Jan 11

Uprising of The Sons of ‘Azarak’ in Sistan, Against Arab Rule Over Iran

European chronicles have written 11 January AD 798 as the day when the Abbasid Caliph’s army was dispatched from Khorasan to Sistan to curb the rising of the sons of Azarak. This uprising was one of the first armed revolts of Iranians in the southeast of our country. When Hamzeh, the elder son of Azarak, heard that Ali Bin Eissa bin Mahan, the Abbasid general and governor, has appointed his son, Eissa, to suppress the rebel of the people of Sistan, he and a few hundred of the independentist rebels hid in the mountains on their way and scattered the dispatched army. Ali bin Eissa bin Mahan himself was defeated, 14 yers later, in two battles from the voluntary Iranian independentist army and was killed.     Years later Yaghub Leis followed the efforts of the sons of Azarak and succeeded. The Sistani rebels would say that the Abbasid rulers are doing what is prohibited in Islam: injustice, extravagance and love for luxury and formalities. Their logic was that by fighting against the Abbasid rule they were defending the true Islam and stressed that Islam has not said that Iranians should have Arab rulers and speak Arabic in order to prove that they are Moslems.          Translation by Rowshan Lohrasbpour (AmordadNews writer)