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Musa ibn Mus'ab al-Khath'ami (Arabic: موسى بن مصعب الخثعمي) (died 785) was a provincial governor for the Abbasid Caliphate, serving at various times over the Jazira, Mosul, and Egypt.

Career

Described as a mawla of the tribe of Khath'am, Musa was the son of Mus'ab ibn Rabi', a secretary to the last Umayyad caliph Marwan II who later submitted to the Abbasids during the Abbasid Revolution. He himself appears to have enjoyed close relations with the Abbasid ruling family, having reportedly been a milk brother to the third caliph al-Mahdi at Humayma.

During the reign of al-Mansur (r. 754–775), Musa was appointed on multiple occasions as governor of the Jazira and Mosul. While there he enacted severe taxation policies which led to widespread unrest and earned a lengthy condemnation of his activities in the Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahre. Al-Mahdi nevertheless returned him to the same post in 783–784, during which he carried out the caliph's plans to construct an enlargement of the Friday mosque in Mosul.

In 784 Musa was appointed governor of Egypt with jurisdiction over both its military and taxation affairs, and with the task of quelling the ongoing rebellion of Dihyah ibn Mus'ab in Upper Egypt. Within a short time of his arrival he seriously alienated a large segment of the population with his large tax increases, including a doubling of the tax on the faddan and imposing levies on the markets and beasts of burden, and his standing was further harmed after he was accused of accepting bribes. In response, the Qays and Yemen Arabs of the Hawf district united against him and proclaimed a war of resistance, while the infuriated members of the Fustat jund for their part formed a secret pact with the Hawfis to not fight against them. In the spring of 785 Musa led his armies out against the Hawfis, but in the resulting encounter he was defeated, abandoned by his men and killed by the rebels.

Notes

1. Forand 1969, p. 95.
2. Forand 1969, p. 96.
3. Crone 1980, p. 193; Yarshater 1985–2007, v. 27: p 170.
4. Forand 1969, p. 95; Al-Azdi 2006, p. 439; Crone 1980, p. 193.
5. Forand 1969, pp. 94–95; Khalifah ibn Khayyat 1985, pp. 433, 441; Crone 1980, p. 193; Yarshater 1985–2007, v. 29: pp. 71, 81 & n. 192 (where he is confused for Musa ibn Ka'b).
6. Chabot 1895, pp. 91 ff.; Forand 1969, p. 94. Cahen 1954, passim, provides an analysis of this account.
7. Forand 1969, p. 96; Al-Azdi 2006, pp. 469–70.
8. Al-Kindi 1912, pp. 124–28; Ibn Taghribirdi 1930, pp. 54–55; Kennedy 1998, p. 78; Morimoto 1981, p. 152; Gordon et al. 2018, p. 1144; Yarshater 1985–2007, v. 29: p. 239.

References

• Al-Azdi, Abu Zakariyya Yazid ibn Muhammad ibn Ilyas (2006). Mahmud, Ahmad 'Abdallah (ed.). Tarikh al-Mawsil (in Arabic). Vol. 1. Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyyah.
• Cahen, Claude (1954). "Fiscalité, Propriété, Antagonismes Sociaux En Haute-Mésopotamie Au Temps Des Premiers ʿAbbāsides, D'après Denys De Tell-Mahré". Arabica (in French). 1 (2): 136–152. doi:10.1163/157005854X00186. JSTOR 4055241.
• Chabot, Jean-Baptiste, ed. (1895). Chronique de Denys de Tell-Mahré: Quatrième partie (in French). Paris: Bouillon.
• Crone, Patricia (1980). Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52940-9.
• Forand, Paul G. (January–March 1969). "The Governors of Mosul According to al-Azdī's Ta'rīkh al-Mawṣil". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 89 (1): 88–105. doi:10.2307/598281. JSTOR 598281.
• Gordon, Matthew S.; Robinson, Chase F.; Rowson, Everett K.; et al., eds. (2018). The Works of Ibn Wadih al-Ya'qubi: An English Translation. Vol. 3. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-35621-4.
• Ibn Taghribirdi, Jamal al-Din Abu al-Mahasin Yusuf (1930). Nujum al-zahira fi muluk Misr wa'l-Qahira, Volume II (in Arabic). Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya.
• Kennedy, Hugh (1998). "Egypt as a province in the Islamic caliphate, 641-868". In Petry, Carl F. (ed.). Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume One: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 62–85. ISBN 0-521-47137-0.
• Khalifah ibn Khayyat (1985). al-Umari, Akram Diya' (ed.). Tarikh Khalifah ibn Khayyat, 3rd ed (in Arabic). Al-Riyadh: Dar Taybah.
• Al-Kindi, Muhammad ibn Yusuf (1912). Guest, Rhuvon (ed.). The Governors and Judges of Egypt (in Arabic). Leyden and London: E. J. Brill.
• Morimoto, Kosei (1981). The Fiscal Administration of Egypt in the Early Islamic Period. Kyoto: Dohosha. ISBN 9784810402124.
• Yarshater, Ehsan, ed. (1985–2007). The History of al-Ṭabarī (40 vols). SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-7249-1.

• 785 deaths
• 8th-century Abbasid governors of Egypt
• 8th-century Arab people
• Abbasid governors of Mosul