The prodigious rise and subsequent dramatic  fall of royal houses has always been one of  

the most reliable fonts of drama in history.  From the destruction of the Achaemenids to the  

fracturing of Han China, eras of dynastic collapse  are notable as a time for change and renewal.  

One of the most tumultuous and enthralling  dynastic collapses in all of history afflicted  

none other than the second dominion of Islam - the  massive and ever-expansionist Umayyad Caliphate.  

As the largest Islamic realm in world history  started disintegrating in the middle of the  

eighth century, a young member of the caliphate’s  ruling dynasty found himself isolated and amongst  

many enemies. This remarkable man - Abd  al-Rahman; the Falcon of Quraysh, escaped,  

and in a daring series of adventures eventually  came to found a rival realm in the furthest  

western edge of the Islamic world, beginning  a golden age for al-Andalus: Muslim Spain.

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The year was 741AD, a time of transition  across Eurasia. In the Frankish Kingdom,  

Charles ‘the hammer’ Martell passed away  after a great tenure of almost thirty years.  

Leo III, savior of Constantinople, died also after  a quarter-century reign as Byzantine Emperor,  

initiating a round of civil strife in the Roman  remnant. As these events unfolded elsewhere,  

one of the world’s most powerful rulers sat  working inside his kingly residence at Rusafa,  

in northern Syria. That man was Hisham ibn Abd  al-Malik - tenth caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate.  

His realm, although colossal and powerful, had  begun suffering issues both internal and external,  

including a massive Berber revolt in Africa and  military setbacks in both east and west. Suddenly,  

a ten year old child entered the caliph’s chamber.  He was Abd al-Rahman - the caliph’s grandson,  

whose father was Hisham’s late son Mu’awiya, and  whose mother was a captured Berber concubine.  

These were, if the sources are to be  believed, days in which capricious  

Umayyad governors would frequently abduct  comely womenfolk from Berber homes to fill  

the harems of Syria - the Umayyads’ centre  of power. Abd al-Rahman was not fully mature,  

but already tall and athletic, he had all  the hallmarks of physical greatness to come.  

Curiously, the boy is also said to have had little  to no sense of smell, for whatever reason. As  

the child entered the chamber, caliph Hisham  and his brother Maslama turned to regard him,  

but the caliph did so with little patience, giving  him a quick, familiar hand signal indicating that  

al-Rahman should go away. The caliph was busy.  As the child turned to depart, however, Maslama  

went over and took his great nephew up in both  hands, embracing the boy. The caliph’s brother was  

believed to have the ability to see the destiny  of individuals in their faces. Turning to Hisham,  

Maslama said: “Let him stay, O Commander of the  Faithful. He is a lord of the House of Umayya,  

their refuge in the time of decline of their  power. He will be the restorer of their realm  

after its fall. Be good to him.” After this,  al-Rahman was always regarded highly by Hisham.

The Caliph died two years later, and with him  passed the last hope for the Umayyad line.  

Seven years later, the armies of the final Umayyad  caliph Marwan II were utterly crushed by the  

brilliant ‘Abbasid’ general Abu Muslim at the  Battle of Zab. The fourteenth and final caliph,  

defeated in battle, fled from town to town until  he was finally caught and killed at Busiris,  

in Egypt. So great was the enmity with which  the Umayyads were viewed that, after their fall,  

a great slaughter of the family took place.  Dozens of prominent members of the Banu Umayya  

were massacred across the entire empire. Even  the corpse of caliph Hisham, who had died in 743,  

was dug up, lashed and then burned ignominiously.  Abd al-Rahman, now in his late teens,  

was forced to hide in a village close to  the Euphrates river in Northeastern Syria.  

But, the young man was betrayed by a slave of  a man he trusted, and riders bearing the black  

standard of the new Abbasid dynasty were on their  way. Running for his life alongside a brother,  

al-Rahman first fled into a riverside orchard,  but was seen and pursued. With the usurpers’  

cavalry at their heels, the two princes leapt into  the river and began desperately swimming across.  

At the midpoint, al-Rahman’s brother, who was not  nearly his equal as a swimmer, began struggling  

and panicked. When the onlooking horsemen  shouted “Come back, you will not be harmed!”,  

the prince’s brother went back and threw himself  at the ground before them, begging for mercy.  

When Abd al-Rahman reached the other bank, he  turned and looked on helplessly. According to  

him “They caught my brother who had come to  them under the promise of amnesty. They cut  

off his head. They took his head away, and I was  watching.” Horrified, the older sibling turned and  

sprinted blindly into a nearby forest, possessing  the shirt on his back and a small bag of money.

