Abū Yazīd Makhlad ibn Kaydād (Arabic: أبو يزيد مخلد بن كيداد; c. 873 – 19 August 947), was a member of the Ibadi sect. He opposed the Ismaili Shia rule of the Fatimids in North Africa and sought to restore Ibadi dominance in the region. Known as the Man on the Donkey (Arabic: صاحب الحمار, romanized: Ṣāhib al-Himār) due to his humble means of transport, Abu Yazid led a rebellion against the Fatimid Caliphate in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria) starting in 944, rallying various Berber tribes and disaffected groups against the Fatimids. His forces initially achieved significant victories, even threatening the Fatimid capital of al-Mahdiyya. Abu Yazid conquered Kairouan for a time, but was eventually driven back and defeated by the Fatimid caliph al-Mansur bi-Nasr Allah in 947, Abu Yazid escaped following a siege, but was wounded and captured. He died of his wounds several days later.
Abu Yazid's father Kaydad was a Zenata Berber from Taqyus or Tozeur in the district of Chott el Djerid, then still known by its ancient name, Qastiliya. Kaydad was a trans-Saharan trader, and during his travels took as concubine a Hawwara or Black African slave, Sabika. Abu Yazid was born c. 874 south of the Sahara, at Tadmakka or Gao. Coupled with his mother's descent, this brought him the sobriquet "the Black Ethiop" (al-Habashi al-Aswad).
Abu Yazid returned with his father to Qitun near Tozeur, where Kaydad died shortly after. The orphaned boy survived through alms, and in his youth became a schoolmaster in the area of Qitun, Tozeur, and Taqyus. Likely raised as a Kharijite from infancy, Abu Yazid went to Tahert to study the Ibadi doctrine (madhhab); at the time, Tahert was still the seat of an Ibadi imam of the Rustamid dynasty, who was widely acknowledged by the North African Kharijites as their spiritual leader. Abu Yazid was an eyewitness to the end of the Ibadi imamate in 909: after the overthrow of the Aghlabid emirate by the Isma'ili preacher Abu Abdallah al-Shi'i and his Kutama followers, the latter marched west to Sijilmasa, to bring his hidden master, Abdallah al-Mahdi Billah, back to Ifriqiya to assume the throne of the Fatimid Caliphate. On the way, the Kutama overthrew and executed the Rustamid imam, and installed a Fatimid governor in his place. Abu Yazid returned to Takyus, and resumed his activity as a schoolmaster.
In 928, Abu Yazid began his anti-Fatimid agitation. He was arrested in 934 but escaped, and went on the Hajj to Mecca. In 937 he returned to Tozeur clandestinely and resumed his preaching. He was denounced and arrested once again, but sprung out of prison by his former teacher Abu Ammar Abd al-Hamid al-A'ma and forty of his armed followers, along with two of Abu Yazid's sons. Abu Yazid and his family fled to the Aurès Mountains in what is now eastern Algeria, finding refuge with the Hawwara tribe. The area had in the previous decades been converted to the Nukkari branch of Ibadi Islam, and was a major centre of the sect, with Abu Ammar as its local leader. The Nukkaris rejected the hereditary Rustamid imams and insisted upon the election of the community's leader.
Abu Yazid, his wife and four sons, Abu Ammar, and twelve followers settled at the village of al-Nawalat, which became the centre of their movement. Abu Yazid toured the region and called the locals to join him in holy war against the Fatimids. The group soon succeeded in gaining a large following among the Hawwara, and Abu Yazid was elected as their leader (shaykh al-Muslimin, lit. 'patriarch of the Muslims'). Thereupon Abu Ammar relinquished his leadership to him as the more worthy one (afḍal), in accordance with the Nukkari doctrine. Abu Yazid deliberately avoided assuming the title of imam for the moment; an imam would be elected once the Fatimid capital, al-Mahdiya, was taken, but until then, an assembly would govern the movement.
