Timeline Explorer · Qayrawan · Stop 1 of 9
c. 670 CE · c. 50 AH approximate debated before the Hijra
In al-Baladhuri: Mu'awiya ibn Khudayj sent — or, some say, Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan gave him the Maghreb — Uqba ibn Nafi' al-Fihri, who raided Ifriqiya with ten thousand Muslims, conquered it, and laid out its Qayrawan, whose site was a thicket of trees and thickets unapproachable…
محمد قباني، الدولة الأموية من الميلاد إلى السقوط (دمشق، دار وحي القلم، 2006)فتوح البلدان — البلاذري (طبعة مؤسسة المعارف)
The Founding of Qayrawan — c. 670 CE · c. 50 AH
In al-Baladhuri: Mu'awiya ibn Khudayj sent — or, some say, Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan gave him the Maghreb — Uqba ibn Nafi' al-Fihri, who raided Ifriqiya with ten thousand Muslims, conquered it, and laid out its Qayrawan, whose site was a thicket of trees and thickets unapproachable for beasts, snakes and deadly vermin; Uqba being a righteous man whose prayer was answered, he prayed to his Lord and all that was removed — till the very beasts carried away their young in flight; and Musa ibn Ali said the first to build it was Uqba ibn Nafi', who laid it out then built — the people building houses and dwellings with him — and built its congregational mosque; and a body of Ifriqiya's people told from their shaykhs that when Uqba wished to make Qayrawan a misr he pondered where its mosque should be, and saw in a dream as though a man gave the call to prayer in the place where its minaret stood — so when morning came he built the minarets in the man's station, then built the mosque. Al-Waqidi said Abdallah ibn Sa'd stayed governor until Muhammad ibn Abi Hudhayfa seized Egypt; then Mu'awiya gave Maslama ibn Mukhallad al-Ansari Egypt and the Maghreb, and he gave the Maghreb to his mawla Abu al-Muhajir; when Yazid ibn Mu'awiya ruled he restored Uqba to his office — who raided Sus al-Adna beyond Tangier, roaming unchallenged till he returned; Abu al-Abbas gave Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath al-Khuza'i Ifriqiya — he repaired Qayrawan's city and mosque — then al-Mansur dismissed him and gave his place to Umar ibn Hafs Hazarmard.
The Ifriqiyan Army's Rising against Ibn al-Ash'ath in His Palace — between 754 and 758 CE
In al-Baladhuri: Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath al-Khuza'i entered Ifriqiya as governor at Abu al-Abbas's caliphate's end in seventy thousand — it is said forty — and governed it four years, repairing Qayrawan's city; then the province's army and others rose on him — al-Baladhuri heard from informants that the townspeople and resident troops rose on him and he fought them forty days in his palace until the obedient gathered to him of the Khurasanis who had come with him and others, and he prevailed over his foes and passed them over the names: whoever was named Mu'awiya or Sufyan or Marwan or a name matching the Umayyads' he killed, and whoever was named otherwise he spared — then al-Mansur dismissed him.
al-Aghlab ibn Salim's Death by an Arrow and Harish's Rout — between 785 and 786 CE
In al-Baladhuri via Ahmad ibn Nafi', mawla of the Aghlab family: al-Aghlab ibn Salim al-Tamimi was of Marw al-Rudh's people among the Masawwida who came from Khurasan; Musa al-Hadi gave him the Maghreb, and Harish — a man of the frontier army of Tunis — gathered him a host and marched on him at Qayrawan of Ifriqiya, besieging him; al-Aghlab sallied and fought him, an arrow struck him in the battle and he fell dead, his companions not knowing of his fall nor Harish's companions knowing; then Harish and his army fled, al-Aghlab's men pursued three days and killed them, killing Harish at a place known as Suq al-Ahad — and al-Aghlab was called al-Shahid.
Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab's Founding of al-Abbasiyya — c. 800 CE · c. 184 AH†
In al-Baladhuri: when the frontier army besieged Ibrahim at Qayrawan, al-Muradi and al-Mamrun came to him bearing money from Egypt's kharaj — when paid, they dispersed. Ibrahim then built the White Palace two miles in Qayrawan's qibla direction, laid out plots around it for the people who built and made it a misr, built a congregational mosque of gravel and brick on marble columns roofed with cedar, two hundred cubits by about two hundred; he bought slaves he freed — they reached five thousand — settled them around it and named that city al-Abbasiyya, inhabited and flourishing to al-Baladhuri's day.
Fall of Kairouan (909) — 909 CE · 296 AH†
Draft card for Fall of Kairouan (909); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
Kairouan incident against the Rafida under al-Mu'izz ibn Badis — c. 1016 CE · c. 407 AH
Al-Mu'izz b. Badis broke with the Rafida and proclaimed Sunnism; when his horse stumbled and he called on Abu Bakr and Umar, the commons rose against the Shia and slew them wholesale — the rift deepened until the khutba for the Cairo caliphs was cut in 440 .
Battle of Kairouan (1053) — 1053 CE · 445 AH†
Draft card for Battle of Kairouan (1053); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
Battle of Kairouan (1348) — 1348 CE · 749 AH†
Draft card for Battle of Kairouan (1348); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
The Kairouan disaster — 1348 CE · Dhu al-Hijja 748 AH
The greatest battle of the Marinid era: the Arabs of Ifriqiya — sons of Mihhal, the Ka'ub and Banu Sulaym — rose against Abu al-Hasan's army and set over themselves Ahmad ibn Hamza back from Alexandria; the sultan marched in the hajj days of 748 and routed them at the defile below Kairouan, but they regathered, turned and hemmed him in the city, broke his ranks and plundered his camp, while he escaped to Susa and sailed for Tunis as the Arabs with Ibn Abi Dabbus laid siege to the capital — until he abandoned Ifriqiya for the Maghreb, his son Abu Inan having seized the throne in his absence.
