2020-01-25 Sat

Today on 25th January Battle of the Zab (also referred to as Battle of the Great Zab River) took place in 750 AD on the banks of the Great Zab River in modern-day Iraq. It was the climactic battle in the Abbasid Revolution that ousted the Umayyad dynasty from the caliphate.

In 747AD a major rebellion broke out against the Umayyad Caliphate, which ruled most of the Middle East from 661AD to 750 AD. In 750 AD, the army of the last Umayyad caliph Marwan II fought a combined force of Abbasid, Shia, Khawarij, and Iraqi forces. Marwan suffered a decisive defeat by Abu al-'Abbas al-Saffah on the banks of the Great Zab called Battle of the Zab. At this battle alone, over 300 members of the Umayyad family died.

It spelled the end of the Umayyad Caliphate and the rise of the Abbasids, a dynasty that would last (under various influences and with varying power) until the 13th century.

During the first Abbasid period, the new form of coins was introduced. In relevance to the look, they were similar to the Umayyad, but the script has taken distinctive forms. The name of the caliph was absent in the earlier coins, however, in this period it appears on the coins. Both the gold and silver coins of this period have written the name of legend "Mohammed is the prophet of Allah." On the dirham, kalima was scripted “There is no god except Allah, he has no partner."

Image Source: wikipedia.org