see M. Tillier, “Représenter la province auprès du pouvoir impérial: Les 
délégations (wufūd) égyptiennes aux trois premiers siècles de l’Islam,” Arabica 67, no. 2–3 (2020): 125–99.

73.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1353–54.
74.  Ibid., 9:1354.



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not be taken from converts to prevent them from joining the Türgesh. However, his policy 
was discontinued when he was dismissed in 109/728.75 In 110/729, the governor Ashras 
al-Sullāmī (d. 111/730) attempted to reinstate Asad’s policy while also tasking Abū al-Ṣaydā 
with converting people to Islam. However, Ghūrak objected, pointing to the financial loss 
the policy would cause.76 The sources regularly quote Umayyad governors offering the 
same argument, making it something of a topos.77 For local non-Muslim rulers, however, 
any active conversion policy had a direct negative effect on their income base. Moreover, 
conversion created new social ties for the converts, decreasing the rulers’ local support 
base in general terms, as well.78 Sogdian rulers thus attempted to stop this undermining of 
their lucrative role as local tax collectors. Under pressure from Sogdian rulers, the Muslim 
authorities instituted new criteria for exemptions from the jizya: converts seeking such 
exemptions had to prove that they were good Muslims, circumcised, praying regularly, 
and able to recite the Qurʾān. In response to this ruling, Sogdian converts in Samarkand 
protested, but their complaints were suppressed and their leaders, including Abū al-Ṣaydā 
and Bishr b. Jarmūz, were arrested. Further, Umayyad fiscal administrators humiliated 
some local notables by ripping their clothes, putting their belts around their necks, and 
taking the jizya by force. As a result, Sogdian converts sought the aid of the Türgesh Turks 
against the Muslim government.79 

During the anti-jizya protests in Sogdiana, al-Ḥārith was based in Ashras al-Sullāmī’s 
camp. He witnessed all these events but showed no interest in supporting the protests 
against the imposition of the jizya on converts. His revolt commenced a full six years after 
these events took place, which makes it unlikely that this was the rebellion’s main trigger. 
Moreover, he issued his call for revolt not in Sogdiana but in the garrison of Andkhud on 
the Bactrian side of the Amu Darya. These facts indicate that the Umayyad jizya policy in 
Sogdiana was not the cause of al-Ḥārith’s revolt in Bactria. However, as we will see later, he 
did exploit the jizya issue to attract Sogdian converts once his revolt was underway. 

The Beginning of al-Ḥārith’s Revolt

Al-Ḥārith launched his rebellion in 116/734 in the Andkhud garrison and counted on the 
support of its Arab Muslim soldiers. Unexpectedly, he did not move to Marw, the political 
center of Khurasan, but instead marched toward Balkh, where the garrison of Baruqān was 
located. Was this accidental or a calculated military move? What could al-Ḥārith hope to 
find in Balkh?

According to al-Ṭabarī, al-Ḥārith marched on Balkh with four thousand troops belonging 
to Tamīm and Azd who had joined him from the Andkhud garrison. He first encountered 
Arab Muslim forces under Naṣr b. Sayyār (d. 131/749), head of the garrison of Baruqān, 
which is said to have housed ten thousand troops from various Arab tribes. Al-Ḥārith invited 

75.  Blankinship, End of the Jihād State, 125, 127.
76.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1508.
77.  Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State, 193–95.
78.  I discuss the problems created by conversion in a Bactrian household in “Between Turks and Arabs.”
79.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1507–10; Athamina, “Taxation Reforms,” 278.



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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

Naṣr and other Arab Muslim elites to heed his call for the application of the Qurʾān and the 
sunna and for allegiance to the leadership of the Elected One, but his message was rejected. 
After a quick skirmish, Naṣr fled,80 though the reason for his flight is not given. Possibly 
he did not want to witness another conflict like the one he had seen earlier in Balkh when 
Arab Muslim soldiers had refused to fight the Türgesh. In that instance, the soldiers had 
mutinied, and the situation rapidly turned into a tribal war between troops from Rabīʿa and 
those from Yaman. Naṣr had been able to suppress the rebels only with the help of troops 
sent to him by the Chaghān Khudā.81 

After capturing Baruqān, al-Ḥārith appointed Sulaymān b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Khāzim governor 
of Balkh. The Ibn Khāzim family had shown opposition to Umayyad rule on several occasions. 
Sulaymān’s brother was the famous Mūsā (d. 85/704–5) who had established de facto rule in 
Tirmidh after tribal leaders, provoked by ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 65–86/685–705), had killed his 
father ʿAbd Allāh b. Khāzim in 72/691. Ibn Khāzim’s family had also supported ʿAbd Allāh 
b. Zubayr (d. 73/692) during the second fitna (61–73/680–92).82 Al-Ḥārith’s appointment of 
Sulaymān was not only a declaration of his anti-Umayyad intentions but also an attempt to 
gain the support of the remaining members of Ibn Khāzim’s family, who were known for 
their long struggle against the Umayyads. The repeated participation in different revolts by 
members of the Umayyad elite is also addressed in the contributions of Petra Sijpesteijn and 
Hannah-Lena Hagemann to this issue. It raises interesting questions about the Umayyad 
polity’s apparent ability and desire to restitute and reintegrate members of its elite who had 
shown temporary dissatisfaction and disagreement with its policies. And it challenges the 
definition of a rebellion as constituting an absolute and definite break between rebels and 
representatives of the central authority, as raised in the introduction. 

Ibn Khāzim’s complaints about Umayyad central power were similar to those of other 
local Arab Muslim elites. As the main consumers of provincial revenues, they rejected 
the caliph’s attempts to limit their autonomy or their access to provincial resources.83 
Any encroachment on what they perceived as their right was opposed, often by force. 
The resentment of local Arab elites about expanding Umayyad administrative power and 
the resulting competition over local resources seem to have been recurring motifs in 
revolts throughout the Umayyad empire in this period, including revolts in Egypt, Iraq, and 
Khurasan as discussed by Hagemann, Sijpesteijn, and Alon Dar in this issue.84

Al-Ḥārith celebrated his victory over Naṣr b. Sayyār by striking coins in Balkh. Both the 
legend “God commanded justice for the Triumphant One” (amara Allāh bi-l-ʿadl li-l-Manṣūr) 
on his coins and the legend “O Victorious” (yā Manṣūr) that was reportedly used as a slogan 

80.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1566–67.
81.  Ibid., 9:1473–77.
82.  Ibid., 9:1568.
83.  For example, al-Ḥakamī al-Ghifārī rejected Muʿāwiya’s request for tribute (ibid., 7:110). Qutayba directly 

warned Caliph Sulaymān, saying that “he will dismiss the caliph like he removes his shoe” (ibid., 8:1283–85). 
84.  See also Yaacov Lev on the Coptic-Arab revolts in early eighth-century CE Egypt: Y. Lev, “Coptic 

Rebellions and the Islamization of Medieval Egypt (8th–10th Century): Medieval and Modern Perceptions,” 
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 39 (2002): 303–44.



