Obeid Allah ibn al-Habhab

Obeid Allah ibn al-Habhab al-Mawsili was an important Umayyad official in Egypt from 724 to 734, and subsequently Umayyad governor of Kairouan, Ifriqiya from 734 to 741. It was under his rule that the Great Berber Revolt broke out in the Maghreb (North Africa) and al-Andalus (Iberian Peninsula).

Ubayd Allah ibn al-Habhab was an Arab official of the Banu Makhzoum, a clan of the Quraysh. Although exceptionally educated and remarkably competent and well-respected, Ubayd Allah was the grandson of a manumitted slave. That humble origin may have embarrassed him and left him with a sense of personal insecurity among the high-bloods that packed the Umayyad circles. Throughout his career, Ubayd Allah seemed to have been overly obsequious, a little too eager to please the whims of the well-born lords of Damascus, while simultaneously exhibiting and harsh and almost vicious disdain of those below him, particularly non-Arabs. Both those character traits would have significant consequences.

In 724, the Umayyad Caliph Hisham appointed Ubayd Allah as sahib al-kharaj, or head of taxation in Egypt. As Egyptian governors proved ineffective, Ubayd Allah became Hisham's point man and effective ruler of Egypt. Ubayd Allah secured the dismissal of Egyptian governor Al-Hurr ibn Yusuf in 727, and again his successor Abd al-Malik ibn Rifa'a al-Fahmi, after they challenged his administrative powers.

To expand fiscal revenues, in 725, Ubayd Allah raised the kharaj by an eighth and appointed Arab officials (rather than local Egyptians) as tax-collectors. This provoked a revolt by Egyptian Copts in 725–26. Leaderless and disorganized, the Coptic revolt went nowhere and was quashed by the Arab authorities under the direction of Ubayd Allah, with quite some bloodshed.

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