- Speaker: .Shaykh Dawuod Adeeb
- Category: SAHABAH
- Language: ENGLISH
Al-Hajjaj was born in ca. 661 in the city of Ta’if in the Hijaz, in modern-day Saudi Arabia. His ancestry was not particularly distinguished: he came of a poor family, whose members had worked as stone carriers and builders. His mother, al-Fari’a, had married, and been divorced by, al-Mughira ibn Shu’ba, appointed governor of Kufa by the first Umayyad caliph, Mu’awiya (r. 661–680). Soon after Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (r. 685–705) assumed the throne, al-Hajjaj left his home town and went to the capital, Damascus, where he entered the security force (shurta) of the Caliph. There he attracted Abd al-Malik’s attention by the rapidity and efficiency with which he restored discipline during a mutiny of the troops destined to accompany the Caliph in his campaign against Mus’ab ibn al-Zubayr in Iraq.
As a result, the Caliph entrusted him with command of the army’s rear-guard. He apparently achieved further feats of valour, so that after the defeat of Mus’ab, Abd al-Malik decided to entrust him with the expedition to subdue Mus’ab’s brother, the anti-caliph Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr, in Mecca. In late 691 he set out from Kufa at the head of 2,000 Syrian troops. After taking over Ta’if unopposed, he halted there as Abd al-Malik had charged him to try to secure Ibn al-Zubayr’s capitulation by diplomatic means if possible, and to avoid shedding of blood in Mecca. Ibn al-Zubayr however rejected the Umayyad offers, and al-Hajjaj,after receiving reinforcements and the Caliph’s permission, moved to attack Mecca. The Umayyad troops bombarded the city with catapults from Mount Abu Qubays, not letting up even during the hajj; even the Ka’aba was not spared, despite the presence of the assembled pilgrims. When a sudden thunderstorm broke out, which his soldiers interpreted as divine wrath, he was able to rally them and convince them that it was actually a sign of victory. Finally, in October 692, after seven months of siege and the defection of several thousand of his supporters, including two of his sons, Ibn al-Zubayr was killed alongside his last remaining loyal followers, fighting around the Ka’aba.
As a reward, Abd al-Malik gave al-Hajjaj the governorship of the Hijaz, Yemen, and Yamama. As governor, al-Hajjaj led the hajj in person in the years 73 and 74 AH (693 and 694 CE), and restored the Ka’aba to the shape and dimensions it had originally, rejecting the alterations made by Ibn al-Zubayr following the first Umayyad siege in 683. Al-Hajjaj was able to restore peace in the Hijaz, but his severity occasioned the frequent personal intervention of the Caliph.
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