Islam Comes to India 4
Al-Ḥajjāj, in full al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ath-Thaqafī, (born 661, aṭ-Ṭāʾif, Hejaz, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia]—died June 714, Wāsiṭ, Iraq), the man behind the first islamic attack on India,was one of the most cruel and able provincial governors under the Umayyad caliphate (661–750). He played a critical role in consolidating the administrative structure of the Umayyad dynasty during its early years.
Al-Ḥajjāj was a school teacher in his native town as a young man, but little else is known of his earlier years. He first became publicly active when, in the reign of the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, he restored discipline among troops being used to repress a rebellion in Iraq. In 692 he personally led troops in crushing the rebellion of ʿAbd Allāh ibn az-Zubayr in Mecca. The brutality with which he secured his victory was to recur during the rest of his public life.
For several years he was governor of the provinces that surrounded Mecca, but in 694 he was made governor of Iraq, which, because of its location and because of the intrigues by various sects there, was the most demanding and the most important of the administrative posts in the Islāmic empire. Al-Ḥajjāj was completely devoted to the service of the Umayyads, and the latter were never fearful of his great power. He was instrumental in persuading the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik to allow the succession to pass to al-Walīd, who, as caliph, allowed al-Ḥajjāj complete freedom in the administration of Iraq. Al-Ḥajjāj did much to promote prosperity in his province. He began to strike a purely Arab coinage that soon replaced older currencies. He stopped the migration of the rural population to the towns in an effort to improve agricultural production, and he saw to it that the irrigation system was kept in good repair.
Al Hajjaj introduced a uniform version of the Quran. To revive agricultural production and increase tax revenue, al-Hajjaj expelled non-Arab Muslim converts from the garrison cities of Kufa and Basra to their rural villages of origin and collected from them the jizya (poll tax) nominally reserved for non-Muslim subjects and oversaw large-scale canal digging projects. In 701, al-Hajjaj, with reinforcements from Syria, crushed a mass rebellion led by the Kufan Arab nobleman Ibn al-Ash’ath whose ranks spanned the Arab troops, Muslim converts and religious elites of Iraq. Consequently, al-Hajjaj further tightened control over the province, founding the city of Wasit to house the loyalist Syrian troops whom he thereafter relied on to enforce his rule. A highly capable though ruthless statesman, strict in character, a harsh and demanding master, al-Hajjaj was widely feared by his contemporaries and became a deeply controversial figure and an object of deep-seated enmity among later, pro-Abbasid writers, who ascribed to him persecutions and mass executions.
Arriving at Kufa, al-Hajjaj gave an inaugural sermon at the local mosque that has become famous and is “often cited as an example of Arab eloquence”. The situation he found there was one of disorder. The troops of Basra and Kufa, ostensibly garrisoned at Ramhurmuz under al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra had instead, upon the death of Bishr, left the camp and were idling in the cities. In order to restore discipline, al-Hajjaj announced that any man who did not within three days return to the camp would be put to death and his property be left open to plunder. This proved effective, but when he went to the troops to distribute the pay, al-Hajjaj faced another mutiny under Ibn al-Jarud because of making cuts in pay that the troops refused to accept. These problems overcome, al-Hajjaj sent the troops against the Kharijites. In 696 al-Muhallab defeated the Azariqa who had rallied around Qatari ibn al-Fuja’a as their anti-caliph, and in spring 697 another Kharijite leader, Shabib ibn Yazid al-Shaybani, was defeated on the Dujayl river in Khuzistan with the aid of Syrian troops. In the same year, al-Hajjaj suppressed the rebellion of the governor of Mada’in, al-Mutarrif ibn al-Mughira ibn Shu’ba, who had allied with the Kharijites.
These campaigns eradicated the Kharijite rebellion, but came at a cost to his relationship with the Iraqis: the campaigns against the Kharijites were extremely unpopular, and measures like the cuts in pay, according to Hugh N. Kennedy, “[seem] almost to have goaded the Iraqis into rebellion, as if looking for an excuse to break them”] The explosion came in 699: when he had been conferred the governorships of Khurasan and Sistan, al-Hajjaj had given it to al-Muhallab, but in Sistan, the situation was far more unstable, and the country had to be essentially reconquered. An army under the local governor Ubayd Allah ibn Abi Bakra had suffered a heavy defeat against the ruler of the kingdom of Zabulistan, known as the Zunbil, and now al-Hajjaj ordered Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn al-Ash’ath, the most pre-eminent member of the Kufan aristocracy (the ashrāf) to lead an army against the Zunbil. This army was drawn from the Kufan soldiery, and such was the splendour of its equipment, or perhaps the “proud and haughty manner of the Kufan soldiers and ashrāf who composed it” (G. R. Hawting), that it became known in history as the “Peacock Army”. This expedition marked the beginning of a rebellion that came close to destroying not only al-Hajjaj’s, but also Umayyad, power in Iraq.
