O pity for the stranger in a distant land—
what has he done to himself?
He parted from his loved ones; they found no delight in life after him,
nor did he.

He died of that wound in the same year—may Allah have mercy on him (1).

[Year 250 AH]

During this year the rising of Abū al-Ḥusayn Yaḥyā ibn ʿUmar ibn Yaḥyā ibn Ḥusayn (2) ibn Yazīd ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib took place in Kūfah. His mother was Fāṭimah bint al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib.

Severe poverty had befallen him, so he traveled to Sāmarrāʾ and asked Wāṣif to place him on the payroll, but Wāṣif answered him harshly. Yaḥyā therefore returned to the region of Kūfah, where many Bedouins gathered around him, and people from Kūfah also came out to join him. He made camp at al-Fallūjah (3) and the numbers with him grew. Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Ṭāhir, the governor of Iraq, wrote to the prefect of Kūfah—Ayyūb (4) ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar ibn Sulaymān—ordering him to fight Yaḥyā.

Already, Yaḥyā ibn ʿUmar had entered Kūfah with a party of his companions, seized the treasury, and found in it only two thousand dinars and seventy thousand dirhams. His cause became manifest in the city: he opened the two prisons and released those inside, expelled the caliph’s deputies, confiscated their wealth, and secured control over Kūfah. Crowds from among the Zaydīs and others rallied to him.

He then left Kūfah for the surrounding countryside, but soon turned back toward the city. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, nicknamed Wajh al-Fals, confronted him in fierce combat, but Wajh al-Fals was routed. Yaḥyā ibn ʿUmar entered Kūfah once more, called for allegiance to “the one acceptable from the family of Muḥammad,” and his power grew exceedingly strong. Groups of people from Kūfah and elsewhere joined him; the commoners of Baghdad and others with Shīʿī leanings supported him and loved him more than they had loved any previous insurgent from the Prophet’s household.