Ishaq ibn Kundajiq

Ishaq ibn Kundaj, or Kundajiq, was a Turkic military leader who played a prominent role in the turbulent politics of the Abbasid Caliphate in the late 9th century. Initially active in lower Iraq in the early 870s, he came to be appointed governor of Mosul in 879/80. He ruled Mosul and much of the Jazira almost continuously until his death in 891, despite becoming involved in constant quarrels with local chieftains, as well as in the Abbasid government's rivalry with the Tulunids of Egypt. On his death he was succeeded by his son, Muhammad, but in 892 the Abbasid government under Caliph al-Mu'tadid re-asserted its authority in the region, and Muhammad went to serve in the caliphal court.

Ishaq ibn Kundaj is first mentioned in the histories of al-Tabari and Ibn al-Athir in 873, during the Abbasid campaigns to suppress the Zanj Rebellion. He was tasked with holding Basra against the Zanj rebels, and cutting off supplies to them. In 878/9, along with other senior Turkish generals (Musa ibn Utamish, al-Fadl ibn Musa ibn Bugha, Yanghajur ibn Urkhuz) he secured from the regent al-Muwaffaq, the Caliphate's de facto ruler, the recognition of their power and status as the main military leaders of the Caliphate.

With the power he had acquired, in 879, he turned his gaze on Mosul in the Jazira, an area plagued by rivalries among the Arab tribal chiefs—chiefly the various Taghlibi leaders, who succeeded one another as rulers of Mosul—and an ongoing Kharijite rebellion. Ibn Kundaj succeeded in defeating the current ruler of Mosul, Ali ibn Dawud, and taking the city. To the local Arab tribes of Taghlib and Bakr, who had been accustomed to wide autonomy from the central government during the "Anarchy at Samarra", the appearance of Ibn Kundaj and his occupation of Mosul represented an unacceptable intrusion. Ibn Kundaj defeated one of them, Ishaq ibn Ayyub, and seized the latter's stronghold of Nisibis, but Ibn Ayyub appealed for aid to the Shaybanid Isa ibn al-Shaykh of Amid and Abu al-Maghra' ibn Musa ibn Zurarah of Arzen. The coalition prepared to strike against Ibn Kundaj, but the arrival of emissaries from Baghdad confirming him as governor over Mosul, Diyar Rabi'a and Armenia forced them to back down and agree to pay a tribute of 200,000 gold dinars.

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