Abu Yazid's movement was the spiritual heir to a number of tendencies endemic in the Maghreb: the Ibadi movement, with its anti-Arab and pro-Berber chauvinism and its insistence that leadership belonged to the "best Muslim", in marked contrast to the Fatimids' claims to a hereditary imamate; the anti-imperial traditions of the great Berber Revolt against the Umayyad Caliphate in 740; and the strong messianic traditions of the Maghreb, which had welcomed and sheltered the Alids persecuted by the Abbasid Caliphate, and which would recur throughout history, culminating in the messianic empire of the Almohads in the 12th–13th centuries.
Abu Yazid himself cut a messianic figure: his appearance fitted the signs of a prophet in Islamic messianic tradition, such as a mole on his shoulder; of advanced age, dressed in rags and lame, he rode a donkey, which gave him the nickname "Man on the Donkey" or "Lord of the Donkey" (Sahib al-Himar). The "awaited prophet who would come riding on an ass" was a figure with a long tradition in Judaic, and later Islamic, eschatology, was associated with Jesus and Muhammad, and was emulated by several would-be prophets during the early Islamic centuries. Even his pejorative sobriquet al-Habashi was often held to have messianic connotations. On the other hand, Abu Yazid's Fatimid enemies cast him as the "False Messiah" (al-Masih al-Dajjal).
Invasion of Ifriqiya and the fall of Kairouan, February–October 944
In February 944, Abu Yazid's followers descended from the mountains to overthrow the Fatimids, attacking the forts in the environs of Baghaya. The uprising appears to have caught the Fatimids by surprise. The local governor tried to put pressure on the tribal chieftains to deliver Abu Yazid to him, but in vain. Caliph al-Qa'im mobilized his loyal Kutama tribes, but the small and highly mobile bands of Abu Yazid eluded them, and were always able to escape back to the safety of the Aurès.
The first major settlement to capitulate was Tébessa, followed by Marmajanna, where he was given his famous donkey to ride. After the surrender of Sbiba, the rebels destroyed a Kutama army near Dougga and captured the city. On 7 August 944, al-Aribus (ancient Laribus), the gate to the core of Fatimid Ifriqiya, surrendered in exchange for a letter of safety (aman) for its inhabitants; Fatimid officials and all adherents of Isma'ilism were explicitly excluded from it. Al-Qa'im mobilized four armies in response: one to defend the old Aghlabid palace city of Raqqada, one under Khalil ibn Ishaq al-Tamimi to secure the former capital and major city of Ifriqiya, Kairouan, one under the eunuch Bushra to the area of Béja, and the main army under Maysur al-Fata, which was to encamp midway between al-Mahdiya and Kairouan, ready to assist either.
These dispositions left the initiative to the rebels, who attacked Bushra. In the subsequent battle, the Fatimids initially prevailed, until Abu Yazid, unarmed and in his usual ascetic habit, rallied his men and led them to victory. Béja was sacked for three days, while Bushra and his men withdrew, first to Tunis, and then, as its inhabitants wanted to surrender, over sea to Sousse. On 13 October, Abu Yazid's forces appeared before Raqqada, which they plundered. Ensconced in Kairouan, Khalil al-Tamimi resisted his officers' calls to march out and confront the rebel army, awaiting the arrival of the main Fatimid army under Maysur al-Fata, but the latter also hesitated to move decisively against the rebels.
As a result, the disgruntled and unpaid soldiers of the local militia began deserting to the rebels, until Khalil was left with only 400 men. Unable to man the city walls with this small a force, he withdrew to the governor's palace next to the Great Mosque of Kairouan. As Abu Yazid's troops entered Kairouan on 14 October, Khalil began to negotiate an aman with the rebels. Most of his men used a rope to escape from the back of the palace, but Khalil, the city's chief qadi, the army treasurer and thirty others were taken prisoner and led to Abu Yazid in Raqqada. The rebel leader initially intended to spare Khalil's life, but Abu Ammar pointed out that dangerous foes should be killed. As a result, Abu Yazid had Khalil and the chief qadi executed. Abu Yazid completed his triumph by destroying Maysur's army in a surprise night attack on 29/30 October: Maysur was killed, and his army disintegrated. Shortly after, Sousse was sacked as well.