A HISTORY OF INNER ASIA

64 A history of Inner Asia
appointing the Arab Qahtaba as leader of the military operations.The
last Umayyad governor, Nasr ibn al-Sayyar, was by 748 ousted from
Merv where Abu Muslim appointed the Yemenite Ali ibn al-Karmani
as the first Abbasid governor of Khurasan.In contrast to the
effectiveness of the Abbasid movement, the Umayyad caliphs in
Damascus acted late and ineffectually.It was only after Qahtaba had
started his march from Khurasan toward Iraq in 749, that Marwan II
had Ibrahim arrested in Humayma and brought to Syria, where the
latter died in August, either killed or victim of plague.Meanwhile the
Abbasid troops stormed Kufa and resumed their march toward Syria.In
November 749 Ibrahim’s brother Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah was proclaimed
caliph in the great mosque of Kufa.
Abu Muslim did not accompany the victorious Abbasid troops to Iraq
but stayed in Merv, eventually as the new dynasty’s governor of
Khurasan.His presence was certainly needed to keep an eye on its restless
population, for soon even those who had furthered the revolution
began to challenge the new masters on the grounds that the promises of
pious rule had not been kept.There flared up a series of revolts, some
in the name of the Alids, others inspired by charismatic leaders who
claimed their own definitive versions of prophethood, but most of which
had roots in an amalgam of earlier messianic cults with the craving of
the masses for greater social justice.Two of these phenomena stand out
as especially characteristic.In Nishapur there appeared a man named
Bih-Afarid, who claimed to have a divine mandate to found a new cult
which contained elements of Zoroastrianism mixed with his own accretions.He
did not challenge Abu Muslim or the Muslim community, but
rather the Zoroastrian priesthood which had preserved their role of
leaders of the local religious community enjoying the status of dhimmis
or protected minorities.These mubadhs (official clergy) complained to
Abu Muslim about the matter, drawing his attention to the fact that the
trouble-maker represented a danger both for them and for him.The
governor thus suppressed the movement, just as he did a simultaneous
turbulence in Transoxania led by the Alid partisan Sharik ibn Shaykh
al-Mahri.Sharik gained to his side even some segments of the Arab
establishment in Bukhara and Khwarazm, as well as the urban population
of Bukhara, whereas the local nobility, led by the Bukhar Khudat
Qutayba (this Sogdian nobleman was no relation to Qutayba ibn
Muslim but a son of the aforementioned Bukhar Khudat Tughshada;
the latter, a convert to Islam, named his son Qutayba in honor of the
Arab commander), stayed on the side of the new masters.Abu Muslim