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by his followers announced the arrival of a new government whose priority was justice. The 
title Manṣūr refers to al-Ḥārith and shows his political ambition to establish an independent 
government in Khurasan.85 The act of minting coins, assigning his own appointee over 
Balkh, and insisting on a shūrā to decide on all further appointments in Khurasan were acts 
of rebellion against the Umayyad authorities. 

In Balkh, al-Ḥārith was in a position to reach out to three different groups. The first two 
groups were the Arab troops and members of the local elite, in particular families such 
as the Banū Khāzim. Al-Ḥārith knew about the resentment of the Arab Muslim soldiers in 
Baruqān who had refused to fight the Türgesh and whose resistance had been suppressed 
by Naṣr b. Sayyār. More importantly, Balkh was a strategic location, and by capturing it 
al-Ḥārith could expand the geography of his rebellion and bring local rulers over to his 
side. Balkh was on the main route to Sogdiana, where large numbers of Muslim converts 
lived, and these converts were potential recruits. For an anti-Umayyad alliance to emerge 
and the rebellion to succeed, al-Ḥārith also needed to persuade local elites to join him. The 
arguments he could use to win Arab Muslim supporters were discussed earlier, but what 
could he offer the locals? What did they see in his revolt that was worth their support? 

The answer is found in the Zayn al-akhbār (Ornament of histories), a Persian chronicle 
dealing with Ghaznavid history written by ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. Zaḥāk Gardīzī, who lived in 
the eleventh century CE. According to Gardīzī, once al-Ḥārith prevailed in Balkh, 
he invited people to the Qurʾān and the sunna but also promised to maintain existing 
agreements with the “protected peoples” (ahl al-dhimma), that is, mainly non-Muslim 
Christians, Zoroastrians, and Jews; to refrain from levying the kharāj tax on Muslims; and 
to not oppress anyone. As a result, many people are said to have answered his call.86 In 
Gardīzī’s narrative, al-Ḥārith’s call contains various layers that need to be examined in turn.  
As before, the appeal to the Qurʾān and the sunna targeted Arab Muslims, but the newly 
introduced promises were clearly directed at local non-Muslims and local converts to Islam. 
Usually, the agreements that al-Ḥārith promised to respect were made not with ordinary 
non-Muslims but with elites who had the authority to negotiate and sign agreements.  
The pledge not to extract the kharāj from “Muslims” refers to the jizya that was 
systematically being collected from converts. 

Al-Ṭabarī mentions that al-Ḥārith met Bishr b. Jarmūz, an ally of Abū al-Ṣaydā, and some 
other elite Arabs in Guzgan on his way to Marw. Many of Abū al-Ṣaydā’s supporters who 
were from Sogdiana joined al-Ḥārith at this point, which suggests that al-Ḥārith addressed 
Sogdian converts not at the beginning of the revolt but only later, after he had taken 
Balkh, and that he promised them that they would be required to pay only the taxes that 

85.  Sears, who published these coins, emphasizes the ideological nature of al-Ḥārith’s message; Sears, 
“Revolt of al-Ḥārith ibn Surayj,” 395. 

86.  Gardīzī, Zayn al-akhbār, 257–58. Gardīzī’s narrative may come from the Akhbār wulāt Khurāsān (Reports 
about the governors of Khurasan), a now-lost Arabic text compiled by Abū al-Ḥusayn ʿAlī b. Aḥmad and his 
brother in eleventh-century CE Khurasan. Recently, Muḥammad ʿAlī Kāẓim Begi has tried to reconstruct the 
original text by collecting relevant information from other sources. See Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Sullāmī, Akhbār 
wulāt Khurāsān, reconstructed by M. ʿA. Kāẓim Bigī (Tehran: Mīrāth-i Maktūb, 1390/2011), 62.



533  •  Said Reza HuSeini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

were due on all Muslims.87 Gardīzī’s narrative, supported by the encounter reported by 
al-Ṭabarī, indicates that it was only after al-Ḥārith’s victory at Balkh that the abolition 
of the jizya for converts became part of his reform program. This addition seems to have 
been motivated by a conscious effort to mobilize support among the local population. Since 
Sogdian converts had been suffering from the Arab Muslim government’s discrimination, 
al-Ḥārith’s adoption of Abū al-Ṣaydā’s goal to lift the jizya and establish just government 
was an inclusive and powerful message aimed at uniting the cause of Sogdian converts with 
that of the discontented Arab Muslim soldiers. 

The third group of local Khurasanis who were attracted to al-Ḥārith’s movement played 
a crucial role in the course of the revolt. Following the victory in Balkh, local Bactrian 
rulers warmly welcomed al-Ḥārith’s conquests. According to al-Ṭabarī, a number of rulers 
in western Bactria declared their support for his revolt. They included the rulers of Guzgan, 
Tarsul the dihqān (local chief) of Faryab, the shahrāb (ruler) of Talaqan, and Qaryāqis the 
dihqān of Marw.88 

Unlike the Sogdian converts, who were upset by the continuing jizya requirement, the 
Bactrians do not seem to have had a problem with this imposition. The Bactrian documents 
do not help with this line of inquiry, since the earliest evidence of taxes is later, from 
the Abbasid period.89 The textual sources contain no references to oppressive Umayyad 
taxation, to a policy of demanding the jizya from converts, or even to large-scale conversion 
in Bactria. The only concrete evidence of the jizya is a few coins minted in Anbir in Guzgan. 
Interestingly, these coins are silver dirhams based on the Sasanian model with the name 
of the governor of Khurasan, Yazīd b. al-Muhallab (d. 102/720), and the date 84/703, three 
decades before al-Ḥārith’s rebellion. The coins have different legends in Arabic, Bactrian, 
and Middle Persian and countermarks on their margins.90 On the obverse of the coins the 
name Yazīd b. al-Muhallab and the legend bi-sm Allāh al-ʿaẓīm, “In the name of God, the 
Great,” is written in Arabic. The image of the Sasanian king and some Middle Persian words 
are depicted as well. On the reverse, the coins have a unique and rather enigmatic Arabic 
legend, “Struck for jizya in Juzjan” (ḍuriba jizyatan bi-l-Juzjān), as well as the name of 
Zhulad, king of Guzgan (r. 80–91/699–711), in Bactrian; the date and the place of minting are  
in Middle Persian. The coins are countermarked by a tamgha, or stamp, representing the 
name of the local king.91 

Although these coins make an unambiguous reference to the jizya, this term could also 
refer to tribute in a more general sense, rather than specifically to the Islamic poll tax, which 
was a personal tax on individuals. All in all, the combination of names and languages as well 
as the obscure and unique Arabic reference to the jizya make it difficult to understand the 

87.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1568.
88.  Ibid., 9:1569.
89.  G. Khan, Arabic Documents from Early Islamic Khurasan (London: Nour Foundation and Azimuth 

Editions, 2007), 92–136.
90.  H. M. Malik, Arab-Sasanian Numismatics and History during the Early Islamic Period in Iran and Iraq: The 

Johnson Collection of Arab-Sasanian Coins (London: Royal Numismatic Society, 2019), 1:71–72.
91.  Cribb, “Coinage in Afghanistan.” 



