No one would have imagined that Juhayman Al-Otaibi, who called himself the Mahdi, and his followers entered the Sacred House, armed with the most powerful weapons, to commit this crime; Were it not for its frequency and scenes that are still present today, but the worst of what Juhayman committed would have occurred a thousand years before that in the fourth century AH / tenth century AD, when a gang of criminals violated the Sacred House, killed its people and stole the Black Stone without an eyelid. Qarmatians. Who are the Qarmatians who did this? And how did they appear on the scene of the events of Islamic history? What are their main ideas? Why did the armies stand in front of them, unable to suppress them and bury their movement? Then why did they enter the Sacred House violating its sanctity and killing its people and worshipers?!
With the martyrdom of the great companion Al-Hussein bin Ali – may God be pleased with him – in the battle of Karbala, a strong movement appeared in support of the Ahl al-Bayt and their men against the Umayyad and Abbasid authority later on. The Shiites of the Al al-Bayt.
A series of sons and grandsons of Ali bin Abi Talib led the leadership of the Alawite movement, and soon he believed in these a group that says their imam, and they believe that Ali bin Abi Talib – may God be pleased with him – had recommended to him the Prophet – may God bless him and grant him peace – with the text, and the guardians after him his sons from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, and then they divided themselves among many groups, the most prominent of whom were the “Twelvers” who believe that the caliphate after Hussein bin Ali – may God be pleased with him – for eleven sons and grandsons known by their names, persons and attributes, beginning with Hussein and after him Muhammad al-Baqir, then Jaafar al-Sadiq and then Musa Al-Kazim, then Muhammad Al-Jawad, then Ali Al-Hadi, then Al-Hassan Al-Askari, then Muhammad bin Al-Hassan Al-Askari, and he is the absent Imam among them, whom they believe “returned.”
From the Twelvers, the Ismailis emerged, who believe that the most worthy of the imamate is not Musa al-Kazim ibn Jaafar al-Sadiq, but his other son, Ismail ibn Jaafar al-Sadiq. Al-Kazim and his successor, and one of his descendants was Abdullah Al-Mahdi, who appeared in North Africa and the king of Morocco and expanded to Egypt, establishing the Fatimid state[1].
Alongside the work of the early Qarmatians, headed by their leader who is attributed to this sect, Hamdan Al-Qarmati with the Ismailis, calling for it, and believing in it. The Ismaili movement was going according to a precise advocacy scheme, and a hierarchical organization on a very complex and secret basis to ensure that it was not exposed to the Abbasid authorities that were Tracking any Alawite movement from which there is suspicion that it may be carrying out an armed opposition.
And they took the Iraqi city of Wasit as their headquarters in the beginning, where its atmosphere was suitable for the growth and spread of the call, and most of its people were poor and those who were subjected to grievances from the rulers of the Abbasid rule, and from here most of them responded to the Qarmatians, and joined their ranks, but Hamdan Al-Qarmati built a building A center for his call near the city of Kufa, the most important and largest stronghold, and the most famous incubator for Shiite movements since the Umayyad dynasty and until then, so he called it “Dar Al-Hijrah,” and took it as a starting point for broadcasting his call, and a center in which the elements who were convinced of his view gathered, and this organized secret movement relied on the element of money to strengthen Its center, where Hamdan al-Qarmati imposed fixed taxes on his followers, through which he was able to recruit and bring in more followers and believers in his ideas.
The Abbasid state was able to arrest some of the Qarmati’s followers, and saw in them a severe threat to public security in Iraq, as well as the spread of their extremist ideologies and ideologies, and the authorities, led by the Caliph himself, wanted to stand on their faith and what they were throwing, but the interrogations revealed that the Qarmatians believed to the end. With their ideas and ideology without announcing it before the authorities, they took advantage of the Zanj revolution that took place in the blackness of Iraq, which are areas where agricultural and agricultural work predominated, and in which Zanj or slaves coming from Africa rose and settled in these areas under the influence of some preachers to go out and demand their rights, so the Qarmatians took advantage of this revolution The armed groups continued for 15 consecutive years, during which they expanded the circle of their da’wah and attracted thousands to their ideas. Some people even came to Baghdad warning the Caliphate of the danger of this da’wah, which was taking a more extreme course as the era became obsolete.
