9

The Rustamids

161–296/778–909

Tahert (Tāhart), in western Algeria

The Rustamids have an importance for the history of Islam in North Africa disproportionate to the duration and limited extent of their political power. In the eighth century, the majority of the Berbers of North Africa adopted the radical, egalitarian religio-political sect of Khārijism, perhaps as an expression of their own ethnic solidarity against domination by their orthodox Sunnī Arab masters. Whereas in the east, except for certain areas of concentration, Khārijism tended to be an extremist, savagely violent minority faith, in North Africa, though equally violent, it was more of a mass movement. The Khārijī sub-sect of the Ibāḍiyya, the followers of one ‘Abdallāh b. Ibāḍ of Baṣra, had their original North African centre among the Zanāta Berbers of the Jabal Nafūsa in modern Tripolitania; and, after a temporary capture of Kairouan (Qayrawān) in central Ifrīqiya or Tunisia, the bastion of Arab religious orthodoxy and military power, these Ibāḍīs controlled a vast region from Barca to the fringes of Morocco. When Arab dominion was largely re-established, a group of the Ibāḍīs under the leadership of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān b. Rustam (whose name would indicate Persian descent; he was later provided with a doubtless fictitious genealogy back to Sāsānid royalty) fled to what is now western Algeria.

Here, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān in 144/761 founded a Khārijī principality based on the newly-founded town of Tahert (Tāhart) (near modern Tiaret), and some fifteen years later he was offered the imamate of all the Ibāḍiyya of North Africa. This nucleus in Tahert was linked with Ibāḍī communities in the Aurès, southern Tunisia and the Jabal Nafūsa, and groups as far south as the Fezzān oasis acknowledged the spiritual headship of the Ibāḍī Imāms. Surrounded as they were by enemies, including the Shī‘ī Idrīsids (see above, no. 8) to the west and the Sunnī ‘Abbāsid governors and then the Aghlabids to the east, the Rustamids sought the alliance of the Spanish Umayyads, and received subsidies from them. But the rise of the messianic Shī‘ī Fāṭimids in Morocco was fatal for them, as for other local dynasties of the Maghrib like the Ṣufrī Khārijī Midrārids (see below, no. 10) and the Aghlabids. The later Rustamids were cut off in the course of the ninth century through schisms within Khārijism from their co-religionists in Tripolitania, and in 296/909 Tahert fell to the Kutāma Berber followers of the Fāṭimid dā‘ī or propagandist Abū ‘Abdallāh; many of the Rustamids were massacred, and the rest fled southwards to the oasis of Ouargla (Wargla).

Tahert under the Rustamids enjoyed a great material prosperity, being one of the northern termini, like Sijilmāsa, of the trans-Saharan caravan routes, and it acquired the name of ‘the Iraq of the Maghrib’. It attracted a cosmopolitan population, among whom were appreciable Persian and Christian elements, and was a centre of scholarship. Its great historical role was as a rallying-point and nerve-centre for Khārijism throughout North Africa; although Tahert succumbed to the Fāṭimids, Ibāḍī doctrines long remained potent in the Maghrib, and have indeed survived to this day in a few places like the Mzāb oasis in Algeria, the Tunisian island of Djerba (Jarba) and in the Jabal Nafūsa.

It is somewhat remarkable that no coins of the Rustamids have yet been found.

Sachau, 24–5 no. 55; Zambaur, 64.

EI¹ ‘Tāhert’ (G. Marçāis), EI² ‘Ibāḍiyya’ (T. Lewicki), ‘Rustamids’ (M. Talbi).

Chikh Békri, ‘Le Kharijisme berbère: quelques aspects du royaume rustumide’, AIEO Alger, 15(1957), 55–108.