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The Rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj   •  534

function of the coins and the circumstances under which they were struck. Whether they 
were minted on the orders of Yazīd or of Zhulad king of Guzgan for the payment of tribute 
cannot be determined with certainty. In any case, despite the coins’ reference to jizya 
payments, the Muslim authorities would have found it difficult to enforce regular and strict 
tax collection in the mountainous area of western Bactria, where independent rulers largely 
continued to hold sway.

Evidence of the levying of taxes associated with Muslim rule in Bactria comes only from 
later periods. A Bactrian legal document from the Rob region in southern Bactria, dating 
to 525 of the Bactrian calendar, which corresponds to 747 CE, refers to taxes called γαζιτο 
and βαριτο levied on a Bactrian household (χανο).92 The word γαζιτο could have been the 
Bactrianized form of the Arabic jizya; alternatively, it might represent the equivalent of 
a former Bactrian tax.93 The kharāj was collected from individuals in Bactria in the early 
Abbasid period, according to several Arabic documents dating from 138–60/755–77.94 
However, all of these documents postdate al-Ḥārith’s death and cannot be regarded as 
evidence of Umayyad taxation before or during his rebellion. 

Other evidence confirms that conversion to Islam progressed at a slower pace in 
Bactria than it did in Sogdiana. Zoroastrianism and Buddhism remained the major 
religions in Bactria.95 Bactrian documents show that the worship of old Iranian deities 
such as Wakhsh, Ram-set, and Zhun continued in the region: their names are referenced 
in legal documents produced between 659 and 747 CE and96 appear as popular personal  
names,97 and they were worshipped in purpose-built temples.98 Bactria also continued to 

92.  Bactrian document W in Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:126–35.
93.  Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 2:205. My thanks to Jonathan Lee, who suggested that this could 

have been the equivalent of a former tax called τογο.
94.  Arabic documents 1–23 in Khan, Arabic Documents, 92–136.
95.  There was a significant Christian presence in the region under the Sasanids, when Christianity was 

an important religion in the empire; see N. Sims-Williams, “Baršabbā,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, updated 
December 15, 1988, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/barsabba-legendary-bishop-of-marv-and-founder-
of-the-christian-church-in-eastern-iran; Haug, Eastern Frontier, 57. Many Hephthalites had converted to 
Christianity, and there were bishoprics in Badghis, Bushanj, and Quhistan; see C. E. Bosworth, Sīstān under 
the Arabs: From the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Ṣaffārids (30–250/651–864) (Rome: IsMEO, 1968), 8–9. A 
number of Turkic tribes had also converted en masse to Nestorian Christianity; see D. Wilmshurst, The Martyred 
Church: A History of the Church of the East (London: East and West, 2011) and C. Baumer, The Church of the East: 
An Illustrated History of the Assyrian Church (London: I. B. Tauris, 2016). 

96.  See the attestation of Wakhsh (οαχþο), the god of the Amu Darya, in the beginning of, e.g., the Bactrian 
legal documents O, R, S, Ss, Tt, Uu, V, and U in Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:80–83, 92–93, 94–95, 
96–97, 104–5, 112–15, 116–25, and in document ji in 2:138–39. He also appears as “king of gods” (βαγανο ƥαυο) 
in documents O and Tt in Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:80–83, 104–5. Ram-set is referenced in legal 
documents produced in 660 CE and 671 CE at Marogan market in Samingan, an area to the east of Balkh (Bactrian 
documents P and Q in Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:84–87, 88–91).

97.  The deity Zhun is preserved in the personal names Zhun-lad (“given by Zhun”), Zhulad, and Zhun-bandag: 
N. Sims-Williams, Bactrian Personal Names, pt. 7 of Iranisches Personennamenbuch, vol. 2, Mitteliranische 
Personennamen (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010), 65–66. Zhulad, the 
king of Guzgan, was also named after this deity.

98.  Bactrians built temples called baglān and nishālm in which to house the images of these deities and 

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/barsabba-legendary-bishop-of-marv-and-founder-of-the-christian-church-in-eastern-iran
https://iranicaonline.org/articles/barsabba-legendary-bishop-of-marv-and-founder-of-the-christian-church-in-eastern-iran


535  •  Said Reza HuSeini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

be an important center of Buddhism in the region. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang 
encountered substantial Buddhist communities in Bactria in 630 CE in Tirmidh, Chaghaniyan, 
Kulab, Qubadiyan, Balkh, Guzgan, Gaz, and Samingan.99 Balkh alone had a hundred 
monasteries with three thousand monks of the Hināyānā school. Xuanzang’s reports have 
been confirmed by archaeological surveys and excavations in the region.100 Buddhism was 
still popular in Bactria when the Korean Buddhist pilgrim Hye Ch’o visited around 725–26 
CE. He noted that the region was dominated by Arabs but that the local population and its 
kings were mostly Buddhist.101 It is unlikely that western Bactrian rulers, whose population 
was still mostly Zoroastrian and Buddhist, would have been interested in al-Ḥārith’s call to 
apply the Qurʾān and the sunna. Likewise, there were no mistreated converts to speak of 
in Bactria and thus no audience for al-Ḥārith’s promise of just government. The source of 
the local leaders’ political legitimacy was entirely different. So what attracted non-Muslim 
Bactrian rulers to al-Ḥārith’s rebellion? 

Al-Ṭabarī’s list of Bactrian rulers who joined al-Ḥārith highlights an important point. 
Except for the dihqān of Marw, all of the local rulers or their family members had joined 
the earlier revolt of Nizak Ṭarkhān, the Hephthalite prince of Badghis, against Qutayba b. 
Muslim in 90/710.102 During the first fifty years of Arab Muslim presence, from 652 to 705 
CE, Bactria remained largely independent. Bactrian documents of this period show that 
local rulers controlled their areas independently while recognizing the overlordship of the 
Turkic Qaghān.103 Arab Muslim forces mainly used Bactria as a safe passage on their way to 
raid Sogdiana, and local rulers mostly cooperated with the Umayyads. However, between 
90 and 94/710–13, the campaigns of Qutayba b. Muslim brought western Bactria under 
Umayyad authority, incorporating local rulers into the political structure of Umayyad 
Khurasan.104 Local leaders subsequently rose in protest under Nizak Ṭarkhān. Qutayba, 
however, killed Nizak Ṭarkhān 105 along with Badhān, the marzbān, or margrave, of Marw 

worship them (Bactrian documents P, Q, Tt, V, and W in Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:84–87, 88–91, 
112–15, 116–25, 126–35). 