Al-Tabari narrates in his history that a group of the people of Kufa came to Baghdad to warn of the danger of the Qarmatians, and they said in the statement of their testimony that the Qarmatians “innovated a religion other than Islam, and that they see the sword over the nation of Muhammad,” but the Abbasid authorities did not listen to them, but it was proven that a Western ruler Iraq at that time used to take one dinar from the Qarmatians for each person annually, which made him turn a blind eye to them[2].
Hamdan al-Qarmati divided his vocation, and made his son-in-law Abdan his main tool, and the mind that theorizes the Qarmati idea, so he wrote most of the books of the holy sect. The largest Qarmatians in western Iraq, and the second man was Abu Saeed Al-Janabi in the southern region of Persia, and Qarmat himself remained in an area close to Baghdad. News of the capital came to him, as well as news of Ismailia in Persia, so he worked and planned based on the news he received from both sides.
The activity of the Qarmatians, after the death of the powerful Abbasid Caliph Al-Mu’tad Billah in the year 289 AH, extended to the Levant, then to Iraq, and in the meantime, the Qarmatian caller in southern Persia was Abu Saeed Al-Hassan bin Bahram Al-Janabi, the most active preacher in his call, and he played the nationalist chord in a game that led to the success great, for he was spreading among the people that God abhors the Arabs because they killed Hussein, and that he loves the subjects of the clans and their caliphs; Because they are the only ones who rose to support the rights of the imams from the family of the house in the caliphate, and that there are some mistakes in many of the orders of the prophets, and these ideas affected the Persians quickly and widely, and while in that state it spread among the people of Persia when the Abbasid police raided its headquarters, and took over On his money, the man miraculously escaped from their hands, and this coincided with sending Hamdan Qarmat to him asking him to appear before him in Iraq [3].
The two dangerous men met in Kaluwadhi near Baghdad for the first time, and when Hamdan Qarmat Abu Saeed Al-Janabi sat, he saw in him intelligence, acumen, and sincerity to the call. From the Bedouins and the remnants of the Zanj revolution who preferred to flee to the desert of the Arabian Peninsula away from the armies of the Abbasids, so the land was paved for Al-Janabi, and his success was brilliant. In fact, he soon married the daughter of a prominent man in that region named Al-Hassan bin Sanbar, and his strength and social standing had an impact on The spread of the Qarmati call among the people in those areas, and the year 286 AH did not come when Abu Saeed al-Janabi was in control of most of the country of Bahrain, and took over Qatif, and from that moment on, al-Janabi began to use armed force to force the villages to obey him, al-Tabari says in that:
And in this year a man from the Qarmatians known as Abu Saeed Al-Janabi appeared in Bahrain, and a group of Arabs and Qarmatians gathered to him, and his emergence – as mentioned – was at the beginning of this year (288 AH), and his companions increased in Jumada Al-Akhirah, and his command was strong, so he killed those around him from the people of the villages Then he went to a place called Al-Qatif, between him and Al-Basra, and he killed those who were there.”[4]
Because of this dangerous news, the assistant of Basra and its regions sent to the Abbasid authorities asking to strengthen and protect the city of Basra, and to build a new strong wall, so approval came to him, and he spent a large sum on building this wall, as Al-Tabari narrated in his history.
Immediately, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mutadid Billah met with his senior men and princes, and the matter ended with sending a military division backed by a number of volunteers to leave the city of Basra in southern Iraq, headed by Abbas bin Amr Al-Ghanawi, to confront Abu Al-Abbas Al-Janabi Al-Qarmati and crush his movement before it escalates, but the Abbasid forces led by Al-Ghanawi was defeated tragically, and most of those who participated in it were killed. In fact, the commander of the military campaign, Al-Ghanawi, was captured, and in the end Al-Janabi released him and carried him a message of threats and threats to the Caliph Al-Mutadid in Baghdad!
This tragic defeat was one of the strongest reasons for the failure of the Abbasids to launch other military campaigns towards the east of the Arabian Peninsula, and the matter of this region was left to its sons to defend it, but the danger of the Qarmatians was increasing every day, and finally in the year 290 AH Al-Janabi cut off the area of abandonment of “Qatar” water, and was able He took control of it, and he descended on those who did not accept his invitation and were killed and tortured with the sword, and eventually the city was vandalized and demolished, and he moved to Al-Ahsa to be the new capital of the Qarmatians in the eastern Arabian Peninsula [5].
