Al-Saffah

Abu al-ʿAbbās Abd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-ʿAbbās (Arabic: أبو العباس عبد الله ابن محمد ابن علي‎; 721/722 – 8 June 754), known by his laqab al-Saffah (Arabic: السفّاح), was the first caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate, one of the longest and most important caliphates in Islamic history.

His laqab al-Saffāḥ means "the Blood-Shedder". It may refer to his ruthless tactics, or perhaps it was used to intimidate his enemies. It was during his inaugural homage as Caliph, delivered in the Great Mosque of Kufa, that he called himself "al-Saffah" ("the Blood-Shedder"), and this title has deservedly stuck to him due to his massacring and hunting down Umayyads in cold blood..

As-Saffāḥ, born in Humeima (modern-day Jordan), was head of one branch of the Banu Hāshim from Arabia, a subclan of the Quraysh tribe who traced its lineage to Hāshim, a great-grandfather of Muhammad via 'Abbās, an uncle of Muhammad, hence the title "Abbasid" for his descendants' caliphate. This indirect link to Muhammad's larger clan formed sufficient basis for as-Saffah's claim to the title caliph.

As-Saffah was the son of Muhammad ibn Ali and his mother, Rayta, was the daughter of a certain Ubayd Allah ibn Abd Allah.

As narrated in many hadith, many believed that in the end times a great leader or mahdi would appear from the family of Muhammad, to which Ali belonged, who would deliver Islam from corrupt leadership. The half-hearted policies of the late Umayyads to tolerate non-Arab Muslims and Shi'as had failed to quell unrest among these minorities.

During the reign of late Umayyad Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik this unrest led to a revolt in Kufa in southern Iraq, mainly by the town's slaves. Shi'ites revolted in 736 and held the city until 740, led by Zayd ibn Ali, a grandson of Husayn and another member of the Banu Hashim. Zayd's rebellion was put down by Umayyad armies in 740. The revolt in Kufa indicated both the strength of the Umayyads and the growing unrest in the Muslim world.

During the last days of the Umayyad caliphate, Abu al-‘Abbās and his clan chose to begin their rebellion in Khurasān, an important, but remote military region comprising eastern Iran, southern parts of the modern Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and northern Afghanistan. In 743, the death of the Umayyad Caliph Hishām provoked a rebellion in the east. Abu al-`Abbās, supported by Shi'as and the residents of Khurasān, led his forces to victory over the Umayyads. The civil war was marked by millennial prophecies encouraged by the beliefs of some Shi'as that as-Saffāḥ was the mahdi. In Shi'ite works such as the al-Jafr faithful Muslims were told that the brutal civil war was the great conflict between good and evil. The choice of the Umayyads to enter battle with white flags and the Abbasids to enter with black encouraged such theories. The color white, however, was regarded in much of Persia as a sign of mourning.^{[citation needed]}

Abbasid Caliphate was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib (566–653 CE), from whom the dynasty takes its name.