99.  SI-YU-KI, 38–49.
100.  P. Bernard, R. Besenval, and P. Marquis, “Du ‘mirage bactrien’ aux réalités archéologiques: Nouvelles 

fouilles de la Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan (DAFA) á Bactres (2004–2006),” Comptes rendus 
des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 150, no. 2 (2006): 1217–29. The ruins of stupas are still 
visible in various places in northern Afghanistan, including Balkh, Dawlatabad, Charkint, and Marmul; personal 
observation, 2004–9. 

101.  Hye Ch’o, Diary, 52. A similar situation is reflected in the Tang-i Safidak inscription; see J. Lee and 
N. Sims-Williams, “The Antiquities and Inscription of Tangi Safidak,” Silk Road Art and Archaeology 9 (2003): 
169–84.

102.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 8:1204–6. 
103.  See Bactrian documents N, Nn, P, Q, S, and T in Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:68–69, 74–75, 

84–87, 88–91, 94–96, 98–103.
104.  Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī mentions that no one had ever suppressed the rulers in the east the way Qutayba 

did (Futūḥ, 7:153).
105.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 8:1221; Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 7:149. Al-Ṭabarī refers to a poem in which Nizak Ṭarkhān 

and his relatives are mentioned (Taʾrīkh, 8:1226–27). See also Haug, Eastern Frontier, 114–21.



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al-Rūd.106 There were even rumors that Qutayba had poisoned the king of Guzgan,107 though 
the royal family of Guzgan survived. 

To control western Bactria, Qutayba established a network of garrisons filled with soldiers 
from Syria, Iraq, and the Marw region.108 Qutayba then appointed his brothers and relatives 
as commanders of these garrisons.109 These measures reduced the autonomy of western 
Bactrian rulers, who joined the rebellion of al-Ḥārith likely in order to try and recover 
their independence. Other Hephthalites joined al-Hārith’s rebellion for similar reasons. 
Some Umayyad dirhams produced in Iraq, Fars, and Marw bear the Hephthalite tamgha, a 
specific mark of association with a certain family. Sears has argued that these dirhams are 
countermarked to support al-Ḥārith’s movement.110 Moreover, local leaders’ expressions of 
independence by revalidating Umayyad dirhams with their own stamps was accompanied, 
according to Sears, with financial support for al-Ḥārith’s movement. The countermarks thus 
reflect the Hephthalite rulers’ attempt to reduce Umayyad power by supporting an anti-
Umayyad rebel. The Bactrian documents show that western Bactrian leaders still had access 
to military forces at this time, and these also likely bolstered al-Ḥārith’s forces.111

Not all Bactrian rulers supported al-Ḥārith. Local notables such as the Barmak, the head 
of the Buddhist monastery of the Naw Bahar in Balkh, and his relative the Chaghān Khudā, 
the king of Chaghaniyan, did not join al-Ḥārith.112 The Barmak’s father (also called Barmak) 
had been killed by a Nizak after he had supported Arab Muslims in the past.113 The Chaghān 
Khudā had invited Arab Muslims to help him vanquish rival kings in northern Bactria.114 
In all likelihood, these two holdouts were not able to stand up against the other powerful 
Bactrian rulers who had joined al-Ḥārith. However, they remained loyal to the Umayyads 
and helped them against al-Ḥārith later when the situation allowed (as discussed below). 

Al-Ḥārith’s rebellious army is said to have consisted of sixty thousand Arab, Sogdian, 
and Bactrian troops, with many others also joining in for the purpose of plunder.115 
Al-Ḥārith habitually wore black garments and carried a black banner, which was not an 
Arab tradition.116 Al-Ḥārith’s use of black quickly became a symbol of resistance against 

106.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 7:152.
107.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 8:1184–85.
108.  Ibid., 8:1206–7.
109.  Al-Yaʿqūbī, Taʾrīkh, 2:208. 
110.  Sears, “Revolt of al-Ḥārith ibn Surayj,” 380.
111.  For instance, Bactrian local military forces and their commanders are mentioned in Bactrian document 

T in Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:98–103 and in document jg in 2:134–35. 
112.  For detailed information on the Barmak, see É. de La Vaissière, “De Bactres á Balkh, par le Now Bahar,” 

Journal asiatique 298, no. 2 (2010): 517–33.
113.  Ibid., 525.
114.  Al-Baladhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, 419–20; al-Tabarī, Taʾrīkh, 8:1180.
115.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1570; Khleifat, “Caliphate of Hisham b. ʿAbd al-Malik,” 222.
116.  Al-Ṭabarī mentions that Muḥammad b. al-Muthannā, who led the Azdite soldiers in al-Ḥārith’s camp, 

had his own flag. Most probably the Azdites’ banner was not black, otherwise al-Ṭabarī would have said so. Naṣr 
b. Sayyār, who confronted al-Ḥārith near Balkh, was astonished by al-Ḥarith’s black dress and banner (al-Ṭabarī, 
Taʾrīkh, 9:1575–76).



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the Umayyads. In a poem sent to the Arab elite in Marw, the famous Umayyad-era poet 
Kumayt b. Zayd al-Asadī (d. 126/741) referred to the connection between black banners 
and the followers of al-Ḥārith. For Kumayt, the black banner was a sign of support for 
the Hāshimites. He asked the local elite of Marw to support al-Ḥārith by raising black 
banners and called the Umayyads “people of ignorance and oppression” (ahl al-ḍalāla wa-l-
taʿaddī).117 However, the Arabic narratives, such as those of al-Balādhurī and al-Ṭabarī, that 
were produced in and reflect the concerns of the caliphal center give no indication that 
al-Ḥārith’s Arab Muslim soldiers dressed in black or displayed black banners. This suggests 
that al-Ḥārith used black dress and banners specifically to communicate with the local 
population, for which these symbols would have been meaningful. 