While Abu Saeed al-Janabi expands the influence of the Qarmatians in Al-Ahsa, Bahrain and Hajar, the other branch of the Qarmatians in western Iraq were in a state of activity and expansion, and even entered into an armed confrontation with some of the Abbasid rulers, and they defeated them at first, and they killed many of the Abbasid soldiers, but Soon the Abbasids defeated them and killed many of their princes and elders, and they were able to capture the rest of them, and among them was a famous man named Abu Al-Fawares, who was sentenced to death by state judges, and everyone promised that he would return after forty days of his killing, which caused riots and angered the public in Baghdad.
Al-Masudi says: “Every day, people from the common people would gather under its tree, count the days, fight and debate on the roads in that, and when the forty days had passed and there was a lot of clamor for them, they gathered, and some of them were saying this is his body, and another says he has passed, but the Sultan killed a man. Another and crucified him in his place so that people would not be tempted, and people quarreled so much that it was called to separate them.”
The activity of the Qarmatians did not stop in Iraq and eastern Arabia, but extended to the desert of the Levant and the depth of the Levant itself when they defeated its ruler, Tughg al-Ikhshid in the year 289 AH, and they almost took over Damascus after a long siege. And Salamiyah, and in Salamiyah, the stronghold of the Ismaili call, the city from which Ubaid Allah al-Mahdi came, whose lineage differs between one who says that he is a descendant of Jafar al-Sadiq, and one who says that he is a pretender. In this historical Ismaili stronghold, the Qarmatians sent down their anger and wrath on the people of the city, as they showed the extent their brutality in other Levantine cities.
Concerning this brutality, al-Tabari, a contemporary historian of those events, says: “He (Al-Qarmati) walked from it to Hama and Ma’arat al-Numan and others, and killed its people, and killed women and children. Salamiyah, its people fought him and prevented him from entering, then he said goodbye to them and gave them safety, so they opened its door for him, so he entered it, and he started with those in it from Banu Hashim, and there was a group of them in it and killed them, then he praised the people of Salamiyah and killed them all. And there is no eye of extremism – as was said – and he walked in the surrounding villages, killing, captivating, burning, and frightening the way.”[7]
Al-Tabari brings tragic stories about the atrocities and crimes of the Qarmatians at those times. Their doctrine developed and became in itself a religion different from Islam, to the extent that Al-Tabari narrates that the sons of Dan, in the Qarmatian belief, disavowed his mother who searched for him for long and for many months because she remained on Islam and did not enter the Qarmatian religion. According to his claim, al-Tabari also narrates that a Hashemite woman from the Alawites was not spared their atrocities, as he took turns raping her and living with her four Qarmatians until, when the moment of her birth came, she complained: “I live with them, four of them, and by God, I do not know who this boy is.” 8]!
And this incident and other things that are more horrific confirm that the Qarmatians were hiding behind the Ismaili Shi’ism. Rather, Ibn Al-Jawzi quotes from contemporary historians of them that the second Qarmatian leader, Abu Taher Al-Janabi, entered Kufa several times, and in it was the tomb of Imam Ali – may God be pleased with him. He, peace be upon him, passed through al-Ha’ir and did not visit al-Husayn.
Because of the danger of the Qarmatians and their totally contrary to Islam belief, Imam Ibn al-Jawzi composed his famous treatise “Qarmatians” in which he says: “Know that their apparent doctrine is the rejection of “Shiism” and its interior is unbelief, and its opening is to limit the perceptions of science to the saying of the infallible Imam, and isolate the minds to be aware of the truth because of the suspicions that oppose it. … This is the principle of their da’wah, then their ultimate goal is to violate the laws… It has been proven from them that they say of two ancient gods.. All of them denied the Resurrection.. Then they believed that prohibitions were permitted, and the stone was lifted… and their aim was to destroy the laws of Sharia.”[10]
And if the Qarmatians wreaked havoc in Iraq, the homeland of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Levant, and eastern Arabia, killing, raping, and committing mass massacres, and defeated many military campaigns even from the most famous leaders, then as soon as the fourth century AH began, their ideas, beliefs and aggressive plans towards Muslims developed into what is More severe and worse.
The contact began between the Qarmatians on one side and the emerging Fatimid state in the Arab Maghreb before moving to Egypt on the other hand, but in the year 300 AH, by surprise, one of the slaves of Abu Saeed bin Bahram al-Janabi al-Farsi entered him by surprise, so I said him, and his son Abu Taher bin Abu Saeed al-Janabi, and with his ascension to the leadership of the Qarmatians in the Arabian Peninsula, close ties between the Ismaili Fatimids and the Qarmatians, despite the difference in the belief of the imams of each of them, but the common hostility of the Abbasids made them enter into a secret alliance.
