Kharijites: Map & History
The Kharijites were an Islamic sect which emerged during the First Fitna (656–661).
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The Kharijites were an Islamic sect which emerged during the First Fitna (656–661). The first Kharijites were supporters of Ali who rebelled against his acceptance of arbitration talks to settle the conflict with his challenger, Mu'awiya, at the Battle of Siffin in 657. They asserted that "judgment belongs to God alone", which became their motto, and that rebels such as Mu'awiya had to be fought and overcome according to Qur'anic injunctions. Ali defeated the Kharijites at the Battle of Nahrawan in 658, but their insurrection continued. Ali was assassinated in 661 by a Kharijite dissident seeking revenge for the defeat at Nahrawan.
Modern Countries Once Part of Kharijites
At its mapped extent, Kharijites covered territory in 3 present-day countries. The period shown is when the mapped borders include that country, and the note says how much of it.
Largest Present-Day Cities in Its Territory
Each opens on the live map inside Kharijites's borders of that time.
Derived by testing mapped cities against this polity's dated territorial polygons, so the list is indicative and follows the borders in the source dataset.
Kharijites in Depth
Later history
The accession of Mu'awiya, the original enemy of the Kharijites, to the caliphate in August 661 provided the new impetus for Kharijite rebellion. Those Kharijites at Nahrawan who had been unwilling to fight Ali and had left the battlefield, rebelled against Mu'awiya. Under the leadership of Farwa ibn Nawfal al-Ashja'i of the Banu Murra, some 500 of them attacked Mu'awiya's camp at Nukhayla (a place outside Kufa) where he was taking the Kufans' oath of allegiance. In the ensuing battle, the Kharijites repelled the initial sortie by Mu'awiya's troops, but were eventually defeated and most of them killed. Seven more Kufan Kharijite uprisings, with rebel numbers in individual revolts varying between 20 and 400, were defeated by the governor al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba.
Origins
The later years of Uthman's reign were marked by growing discontent from multiple groups within the Muslim community. His favoritism and enrichment of his Umayyad relatives was disdained by the Muslim elite in Medina. The early Muslim settlers of the garrison towns of Kufa and Fustat, in the conquered regions of Iraq and Egypt, felt their status threatened by several factors during this period. These were Uthman's interference in provincial affairs, overcrowding of the garrison towns by a continuous tribal influx from Arabia, diminishing revenue from the conquests, and the growing influence of the pre-Islamic tribal nobility.
Legacy
According to Rudolf Ernst Brünnow (1858–1917), the first academic historian to systematically study the Kharijites, the qurra supported the arbitration proposal because, as pious believers in the Qur'an, they felt obliged to respond to the call of making the Qur'an the arbitrator. The people who objected to the treaty were Bedouin Arabs, and hence separate from the qurra who had settled in Kufa and Basra following the wars of conquest. They had devoted themselves to the cause of Islam and perceived the arbitration by two people as an acute religious injustice, which drove them into secession and later into open rebellion.
Sections adapted from Wikipedia: Kharijites (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Kharijites: Key Facts
| Founded | 657 CE |
|---|
Facts from Wikidata Q189570 (CC0).
Kharijites Timeline
Key historical inflections from foundation to peak territorial expansion
Expansion to peak recorded area of 251,017 km² in 760 CE.
Kharijites: Frequently Asked Questions
When did Kharijites exist?
Kharijites is dated to 751 CE – 762 CE, in the Early Middle Ages era.
How large was Kharijites at its peak?
At its peak in 760 AD Kharijites covered about 251,017 km².
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