The symbolism of the black dress that al-Ḥārith used to communicate with his local 
constituency had a long history in the pre-Islamic East. Scholars have argued that al-Ḥārith 
exploited current messianic expectations among Muslims with his use of black symbolism.118 
It is true that messianic appeals related to the removal of the Umayyads had probably 
spread to Khurasan from Syria and Iraq. However, the symbolism of the color black was 
not initially imported to Khurasan from the western lands; rather, it was an ancient symbol 
in the east that first migrated westward from Khurasan before returning in the Abbasid 
period, accompanied by strong messianic symbolism. The apocalyptic idea that Umayyad 
rule would come to an end a century after the hijra (emigration) of the Prophet from 
Mecca to Medina was known among the Arab Muslims in Khurasan. It was mentioned in 
a letter sent in 719 CE by Ghūrak, the king of Samarkand, to the Tang emperor, in which 
the Sogdian ruler asked for help against the Arabs.119 It is possible that the Arab Muslims 
in Sogdiana informed Ghūrak about this expectation. However, there is no evidence to 
connect awareness of such apocalyptic ideas to the use of black garments in 719 CE. It seems 
that al-Ḥārith’s rebellion combined the color black with the apocalyptic vision of the end of 
the Umayyad caliphate and that this symbol was subsequently taken up further west by the 
Abbasids. This theory is supported by the fact that the majority of the reports attributed to 
the Prophet relating to the appearance of holders of black banners (ṣāḥib al-rāyāt al-aswad) 
who will bring an end to Umayyad rule are collected in Kitāb al-Fitan (“Book of Social 
Disturbances”) compiled by Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād al-Marwazī (d. 227/844), a native of Marw 
who lived in the ninth century CE.120

Instead of seeing al-Ḥārith’s use of black dress and banners as reflecting later Islamic 
apocalyptic associations, his use of color symbolism should be understood in a local eastern 
context, in which it was associated with political change, political power, Buddhism 

117.  Ibid., 9:1575–76.
118.  See Sharon, Revolt, 30–31; idem, Black Banners from the East: The Establishment of the ʻAbbāsid State; 

Incubation of a Revolt (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983); K. Athamina, “The Black Banners and the Socio-political 
Significance of Flags and Slogans in Medieval Islam,” Arabica 36, no. 3 (1989): 307–26.

119.  For an English translation of the letter, see V. A. Livshits, Sogdian Epigraphy of Central Asia and 
Semirech’e, trans. T. Stableford, ed. N. Sims-Williams (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 2015), 49.

120.  Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād al-Marwazī, Kitāb al-Fitan, ed. S. Zakkār (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1414/1991). Similarly, 
La Vaissière has argued that “most texts saying that it was the colour of the flag of the prophet, or his turban, 
are ʿAbbāsid reconstructions trying to justify the choice of black”; La Vaissière, “ʿAbbāsid Revolution,” 140.



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The Rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj   •  538

and mourning. During the Southern and Northern dynasties of China (386–589 CE), and 
specifically during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou (r. 560–578), a prophecy 
spread that the wearer of a black garment would take the throne. Emperor Wu took the 
prophecy very seriously. To prevent its realization, he listened to the preaching of two 
influential Daoists, Wei Yuansong and Zhang Bin, who agitated against Buddhists, accusing 
them of being the black garment wearers. The emperor prohibited the use of black and 
ordered the execution of many Buddhists. During the Tang dynasty (618–907), the Tang 
emperor, who was also known as Wu but whose real name was Li Yan (r. 840–846) seems to 
have reacted to rumors that a “Tiānzǐ,” or Son of Heaven, dressed in black would appear to 
depose him.121 

We know that many Sogdians, Bactrians, and other people from Central Asia traded or 
settled in China and spread Buddhism in the region.122 On the basis of Xuanzang’s account, 
Renato Sala calculated that at least 496 monasteries with 22,500 monks existed in the 
southern parts of Central Asia in 630 CE.123 Many of these Buddhist monasteries were in 
Bactria. Balkh was the center of Buddhism in the eastern Iranian regions. According to 
Xuanzang, followers of the Sarvāstivādā Buddhist sect were present in Gaz, an area to the 
south of Balkh.124 Hye Ch’o, during his visit in 725–26 CE, also noted the presence of the 
Sarvāstivādā sect.125 It is said that the Buddhist monks in the Sarvāstivādā tradition wore 
black garments.126 It is not known, however, whether the Buddhists of Balkh related the 
color black to any apocalyptic narrative. 

La Vaissière made an important observation regarding the significance of black garments 
in Sogdiana: he showed that black was the color of mourning in seventh- and eighth-century 
Central Asia. Some ossuaries show mourners in black dress, and a text from the Tongdian, 
the Chinese institutional history, refers to mourners in Samarkand who wore black.127  
Given that Bactria, Samarkand, and Bukhara shared strong ethnic, cultural, and commercial 
ties, it is likely that Bactrians, too, used black as a mourning color.128 It is also important to 

121.  I would like to thank Shuqi Jia for providing me with detailed information on the symbolism of black 
in China. The main Chinese sources on this issue are: Sima Qian, “Annals of Qin Shi Huang” [秦始皇本紀], in 
Records of the Grand Historian [史記] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1973), juan 6; Dao Xuan, Guang Hong ming ji (40 
juan) [廣弘明集: 40卷] (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, 1936), juan 8. Brief information in English on black garments 
is also given in K. S. Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 
1964), 186–87.

122.  É. de La Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History, trans. J. Ward (Leiden: Brill, 2005); V. Hansen, The Silk 
Road: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 

123.  R. Sala, “The Spread of Buddhism from Gandhara to South, West and East Central Asia (I BC–XIV AD),” 
in Religions of Kazakhstan and Central Asia on the Great Silk Road: Materials of the International Scientific and 
Practical Conference, 12–13 June 2017, 248–72 (Almaty: Service Press, 2017), 260.

124.  SI-YU-KI, 44–49.
125.  Hye Ch’o, Diary, 52. 
126.  M. Deegalle, “Theravāda Pre-understanding in Understanding Mahāyāna,” in Three Mountains and 

Seven Rivers: Prof. Musashi Tachikawa’s Felicitation Volume, ed. S. Hino and T. Wada, 43–64 (Delhi: Motilal 
Banarsidass, 2004), 55.

127.  La Vaissière, “ʿAbbāsid Revolution,” 140–42. 
128.  Similarities in the ways in which the Nawrūz festival is celebrated in these areas are a good example of 



539  •  Said Reza HuSeini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

note that various groups of Chionites and Turks migrated westward and settled in Sogdiana 
and Bactria. These nomadic groups continued to have relations with China and with eastern 
Iranian regions. Thus, it is not implausible that the symbolism of black passed from one 
region to another.129