The new alliance was very malicious, outright hostile. Both the Qarmatians and the Fatimids wanted it to desecrate and weaken the image of the Abbasids in the collective Sunni imagination in all parts of the Islamic world. Pilgrims and pilgrims, starting in the year 312 AH, were their first disastrous attacks on the convoys of pilgrims and pilgrims, as one thousand men and eight hundred Qarmati knights left Bahrain, exposed to the largest convoy of pilgrims at the time, which included thousands of men, women and goods. Eyewitnesses estimated that the Qarmatians slaughtered 2,200 men and 500 women And they took the others captives to Hajar, and the spoils were estimated at one million golden dinars as well as others, and they also dropped the Abbasid emblem in the Hajj, where they seized the Abbasid flag or the solar one[11]. Blood rivers in the heart of the Arabian Peninsula!
Abu Taher al-Janabi al-Qarmati sent a letter to the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir in God stipulating that the Abbasid caliphate cede Basra and Ahwaz to the Qarmatians in exchange for them stopping the Sunni Muslim subjects, their ways, their blood, and their money, and since the letter was an insult in itself to the Abbasid caliph, the greatest religious and political figure at the time. , he did not write to Qarmati an answer to this insult, at a time when public opinion in the capital, Baghdad, began declaring his indignation at the failure of the minister Ibn al-Furat, who called him “the Great Qarmati” an insult and mockery[12], which forced the Abbasids to prepare a huge army led by the military commander. Mu’nis al-Turki headed towards Kufa and eventually settled in Wasit to be close to Basra, Kufa and Baghdad.
The Qarmatian attack continued on the outskirts of Mecca, and the pilgrimage routes coming from Iraq, the Levant and others, which negatively affected the numbers of arriving pilgrims, and year after year the number of pilgrims and Umrah pilgrims began to decrease, and the image of the Abbasids collapsed more and more among the general public, and in the year 317 AH many scholars issued a fatwa invalidating Hajj is a protection for souls and honor [13], until the great catastrophe came in the same year, so Abu Taher al-Qarmati, their leader, decided to enter Mecca itself, and do with it what they liked!
On the outskirts of Makkah, the governor Ibn Mahlab went out with a number of its notables to meet Al-Qarmati and his army, asking them to stay away from the holy city in a peaceful manner, but Al-Qarmati urgently attacked them with the sword and killed them all. Covering the Kaaba, and in the midst of this human stampede during the Hajj season, you would see the fierce soldiers of Abu Taher killing and trampling everything with tragic barbarism, and shouting at their victims in mockery and brutality: “Oh donkeys! Didn’t you say in this house that whoever entered it was safe? Where have you forbidden him now?”] 14]!
Ibn al-Jawzi and other commentators comment on the Almighty’s saying: “Whoever enters it will be safe,” meaning, whoever enters the Sacred Mosque, the people in charge of this house must secure the visitors, pilgrims, and pilgrims and work on their comfort and not be exposed to them, and it was said that we are safe from the fire [15]. The looting of the Qarmatians spread, and they started killing people everywhere inside the sanctuary and in the roads and streets of the honorable Mecca until the sacred land was filled with corpses. He considered the Kaaba and the Sacred House and circumambulating it like worshiping idols and idols, and he reprimanded the Muslims who killed him with these words before killing him. The end of the matter is to take the Black Stone and uproot it from its place before leaving[16]!
The Black Stone remained in the Qarmatian possession for more than twenty whole years, during which they reached the height of their power. And they decided to reconcile with them in return for paying a huge annual ransom estimated at 120,000 golden dinars, and in the year 337 AH, after arduous mediation, and the payment of huge sums of money, the Abbasids received the Black Stone and returned it to its place again!
In the end, the Qarmatians fell as a result of their internal shrinkage, and many of them migrated to Iran, and in the middle of the fifth century the Umayyads and some Arab tribes loyal to the Abbasids and the Seljuks were able to defeat the Qarmatians and drive them from the provinces of Al-Ahsa and Bahrain, after nearly two centuries in which people tasted the most heinous crimes and massacres committed in the name of ideas Extremism in the medieval Islamic era!