Zahiri Revolt
| Zahiri Revolt | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Mamluk Sultanate (Burji dynasty) |
Zahirite rebels Syrian Bedouin tribes |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Barquq | Al-Burhan Ahmad al-Zahiri Khalid al-Himsi |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| None | 5 captured (2 died while incarcerated) | ||||||
The Zahiri Revolt was a conspiracy leading to a failed coup d'état against the government of the 14th-century Mamluk Sultanate, having been characterized as both a political struggle and a theological conflict. While the initial support for the potential overthrow of the sultan began in Egypt, movement of Egyptian ideological agitators to Syria eventually caused the actual planned uprising to take place in Damascus in 1386. Rallying around Ahmad al-Zahiri, a cleric of the Zahirite school of Sunni Islam, the agitators mobilized from Hama to the capital. Having failed to secure the support of both the Mamluks and local Arab tribes, they were arrested by the authorities of Barquq before armed conflict could even take place.
Although not all those taking part in the revolt accepted the views of the Zahiri school of law, the term was used to denote all of those willing to participate in armed conflict against the Mamluk sultan. The suppression of the revolt both practically and ideologically has been described as a sign of the Mamluk authorities' intolerance for non-conformist ideas and willingness to interfere in religious issues normally considered the domain of theologians in Muslim empires.
In December 1382, Muslim jurist Ibn Abi al-Izz of the Hanafite school came under investigation for his theological criticism of a poem which would eventually be discredited, though not before the jurist's short inquisition. On 27 December that year, an affidavit was signed by the Sultan Barquq condemning the jurist as well as calling for an investigation of rumors regarding other jurists promoting the Zahirite school of Sunni Muslim law in Damascus. The four jurists rumored to be promoting non-conformist views were simply nicknamed al-Qurashi, Ibn al-Jabi, Ibn al-Husbani and Sadr ad-Din al-Yasufi.
Four years later, a Syrian Hanbalite known as Khalid of Homs, who was actually from Aleppo, moved to Damascus under the tutelage of the Sufi ascetic Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Isma'il ibn Abd al-Rahim Shihab ad-Din Abu Hashim al-Zahiri, also known as al-Burhan. During this time, a number of Egyptians who had been influenced by Zahirite theology emigrated to Syria. Burhan engaged in study of Ibn Hazm's book Al-Muhalla alongside Yasufi, with Ibn al-Jabi and Ibn al-Husbani following the other two. Qurashi, on the other hand, associated with the above four only for the purpose of studying, but disliked Burhan personally.
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