The fact that al-Ḥārith’s rebellion began in Bactria and attracted many Bactrian and 
Sogdian supporters may explain al-Ḥārith’s use of black clothing and banners. By wearing 
black, al-Ḥārith may have tapped into a “regional color code” that was understood by his 
local supporters,130 who were familiar with black as the color of power, political change, 
and mourning.131 Al-Ḥārith represented these cultural elements in his clothing, though 
the specific meanings that he may have attached to black beyond its regional significance 
are unknown. In his mission, al-Ḥārith successfully combined the political priorities of 
local Bactrian rulers with ideological terminologies and symbols that appealed to other 
groups. His message was inclusive and powerful and generated a large group of supporters 
from various backgrounds to whom he appealed with different arguments. He used 
the prioritization of the Qurʾān, the sunna, and just government based on shūrā for his 
Arab Muslim supporters; the abolition of the jizya for Sogdian converts; and messianic 

the cultural ties between these regions. The symbolism of black is also reflected in the Shāhnāma (Book of kings) 
composed by Abū al-Qāsim Firdawsī in tenth-century CE Khurasan. A large part of the Shāhnāma is related to the 
eastern Iranian world, as attested by the geographical names and characters that appear in it. In the Shāhnāma, 
black is the color of political power and mourning. The tents of the mythical Iranian kings (shāh-i Ērān) were 
black, and Afrāsiyāb, the king of Turān, wore black and carried a black banner when he fought the Iranians. 
In the Shāhnāma, Turān is the region beyond the Amu Darya, which included Sogdiana and northern parts of 
Bactria. When Eraj son of Afrīdūn was killed, the Iranians dressed in black, and the wearing of black garments 
to mourn the deaths of Iranian kings, princes, and heroes is mentioned several times in the Shāhnāma. All 
these examples indicate that the Shāhnāma reflects a very similar view of the color black as that which we have 
seen in the Sogdian and Chinese examples. It is highly unlikely that Firdawsī’s portrayal of black as the color of 
mourning and a symbol of power was his own innovation or an adaptation of Abbasid narratives. Had it been 
a later adaptation, we should have seen it in his work. See Abū al-Qāsim Firdawsī, Shāhnāma, available online 
at https://ganjoor.net/. Black color as symbol of mourning continued in Bactria to the sixteenth century. It is 
reported in Mirzā Muḥammad Ḥaidar Dughlāt, Taʾrīkh-i Rashīdī, ed. Abbāsqulī Ghaffārīfard (Tehran: Mirāth-i 
Maktūb, 1383/2004), 275.

129.  The relations between the Turks and the Chinese have been studied by various scholars. See, for 
instance, H. Ecsedy, “The Trade and War Relations between the Turks and China in the Second Half of the 6th 
Century,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 21, no. 2 (1968): 131–80; N. Di Cosmo, “China-
Steppe Relations in Historical Perspective,” in Complexity and Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the 
First Millennium CE, ed. J. Bemmann and M. Schmauder, 49–72 (Bonn: Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie, 
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 2015); N. Di Cosmo, “The Relations between China and the Steppe 
from the Xiongnu to the Turk Empire,” in Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, 
and the Steppe, ca. 250–750, ed. N. Di Cosmo and M. Maas, 35–53 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 

130.  Thanks to Étienne de La Vaissière, who informed me that this was a local cultural code (personal 
communication, October 11, 2021). 

131.  La Vaissière has argued that Abū Muslim’s choice of black as symbol of his revolution was a strategic 
move (La Vaissière, “ʿAbbāsid Revolution,” 140). The use of symbols as an effective tool of communication in 
rebellions has been studied in detail in the medieval European context. These studies show similarities with the 
meanings of symbols discussed in this article. See, for example, J. Firnhaber-Baker and D. Schoenaers, eds., The 
Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).

https://ganjoor.net/


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The Rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj   •  540

propaganda combined with messages of authority and political change through his use 
of black dress and banners for local elites. Despite his huge and diverse army, al-Ḥārith’s 
mission ultimately failed. Even so, however, it had been powerful enough to break down the 
political structures of Umayyad Khurasan—structures that would crumble for good a couple 
of years later under another black banner, that of the Abbasid revolution of Abū Muslim. 

The Umayyad Response to the Rebellion 

After conquering Andkhud and Balkh, al-Ḥārith marched on Marw, which alarmed the 
Umayyad authorities. Unable to unite the Arab Muslims of Marw against al-Ḥārith, ʿĀṣim 
al-Hilālī, the governor of Khurasan at the time (in office in 116/734), withdrew to Abarshahr 
to recruit more forces and prepared to breach the dam on the Marw River to flood al-Ḥārith’s 
camp.132 However, these strategies failed to stop the advance of the rebels. In the end, what 
prevented a complete collapse of Umayyad authority in Khurasan was the internal conflict 
that broke out in al-Ḥārith’s camp. His Arab Muslim soldiers as well as the Arab tribal 
leaders in the region who had not joined al-Ḥārith were alarmed by the large number of 
local supporters in al-Ḥārith’s army. The unwelcome prospect of non-Arab dominance 
formed a common threat that united the Arabs—both those in the Umayyad camp and those 
in al-Ḥārith’s. The Azdite soldiers of al-Ḥārith abandoned him and joined al-Hilālī before 
the battle for Marw commenced.133 The dissent in al-Ḥārith’s camp combined with al-Hilālī’s 
breaching of the dam caused al-Ḥārith’s first military defeat. This, in turn, prompted his 
Bactrian allies to desert him. Al-Ḥārith was left with a small group of loyal soldiers, mostly 
from Tamīm. The sources do not specify the reason the local rulers abandoned al-Ḥārith.134 

The battle at Marw, however, was not the end of the rebellion. The rebels’ attack on the 
political center of Khurasan was taken seriously by Caliph Hishām. On the advice of al-Hilālī, 
he combined the forces of Iraq and Khurasan and placed them under the command of 
Khālid al-Qasrī (d. 126/743),135 who sent his brother Asad al-Qasrī (d. 120/738) to Khurasan 
with twenty thousand Syrian troops. Al-Hilālī, too, had advised the caliph not to rely on the 
Iraqis of Khurasan but to send Syrian forces, who had fought for the caliph faithfully.136

When Asad al-Qasrī arrived in Khurasan, the entire region was in turmoil. Asad divided 
his forces, sending one division to Marw and another to Marw al-Rūd. Marw and Marw 
al-Rūd were soon reconquered, and al-Ḥārith retreated to Balkh. Those Arab troops who 
had abandoned al-Ḥārith earlier now joined al-Hilālī and Asad’s service.137 Al-Ḥārith then 
crossed the Amu Darya and surrounded Tirmidh but could not capture it despite having the 
support of the Turks and the spāhbed, or military commander, of Nasaf. Though al-Ḥārith 
was defeated at Tirmidh, he managed to send a number of his followers—soldiers and their 
families—to safety in the Tabushkān fortress, located somewhere in eastern Bactria. The 

132.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1569–71.
133.  Blankinship, End of the Jihād State, 177.
134.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1569–71.
135.  Ibid., 9:1574–82.
136.  Blankinship, End of the Jihād State, 179.
137.  Ibid., 180.



