Balj ibn Bishr al-Qushayri

Balj ibn Bishr al-Qushayri (Arabic: بَلْج بن بِشْر الْقُشَيْرِيُّ الهَوازِنِيِّ ) (? – August 742) was an Umayyad military commander in North Africa and Iberia, and briefly ruler of al-Andalus in 742.

Balj was a member of the Banu Qushayr clan, a branch of the larger Qays tribe, he was the nephew of Kulthum ibn Iyad al-Qasi, who had been appointed by Caliph Hisham as governor of Ifriqiya in 741 and charged with crushing the Great Berber Revolt in North Africa. Kulthum was dispatched with a fresh Arabian army of 30,000, raised from the regiments (junds) of the east – specifically, Damascus, Jordan, Qinnasrin, Emesa (Hims), Palestine and Egypt. Despite its significant Egyptian contingent, historians frequently refer to them collectively as the 'Shami' junds. Balj ibn Bishr came as his uncle's lieutenant and, by grant of Caliph Hisham, his designated successor. Balj was given military command of the elite Arabian cavalry.

Balj ibn Bishr led the vanguard that arrived in Kairouan in the Summer of 741. In haughty spirits, Balj and his fellow Syrian commanders alienated their Ifriqiyan hosts by billeting troops, requisitioning supplies, and paying little or no respect to local authorities. Balj's behavior hardly improved when the Shami expedition made junction with the remnant of the Ifriqiyan army near Tlemcen. His high-handed manner provoked a quarrel with the Ifriqiyan commander Habib ibn Abi Obeida al-Fihri that nearly led to blows between the two armies, before his uncle arrived and defused the situation.

(Ancient pre-Islamic tribal rivalries also played their part, as Ifriqiyan (and Andalusian) Arabs were largely of ('Kalbid' or 'Yemenite') tribal origin, while the Syrian junds were drawn from north Arabian ('Qaysid', 'Mudharite') tribes. Balj ibn Bishr, by all accounts something of a Qaysid chauvinist, played up the difference.)

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