Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr
624 CE–692 CE · Medina
Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr (born c. 2 AH / 624 CE in Medina — the birth year is reported variously as 1 or 2 AH; died 73 AH / 692 CE in Mecca) was an early Muslim political and military figure of the Quraysh tribe. His father was al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, a prominent Companion of the Prophet; his mother was Asma bint Abi Bakr, daughter of the first caliph Abu Bakr. According to the ninth-century historians Ibn Habib and Ibn Qutayba, he was the first child born among the Muhajirun (the emigrants from Mecca) after the move to Medina — a detail that belongs to tradition rather than independent documentation.
He is reported to have taken part in the early conquests in Egypt, Ifriqiya (North Africa), and Tabaristan (northern Iran); these accounts come from later narrative sources and his role may be magnified. He fought beside his father and his aunt Aisha at the Battle of the Camel near Basra in 36 AH (656 CE).
When Yazid I became Umayyad caliph in 680, Ibn al-Zubayr withheld allegiance and took refuge in Mecca. After Yazid's death he was proclaimed 'Commander of the Faithful' and for several years controlled much of the Hijaz, though his authority outside the Hijaz was largely nominal, reaching Iraq, Egypt, and beyond only loosely. Whether his caliphate was legitimate is a question on which later Sunni, Shia, and modern academic readings differ, not a settled fact. The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik sent al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf to besiege Mecca; Ibn al-Zubayr was killed in the fighting in 73 AH (692 CE), ending the Second Civil War.
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Medina
What they did here
Born in Medina c. 2 AH (the birth year is reported variously as 1 or 2 AH; 2nd Sha'ban 2 AH is the common traditional date, ~624 CE), to al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Asma bint Abi Bakr. Ninth-century historians (Ibn Habib, Ibn Qutayba) report he was the first child born among the Muhajirun after the emigration; the 'first-born' claim is traditional, though his birth in Medina is well established.
About Medina
Medina (al-Madina, formerly Yathrib), in the Hejaz of western Saudi Arabia, is the city to which the Prophet Muhammad emigrated in 622 (the hijra), establishing the first Muslim community; it contains his tomb and is Islam's second-holiest city. As the cradle of early Islamic law and hadith scholarship it remained a major centre of learning that drew the scholars connected here.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Graeco-Roman world
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