541  •  Said Reza HuSeini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

fortress was given to him by the yabghu of Tukharistan.138 
Once al-Ḥārith had left, Asad entered Balkh. From Balkh, he sent Judayʿ b. ʿAlī al-Kirmānī 

(d.129/746), a senior leader from the Azd, to take the Tabushkān fortress with Syrian forces 
as well as two and a half thousand soldiers from Balkh (jund Balkh). Al-Kirmānī took the 
fortress by force, killed the men sheltering there, and sold both Arab and non-Arab women 
and children on the market in Balkh as slaves. A number of the Arab Muslim notables who 
had supported al-Ḥārith were sent to Balkh, where Asad publicly executed them.139 It is 
likely that the purpose of al-Kirmānī’s and Asad’s brutal acts was to show that they would 
not tolerate any rebels, whether Muslim or non-Muslim.

Bactrian Rulers Turn against al-Ḥārith 

The defection of the local Bactrian rulers who had initially supported al-Ḥārith 
accelerated his defeat. Having no other option, al-Ḥārith fled and took refuge with the 
Qaghān of the Türgesh Turks, who was preparing to invade Bactria.140 However, the arrival 
of Asad al-Qasrī in Balkh divided the Bactrian rulers into two camps, one pro-Umayyad and 
another pro-Türgesh—that is, backing al-Ḥārith. In order to attract more local support and 
drive a wedge between al-Ḥārith and the Bactrian rulers, Asad shifted his capital from Marw 
to Balkh and appointed the Barmak to restore the city by using the faʿla, or corvée labor, 
which the local inhabitants contributed as part of the tribute they were supposed to deliver 
to the Arab Muslim officials.141 The city of Balkh was heavily fortified, but its fortifications 
had been damaged during the wars of the early seventh century CE. Most of its population 
had also left.142 For this reason, the Arabs did not settle in the city but founded the Baruqān 
garrison outside the city walls.143 Asad reasoned that the restoration of the city would 
attract people to return. He ordered the Arab Muslim soldiers to leave Baruqān and settle 
in the city among the local people. Asad also moved the official registers (sing. dīwān) from 
Marw to Balkh and restored the city’s irrigation system. The locals appreciated these efforts, 
and some of them consequently shifted their allegiance to Asad and the Umayyads.144 

The first great conflict between Asad and the Qaghān occurred in 119/737 in Khuttal in 
eastern Bactria. The king of Khuttal, angered by Asad’s raids and plunder, complained to the 
Qaghān, accepted his overlordship, and invited him to Khuttal. The king hoped to destroy 
the Arab Muslims by the hand of the Türgesh Turks. He nonetheless surely intended to 
maintain his autonomy and did not expect the Qaghān to stay after vanquishing the Arabs. 

138.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1582–85, 1590–92; al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, 12:111.
139.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 7:283. 
140.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1594; Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 7:283. 
141.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1591.
142.  SI-YU-KI, 44.
143.  Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar b. Muḥammad al-Wāʿiẓ al-Balkhī, Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, trans. ʿAbd Allāh 

Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī al-Balkhī, ed. ʿA. Ḥ. Ḥabībī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Bunyād-i Farhang-i Īrān, 
1350/1971), 34, 43. 

144.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1490–91.



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The Rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj   •  542

The Türgesh army arrived and took Asad by surprise.145 The clash triggered a run on both 
sides to secure the assistance of supporters with the aid of threats and promises, carrots 
and sticks. Al-Ṭabarī reports that Asad sent a letter to a certain commander, Ibrāhīm b. 
ʿĀṣim, informing him that he would kill him and sell all his family members as slaves in the 
Balkh market if he were to join the enemy. The Qaghān, for his part, ordered his forces to 
attack Chaghaniyan and other non-Arab supporters of the Umayyads to demonstrate the 
consequences of siding with the Arabs. The Türgesh Qaghān also sent a message to Asad 
via one of al-Ḥārith’s supporters, saying that the region beyond the Amu Darya belonged to 
him and that he had the right to defend it against Arab attacks. However, in practice, the 
Qaghān claimed the entire region and invaded Bactria as far west as Marw al-Rūd. Even so, 
some local commanders remained loyal to Asad, including the Chaghān Khudā, who was 
killed defending Asad.146 

The defeat at Khuttal taught Asad a bitter lesson—namely, that his Syrian forces were as 
weak as the Iraqis in the war against the Türgesh.147 Asad was therefore in desperate need 
of local support. In Balkh, he ordered fires to be lit on the city walls to invite people from 
the surrounding villages (min al-rasātīq) to join him. Then he called a large gathering at 
which he accused al-Ḥārith of being “God’s enemy” and of having invited the Türgesh to 
bring down destruction on the people.148 Shortly before Asad’s arrival, Türgesh forces had 
already attacked Guzgan and destroyed the rulers’ palaces. It is possible that some Bactrian 
rulers had been unsettled by the sight of the Türgesh and their allies plundering Bactria. 
Indeed, the local rulers and rural inhabitants of this region may have seen al-Ḥārith as more 
of a threat than an ally.149 They thus preferred to make an alliance with the Arabs to defend 
Bactria against plundering by Türgesh forces. 

One of the local rulers who remained loyal to the Qaghān was the yabghu of Tukharistan, 
who hosted the Qaghān after the battle of Khuttal.150 Such autonomous eastern Bactrian 
rulers had traditionally recognized the overlordship of the Qaghān.151 The outcome of 

145.  Ibid., 9:1592–94.
146.  Ibid., 9:1594–1601. 
147.  Blankinship, End of the Jihād State, 181.
148.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1603. 
149.  Ibid., 9:1603–5.
150.  Ibid., 9:1604.
151.  Several Bactrian documents from Rob dated to between 629 and 671 CE reflect the Qaghān’s overlordship 

and refer to the king of Rob with the Turkic title tapaghlïgh iltäbir of the Qaghān (documents N, P, and Q in 
Sims-Williams, Bactrian Documents, 1:68–73, 84–87, 88–90). The rulers of Rob retained their territorial control, 
court, and administration until 747 CE (documents U and V in ibid., 1:106–11,116–25). The region of Gaz was 
ruled by the ser (possibly means ruler) of the Turks in 691 CE (document S in ibid., 1:94–96), and this situation 
may have continued. In Kadagstan in 700 CE, Bag-Azyas, the queen of the qutlugh tapaghlïgh Bilgä Sävüg, gifted 
farm land and a female slave to a priest named Kamird-far. The army of Kadagstan was led by a commander 
called Baralbag, and the administration functioned under the Turks (document T in ibid., 1:88–91). The Turkic 
control of Kadagstan continued much longer, as indicated by a legal document dated to 772 CE (document Y 
in ibid., 1:142–43). It is most likely that these local rulers were on the Qaghān’s side because they traditionally 
recognized Turkic overlordship. Al-Ṭabarī’s report that the Türgesh Qaghān requested the rulers of Tukharistan 
to join him with their forces supports this idea (al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1604).



