the Conquest, with a mail helmet on his head and a black turban above it.

He then dispatched his uncle ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī to fight the Umayyads. In 132 AH he routed them, and the last of their caliphs—Marwān ibn Muḥammad ibn Marwān, nicknamed Marwān al-Ḥimār—fled the battlefield. He was also called Marwān al-Jaʿdī, it is said because of his association with Jaʿd ibn Dirham.

ʿAbd Allāh entered Damascus and seized everything that had belonged to the Umayyads of dominion, estates, and wealth. Many grave events followed; we shall recount them in detail at their proper place, God willing.

A number of the early scholars transmitted lengthy reports about the black banners that will come forth from Khurāsān. Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād assembled them in his book. Some of the chains indicate that this matter has not yet occurred and that it will take place at the end of time, as we shall relate in due course, God Most High willing. In Him we trust and upon Him we rely.

ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated from Maʿmar, from al-Zuhrī, who said that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ declared: “The Hour will not be established until the world belongs to a lukiʿ son of a lukiʿ.” Abū Maʿmar remarked: “That is Abū Muslim al-Khurāsānī”—meaning the man who established the ʿAbbāsid state.

The point, then, is that in this very year authority passed from the Umayyads to the ʿAbbāsids. The first to rise among them was Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Saffāḥ, followed by his brother Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh al-Manṣūr, the builder of Madīnat al-Salām (Baghdad); then his son al-Mahdī Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh; after him his son al-Hādī; then his other son Hārūn al-Rashīd. Thereafter the caliphate spread among his descendants, as we shall detail when we reach those years.

The ḥadiths we have just cited explicitly mention al-Saffāḥ, al-Manṣūr, and al-Mahdī. There is no doubt, however, that the Mahdī who was al-Manṣūr’s son and the third ʿAbbāsid caliph is not the Mahdī described in the widely transmitted traditions: the one who will appear at the end of time and fill the earth with justice and equity just as it had been filled with oppression and wrongdoing. We have devoted a separate treatise to the reports concerning him, just as Abū Dāwūd set aside an entire book for him in his Sunan. Some of the aforementioned ḥadiths state that he will hand the caliphate over to Jesus son of Mary when the latter descends to earth; Allah knows best.

As for al-Saffāḥ, earlier reports place him in the last days, which makes it unlikely that he is the man who was given the pledge as the first ʿAbbāsid caliph. It is more probable that he will be some other caliph, and this is the apparent meaning.

Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād narrated—through Ibn Wahb, from Ibn Luhayʿah, from Yazīd ibn ʿAmr al-Muʿāfirī, from Tadūm al-Ḥimyarī, who heard Tabīʿ ibn ʿĀmir—who said: “Al-Saffāḥ will live for forty years; in the Torah his name is ‘Bird of the Sky.’” (1)

I say: It may be that this is merely a description of the Mahdī who will appear at the end of time, because of the great amount of blood he will shed—that is, the blood he will spill in order to establish justice and spread equity. If the ḥadiths about the black banners are authentic, then those banners will be the ones borne alongside the Mahdī. The first appearance of his pledge will be in Mecca, after which his supporters will come to him from Khurāsān, just as happened long ago with al-Saffāḥ.