Al-Hajjaj, sent letter after letter to his commander, demanding an immediate assault against the Zunbil. The tone of these letters was extremely offensive, and he threatened to dismiss Ibn al-Ash’ath and appoint his own brother Ishaq to command the expedition instead. Al-Hajjaj’s harsh tone and unreasonable demands, as well as the army’s evident reluctance to continue such a protracted and arduous campaign so far from their homes, provoked a widespread mutiny, led by Ibn al-Ash’ath himself. The rebel army marched back to Iraq, growing to over 100,000 strong in the process as they were joined by other malcontents, and being transformed from a mutiny against al-Hajjaj—denounced as an enemy of God and a latter-day Pharaoh—to a full-blown anti-Umayyad movement.
Al-Hajjaj tried to stop the rebels at Tustar, but the rebels were victorious (early 701). Al-Hajjaj abandoned Basra to the rebels, and Ibn al-Ash’ath entered the city in triumph. Reinforced with Syrian troops, al-Hajjaj managed to score a minor victory, after which the bulk of the rebel army left Basra for their natural stronghold, Kufa. Al-Hajjaj recaptured Basra and pursued Ibn al-Ash’ath to Kufa, encamping near the city. Ibn al-Ash’ath’s progress had sufficiently alarmed the Umayyad court that they sought a negotiated settlement, even though they kept sending Syrian reinforcements to al-Hajjaj. Abd al-Malik offered to dismiss al-Hajjaj, appoint Ibn al-Ash’ath as governor over one of the Iraqi towns, and raise the Iraqis’ pay so that they received the same amount as the Syrians. Ibn al-Ash’ath was inclined to accept, but the more radical of his followers, especially the scholars known as qurrāʾ, refused, believing that the offered terms revealed the government’s weakness, and pushed for outright victory. The two armies eventually met in the Battle of Dayr al-Jamajim in April 701, which resulted in a crushing victory for al-Hajjaj and his more disciplined Syrians. Kufa surrendered after that, and al-Hajjaj further undercut Ibn al-Ash’ath’s support by promising amnesty to those who surrendered, providing however that they acknowledged that their rebellion had been tantamount to renouncing Islam; those who refused were executed.
In 702 al-Hajjaj founded the city of Wasit, situated midway between Basra and Kufa, where he moved his seat. Al-Hajjaj was now the undisputed master not only of Iraq, but of the entire Islamic East.As governor of Iraq and viceroy of the East, al-Hajjaj supervised a major wave of expansion. He appointed Muhammad ibn al-Qasim al-Thaqafi to lead the conquest of northwestern India, Qutayba ibn Muslim to conquer Transoxiana, and Mujja’a ibn Si’r to Oman.
Al-Hajjaj died in Wasit in May or June 714 at the age of 53 or 54; The cause of his death, according to the medieval historian Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282), was a stomach cancer.
Al-Hajjaj killed four companions (sahaba) of Muhammad, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Jabir ibn Abd-Allah, Sa’id ibn Jubayr and Kumayl ibn Ziyad. While besieging the city of Mecca, Al-Hajjaj crucified Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr and said, “No one can take down his body except Asma (daughter of the late caliph Abu Bakr); she must come to me and ask permission of me, and only then will his body be taken down”.
He is recorded by Tha’ālibī (Laţ’āif, 142) as one of the four men to have killed more than 100,000 men (the others being Abu Harb, Abu Muslim and Babak). It was mostly due to his numerous campaigns and the many uprisings and revolts against the empire during his reign.
“My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
“Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.”
Marco Polo left Italy with his father and uncle in 1271 and returned in 1295. In those years of travel Polo traveled to the then poorly understood Far East. On Polo’s return to Italy he was captured by the Genoese and held captive. While in prison he related his adventures to fellow prisoner Rusticello de Pisa. Rustichello wrote down what he heard and soon copies of the tale spread throughout Europe. For centuries the Travels of Marco Polo were the best information the West had about China. While Polo’s account can be questioned in some aspects of veracity it has certainly proved influential. Contact with China had existed (certainly in trade in the days of ancient Rome) before Polo but with the dissemination of his book fascination with the ‘exotic East’ was born. Other Europeans had travelled to China before Polo but none left as detailed an account, perhaps a jail term to write would have secured them a place on this list.
“Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth.”
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Yugoslavian political prisoner Milovan Djilas translated Paradise Lost into Serbo-Croatian in the 1960s while he was imprisoned, writing the epic out on toilet paper with a pencil, and smuggling it out of prison. 