543  •  Said Reza HuSeini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

the revolt was finally decided at the battle of Kharistan in Guzgan in 119/737. The battle 
is described in detail by al-Ṭabarī, but none of the existing studies have explained it, and 
they have thus missed the role played by local western Bactrian rulers in the defeat of 
the Qaghān and al-Ḥārith. The Türgesh Qaghān was accompanied by al-Ḥārith and the 
king of Khuttal, as well as the local rulers of Sogdiana and the yabghu of Tukharistan. 
The main part of the Türgesh army, however, had been scattered with orders to plunder 
the region. Consequently, the Qaghān had only a small contingent of troops, which was 
furthermore weighed down with a large amount of booty and cattle.152 Asad, by contrast, 
commanded a coalition force of Syrian and Iraqi troops and several western Bactrian allies, 
most importantly the king of Guzgan. 

Before the battle, the Qaghān ordered that all Guzganis who had joined the Arabs were 
to be killed if Asad was defeated. Despite this threat, the ruler of Guzgan eventually decided 
to stay with Asad. The Guzganis, who knew the region well, and some Arabs mounted a 
surprise attack on the Qaghān. Al-Ḥārith fought valiantly, particularly against the Syrians, 
but was eventually defeated. While fleeing, he even saved the Qaghān’s life. The Qaghān 
and al-Ḥārith retreated to the upper Amu Daraya region, where they planned to regroup 
and attack Samarkand.153 However, the unexpected murder of the Qaghān by Bugha Kul Cür, 
chief of the “Yellow Bone clan,” ended this ambitious plan.154

Aftermath

The Qaghān’s death caused the Turks to divide into competing and hostile factions. They 
never again challenged Umayyad power in Khurasan. Al-Ḥārith lost his most powerful 
supporter, but he continued to live among the Turks.155 The death of the Qaghān had a 
significant impact on the region. It encouraged the local rulers of western Bactria to remain 
loyal to the Umayyads, which helped preserve Bactria as part of Umayyad Khurasan until 
the Abbasid revolution. It also provided an opportunity for Asad to consolidate Umayyad 
authority over Bactria. The implosion of the Türgesh allowed Asad to punish the king of 
Khuttal, removing another potentially powerful opponent in the process.156 Asad’s successor, 
Naṣr b. Sayyār, campaigned in Sogdiana with the aid of Bactrian rulers, in particular the 
ruler of Guzgan.157

The battle of Kharistan showed that in the end Bactrian elites preferred to be ruled by 
the Umayyads rather than by al-Ḥārith or his ally, the Türgesh Qaghān, whose troops had 
resorted to plunder and violence. Like al-Ḥārith’s Arab Muslim supporters, who wearied 
of al-Ḥārith’s alliance with powerful local commanders and defected to the Umayyads, his 

152.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1604–14.
153.  Ibid.
154.  C. Beckwith, The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among 

Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese During the Early Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 
1987), 90.

155.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 7:283; Αl-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1613, 1689. 
156.  Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 9:1630–33.
157.  Ibid., 9:1695–96.



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The Rebellion of al-Ḥārith b. Surayj   •  544

local allies, too, turned against al-Ḥārith because of his alliance with the Qaghān. After the 
battle, al-Ḥārith was never able to attract local support and eventually met his death in 
Marw in 128/746 after failing to organize another anti-Umayyad rebellion.158 

Conclusion 

The rebellion of al-Ḥārith revolved around the power dynamics that existed in the 
frontier region of Umayyad Khurasan, involving not only the Arab Muslims but also many 
local rulers who ruled their territories independently. Depending on the political situation, 
these rulers either cooperated with the Umayyads or made alliances with Tang China or the 
Türgesh. This flux made central control over the northeastern frontiers of the Umayyad 
empire far from easy. Although the Umayyad governors represented imperial authority, 
they faced a difficult task in keeping both Arab Muslim elites and local rulers on their 
side. Cooperation with these Muslim and non-Muslim elites was essential for creating and 
maintaining political stability in Khurasan. At the same time, the governors had to maintain 
good relations with the caliph and the governor of Iraq. They had to ensure regular fiscal 
income from the province without upsetting the Arab tribal leaders and local rulers, who 
represented provincial authority. Mismanagement, favoritism, or discrimination by the 
governors could lead to rebellion. Al-Ḥārith’s rebellion should be understood in the context 
of competition between central imperial power and provincial authority, which was not 
limited to local Arab elites. 

Al-Ḥārith effectively exploited anti-Umayyad sentiments among the various groups that 
joined his rebellion, basing his appeals to them on the specific needs and political concerns of 
each faction. The allegiance of Arab and non-Arab, Muslim and non-Muslim, local, Umayyad, 
and Türgesh supporters to his cause undermined Umayyad control in Khurasan, even 
though he eventually lost the war. His supporter base crumbled, first through the defection 
of a large proportion of his Arab supporters and subsequently through the departure of a 
number of Bactrian notables. Ironically, the Umayyads were subsequently able to create 
a coalition of Arab Muslims and mostly non-Muslim Bactrians against al-Ḥārith and his 
Turkish, Sogdian, Arab, and Bactrian allies. 

When raising support for his rebellion, al-Ḥārith made clever use of various local 
dissatisfactions. He exploited Arab soldiers’ disappointment with Umayyad authority, drew 
on the resentment of Sogdian converts forced to pay the jizya, and appealed to western 
Bactrian rulers who wanted to free themselves of increasingly intrusive and burdensome 
Umayyad control. He also tapped into indigenous color symbolism through his use of black 
clothing and banners. Al-Ḥārith utilized an inclusive and powerful message to unite Muslims 
and non-Muslims and created a coalition of Arabs, Sogdians, and Bactrians. Though this 
diversity was the basis of his power, his inability to keep his coalition together led to his 
downfall. His later alliance with the Türgesh Qaghān who invaded Bactria also turned local 
rulers in western Bactria against him. 

Although al-Ḥārith’s rebellion failed to overthrow Umayyad rule in Khurasan, it was 
successful at uniting Muslims and non-Muslims in the region for a single cause. The 

158.  Ibid., 9:1917–33.



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complexity of the local context, including the distinct interests, dissatisfactions, and 
ambitions of different groups, makes it clear that it is not enough to grasp just one group’s 
interest in or opposition to al-Ḥārith’s movement when trying to explain its success and 
ultimate failure. Al-Ḥārith’s rise in Andkhud, the expansion of his revolt to Balkh, and his 
downfall in Kharistan highlight the role of local Bactrian rulers in his rebellion. Sogdian 
converts and local Arab Muslim elites as well as common soldiers and the Türgesh Qaghān 
each had their own reasons for joining the uprising and, in the case of some, for eventually 
defecting to the Umayyad side. One lesson to be learned from al-Ḥārith’s rebellion is that 
victory in Khurasan was liable to go to the commander or ruler who was able to navigate 
and unite in a common cause the complex web of competing and opposing local interests.



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https://iranicaonline.org/articles/jahm-b-safwan