Abbasid Revolution

Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik (72-125 AH / 691-743 CE) was the tenth Umayyad caliph, whose nineteen-year reign was the dynasty's last long one. A careful administrator, he reorganised the diwans, the police and the postal service while the frontiers stopped advancing.

Founded in 638 CE as a military garrison, Kufa became one of the most consequential cities of early Islam — capital of Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib, birthplace of the Iraqi legal tradition, a center of Arabic grammar and hadith, and the city where the Abbasid revolution was launched.