On his own, sheltering with generous  shepherds, cowherds and other such lowly folks,  

this ‘last Umayyad’ eventually arrived  in Palestine, where he was joined by  

two former slaves - his own - Badr, and the  ex-slave of his sister, Salem. The latter had,  

with considerable stealth, brought a small  fortune of money and jewels to keep Abd al-Rahman  

at the behest of his sister. Halting for a while  in Palestine to prepare for the coming journey,  

this veritable fellowship laid low to  avoid detection by Abbasid partisans.  

After some time had passed, they traveled south  to Egypt and resided there incognito for a time.  

For whatever reason, the fugitive prince and his  band made their way to the ancient city of Barca  

by the Mediterranean coast, and settled down  for a while. Now far from the Mesopotamian core  

of the new Abbasid Caliphate, the company of  al-Rahman believed they could rest easier,  

but there was another threat close at hand. The  local governor was a man who shared the prince’s  

name - Abd al-Rahman bin Habeeb. This magnate  was closely advised by a Jewish councilor who  

had previously lived in Syria, serving the former  Umayyad caliph’s brother Maslama. Consequently,  

this advisor was known for making prophecy-like  predictions about what would happen in the future  

like Maslama once had. One of his predictions was  that a man from the Banu Umayya clan would seize a  

realm of his own in Spain and start a new dynasty.  His name, according to the Jew, would be Abd  

al-Rahman, a prediction which gave the ambitious  governor hope. The prudent advisor, however,  

discouraged this line of his superior’s thinking  by arguing that he was not of the correct clan.  

Reluctantly acknowledging this fact, the  viceroy set down his hopes for Spain. He was  

still concerned by the prediction, primarily  because his cousin and ally Yusuf governed  

the territory of al-Andalus. Because of this  fear, agents had been dispatched to many towns  

and roads throughout the Maghreb, searching  for any other Abd al-Rahmans in the region.

As the fugitive Umayyad prince was making his way  through Tripoli, one of these henchmen managed  

to locate him. The escapee was finally captured  and brought to his namesake’s seat at Qairowan,  

where he was brought into a hostile audience  with the other Abd al-Rahman. Immediately  

noticing the prince’s noble bearing, the  viceroy whispered to his advisor “This is he.  

I am going to kill him.” The Jewish  councillor protested, stating in reference  

to his own prediction “If you kill him, it  is not he. If you let him go, it is he.”  

Perhaps there was still some remnant of loyalty to  the Umayyads in this advisor. Whatever the case,  

the viceroy was so taken aback by this response  that he allowed Abd al-Rahman to leave unharmed.  

The Prince took the opportunity, speeding west  as fast as he could with his two companions.  

Passing into Berber country, Abd al-Rahman lived  there for a while among the people of his mother  

Ra’ha, around the area of modern Tiaret. He,  Salem and Badr passed from tribe to tribe,  

some of which welcomed him, while others treated  him with suspicion. Meanwhile, the viceroy changed  

his mind about sparing the Prince. While Abd  al-Rahman was being sheltered by the Berber  

chieftain Abu Qurrah Wanesus, soldiers of the  other al-Rahman came to the village and began  

scouring the whole encampment. As it became  inevitable that he would be found and slain,  

it is said that the chieftain’s wife Tekfah  concealed al-Rahman within the folds of her dress  

until the danger had passed. This protective act  can only be explained by a great fondness which  

the wanted Umayyad had engendered during his time  among the native Africans. Immensely thankful,  

Abd al-Rahman would never forget these Berbers  during his later, more prosperous days. Driven  

by the constant pursuit of the viceroy’s men, Abd  al-Rahman fled to the Mediterranean coast in early  

754, probably emerging somewhere in the vicinity  of Ceuta, where his mother’s ‘Nafza’ tribe was  

located. The prince could finally feel peace,  being both out of the viceroy’s reach and in  

the midst of loving kinsmen and women. Throughout  the entire journey, Badr and Salem kept faithful.

From his new, relatively comfortable stomping  grounds on the coastal region in the shadow of  

the Atlas Mountains, news trickled across the  straits from al-Andalus. Ever since the 730s,  

Muslim Spain had been embroiled in civil war  driven by a complex fusion of both Arab-Berber and  

inter-Arab tribal feuds, supplemented by jealousy  between old and new arrivals to the peninsula.  

In this, the Prince saw opportunity. He  knew that veteran Syrian jund contingents  

with strong ties to his deposed family had  been dispatched to deal with the unrest,  

and were stationed at Granada and Jaen. These men  represented the possible core of a conquest army.  

