Their next step would be to cross the sea to al-Andalus, where Abd al-Rahman could not have been sure whether or not he would be welcomed. In 755, Abd al-Rahman and Bedr reached modern-day Morocco near Ceuta. Once they were gone, Abd al-Rahman and Bedr immediately set off westwards. When Ibn Habib's soldiers entered the camp, the Berber chieftain's wife Tekfah hid Abd al-Rahman under her personal belongings to help him go unnoticed. Ibn Habib dispatched spies to look for the Umayyad prince. At the time, Abd al-Rahman and Bedr were keeping a low profile, staying in Kabylie, at the camp of a Nafza Berber chieftain friendly to their plight. Around 755, believing he had discovered plots involving some of the more prominent Umayyad exiles in Kairouan, Ibn Habib turned against them. He feared the presence of prominent Umayyad exiles in Ifriqiya, a family more illustrious than his own, might become a focal point for intrigue among local nobles against his own usurped powers.
Abd al-Rahman was only one of several surviving Umayyad family members to make their way to Ifriqiya at this time.īut Ibn Habib soon changed his mind. At first, he sought an understanding with the Abbasids, but when they refused his terms and demanded his submission, Ibn Habib broke openly with the Abbasids and invited the remnants of the Umayyad dynasty to take refuge in his dominions.
The ambitious Ibn Habib, a member of the illustrious Fihrid family, had long sought to carve out Ifriqiya as a private dominion for himself. At the time, Abd al-Rahman ibn Habib al-Fihri was the semi-autonomous governor of Ifriqiya (roughly, modern Tunisia) and a former Umayyad vassal. The journey across Egypt would prove perilous. It may be assumed that he intended to go at least as far as northwestern Africa ( Maghreb), the land of his mother, which had been partly conquered by his Umayyad predecessors. Abd al-Rahman had to keep a low profile as he traveled. Only he and Bedr were left to face the unknown.Īfter barely escaping with their lives, Abd al-Rahman and Bedr continued south through Palestine, the Sinai, and then into Egypt. Al-Maqqari quotes earlier historians reporting that Abd al-Rahman was so overcome with fear that from the far shore he ran until exhaustion overcame him. They cut off his head and left his body to rot. The 17th-century historian Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari poignantly described Abd al-Rahman's reaction as he implored Yahya to keep going: "O brother! Come to me, come to me!" Yahya returned to the near shore, and was quickly dispatched by the horsemen. The horsemen urged them to return, promising that no harm would come to them and Yahya, perhaps from fear of drowning, turned back. Abd al-Rahman and his companions then threw themselves into the River Euphrates. On the way south, Abbasid horsemen again caught up with the trio. Ībd al-Rahman, Yahya, and Bedr quit the village, narrowly escaping the Abbasid assassins. Some histories indicate that Bedr met up with Abd al-Rahman at a later date. Accounts vary, but Bedr likely escaped with Abd ar-Rahman. He left his young son with his sisters and fled with Yahya. Abbasid agents closed in on Abd al-Rahman and his family while they were hiding in a small village. The Abbasids were merciless with all Umayyads that they found. All along the way the path was filled with danger, as the Abbasids had dispatched horsemen across the region to try to find the Umayyad prince and kill him. The family fled from Damascus to the River Euphrates. Abd al-Rahman and a small part of his family fled Damascus, where the center of Umayyad power had been people moving with him included his brother Yahya, his four-year-old son Sulayman, and some of his sisters, as well as his Greek mawla (freedman or client), Bedr. He was twenty when his family, the ruling Umayyads, were overthrown by the Abbasid Revolution in 748–750. 2.1 Social dynamics and construction worksĪbd al-Rahman was born in Palmyra, near Damascus in the heartland of the Umayyad Caliphate, the son of the Umayyad prince Mu'awiya ibn Hisham and his concubine Ra'ha, a Berber woman from the Nafza tribe, and thus the grandson of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, caliph from 724 to 743.