Maysara al-Matghari

Maysara al-Matghari (Berber: Maysara Amteghri or Maysara Amdeghri, sometimes rendered Maisara or Meicera; in older Arab sources, bitterly called: al-Ḥaqir ('the ignoble'); died in September/October 740) was a Berber rebel leader and original architect of the Great Berber Revolt that erupted in 739-743 against the Umayyad Muslim empire. However, he was deposed by the rebels, replaced with another Berber leader, and died or possibly was executed by them in 740. The Berber Revolt succeeded 3 years after his death in defeating the Umayyad armies.

Maysara Amteghri takes his surname from the Berber tribe Imteghren. The exact biographical details of Maysara are obscure, and made more complicated by what are likely scurrilous stories circulated by his enemies. Chroniclers have recorded allegations that Maysara was a low-born Berber water-seller in Kairouan or Tangiers, possibly a water-carrier in the caliphal army. Chronicles routinely refer to him by the unflattering label of al-Hakir, 'the Ignoble' or 'the Vile'. Ibn Khaldun, however, was probably closer to the truth in proposing that his origins were perhaps not so humble, that Maysara was probably a significant chieftain or sheikh of the Berber Matghara tribe. Al-Tabari reports that Maysara had even headed a Berber delegation to Damascus to present the Berber complaints before the Caliph Hisham.

And the complaints were many. The Berbers had long resented the second-class status accorded to them by the ruling Umayyad-Arab military caste. Berber Muslims were intermittently subjected to extraordinary taxation and slave-tributes, contrary to Islamic law. As a result, many Berbers grew receptive to puritan Kharijite activists, particularly those of the Sufrite sect, that had begun arriving in the Maghreb, preaching a new political order in which all Muslims would treated without regard for ethnicity or tribal status. Maysara's Matghara tribe had been particularly taken up with Sufrite influence.

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