So, in the middle of June 754, al-Rahman  dispatched his ever-faithful companion Badr  

across the strait to Spain. Over the course of  a year, while his banu Umayya escapee master  

resided comfortably on the African coast, Badr  laboured with peerless grit and determination.  

He put out feelers and tested for allies, while  raising support and spreading the word that  

the great Umayyads were about to return and put  al-Andalus to rights. The Syrian divisions were on  

board, as were many Arab Yamanite1 clans and other  factions who opposed the rule of governor Yusuf -  

cousin of Abd al-Rahman’s old pursuer. With the  stage set, Badr sent a ship to pick up al-Rahman.  

It was on the afternoon of August 14th 755 that  the fugitive prince landed at Almuñécar on the  

Andalucian coast. On his arrival, supporters  poured out to meet him, supposedly offering him  

wine and women, both of which he turned out in  acts of ascetic, princely virtue. As al-Rahman  

was rallying the sympathetic tribes, clans  and military units of al-Andalus to his side,  

Yusuf and his cunning chief captain Sumail were  debating on how to stop him. The latter wished  

to march on al-Rahman immediately before winter  set in. Eventually however, to Sumail’s dismay,  

the vacillating governor decided to ensnare the  Umayyad with a marriage to his own daughter,  

which was swiftly denied. Winter swept in, and  Yusuf’s opportunity to win quickly was gone.

Throughout the winter of 755 and into early  756, Abd al-Rahman embarked on a final flurry of  

activity, drawing in whatever clients he could and  concentrating forces at Granada for the decisive  

clash. He went from city to city, Archidona  to Ronda to Medina-Sidonia and then Jerez,  

receiving welcomes and recruiting  more warriors as he did so.  

By the time al-Rahman reached Seville in early  April, his army was about 3,000 strong. After  

receiving the allegiance of the citizens and  that of the entire southwestern region of Spain,  

known as the Gharb, the would-be conqueror called  a council of prominent generals, advisors and  

chiefs. Messengers had just brought in news  that Yusuf and his forces were on the march.  

The council agreed that it was time to meet the  governor in a decisive battle and crush him.  

At the beginning of May 756, al-Rahman advanced  northeast from Seville along the southern bank  

of the Guadalquivir River towards Córdoba. The  army’s strength is almost entirely unknown, but it  

consisted of Banu Umayya and their client junds,  who were mostly from Syria, most of the Yamanite  

wing of the tribal division, some Muzarites who  hated Yusuf and a large Berber contingent from  

the Gharb. The march along the river’s edge  continued, Umayyad forces on the south bank,  

while Yusuf’s hugged the north. Before long, the  two armies encountered one another about halfway  

between Seville and Córdoba. The Guadalquivir  however, swollen by recent heavy rainfall,  

couldn’t be forded, and so both forces simply  stared at one another. Logistics began exerting  

strain almost immediately. Yusuf’s troops were  better organised and therefore better provisioned,  

whereas al-Rahman was leading a hungry army with  little supply. He needed an early conclusion  

before hunger started prompting desertions. Aiming  at precisely this kind of decisive stroke, the  

Umayyad prince force marched directly towards the  near-undefended capital at Córdoba, but Sumail saw  

through this strategy and simply shadowed along  the other bank. This parallel march continued for  

a few days until Yusuf came to a stop at a place  called Musara, where there was a usable ford.

Checkmated, Abd al-Rahman’s starving  army was blocked from crossing the ford,  

nor could it march on to Córdoba, which was  guarded. So, sending entreaties across the river,  

the prince outlined that it had all been a  misunderstanding. Yusuf’s offer was generous,  

but had merely not been explained clearly enough  by al-Rahman’s emissaries. Negotiations and an  

inevitable acceptance could take place, but it  would, of course, be far easier to negotiate  

if he could cross the river unhindered.  For some inconceivably naive reason,  

perhaps underestimating the young man, both Yusuf  and Sumail were overjoyed with the prospect of  

peace and allowed al-Rahman’s force to cross the  Guadalquivir without opposition. By nightfall of  

May 13th 756, all of al-Rahman’s army were  across and encamped west of the governor’s.  

When dawn came, however, the truth was revealed  in the form of a fully battle-arrayed enemy force.  

It had, somewhat obviously, all been a trick. In  what became known as the brief and bloody Battle  

of Musara, the surprised and beleaguered  force under Yusuf and Sumail was shattered  

and scattered by Abd al-Rahman’s hodgepodge army.  Soon after, the erstwhile Prince entered Córdoba.  

What followed was the foundation  of an extremely prosperous Emirate,  

and later Caliphate. Centered in Córdoba,  this illustrious polity came to represent  

not only the golden age of Islamic high culture  in Iberia, but perhaps the entire Muslim world.

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