The Abbasid Revolution overthrows the Umayyad Caliphate
- Date
- 25 January 750 CE (Battle of the Zab)
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Mesopotamia and the wider Islamic world
- Era
- Post-Classical / Medieval
- Significance
Beginning with Abu Muslim raising the black banners of the Hashimiyya movement in Khurasan in 747, the Abbasid Revolution channelled discontent among non-Arab Muslims (mawali), Shi'a sympathisers and easterners against Umayyad rule.
Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah was proclaimed the first Abbasid caliph at Kufa in 749. The decisive Battle of the Great Zab River, fought on 25 January 750 in Mesopotamia, shattered the army of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II, who fled and was hunted down and killed in Egypt later that year. The revolution shifted the centre of the Islamic world eastward from Damascus toward Iraq and Persia, ended the Arab aristocratic dominance of the Umayyad order, and brought Persian administrative traditions and personnel to the heart of government. It inaugurated the Abbasid Caliphate, under which the Islamic Golden Age would flower. A surviving Umayyad prince, Abd al-Rahman I, escaped to Iberia and founded an independent emirate at Córdoba, permanently splitting the western Islamic world from Abbasid authority.
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Empires active in 25 January 750 CE (Battle of the Zab)
- Tang Dynasty618 CE – 907 CE
- Umayyad Caliphate661 CE – 750 CE
- Byzantine Empire330 CE – 1453 CE
- Kanem-Bornu Empire700 CE – 1900 CE
- Tibetan Empire618 CE – 842 CE
- Uyghur Khaganate744 CE – 840 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Emperor Kanmu founds Heian-kyo, opening Japan's classical golden ageNovember 17, 794 CE
- Charlemagne crowned Emperor of the Romans25 December 800 CE
- Donation of Pepin establishes the Papal States754–756 CE
- Al-Mansur founds Baghdad as the Abbasid capital30 July 762 CE
- Wu Zetian Proclaims the Zhou Dynasty and Becomes China's Only Female Emperor16 October 690 CE
- The First Fitna and rise of the Umayyads656–661 CE
Further reading
The wider story
The Great Arab Conquests
Leading historian's narrative of the early Islamic conquests.
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