al-Aswad al-ʻAnsī

al-Aswad al-ʻAnsī, whose name is given as ʻAyhala ibn Kaʻb (or ʻAbhala) of the tribe of ʻAns, a branch of Madḥij in the Yemen, was the first of the false prophets (mutanabbiʼūn) to rise against the authority of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ, laying claim to prophethood in the Yemen in the closing months of the Prophet’s ﷺ life, in the year 10–11 AH. A soothsayer and conjurer known for his tricks and his eloquence, he gathered a following, seized Ṣanʻāʼ and much of the Yemen by force, and held it for a brief period until he was slain by a conspiracy of the Muslims and the Persian abnāʼ of Yemen. The Prophet ﷺ is reported to have received word of his death by revelation on the very night it occurred.

al-Aswad, called also Dhū al-Ḥimār, was a man of the ʻAns of Madḥij, reputed a kāhin, a soothsayer, and a worker of marvels who deceived the people with feats of conjuring and with rhymed and oracular speech. When the authority of Islam had been established over the Yemen and its governors and agents appointed by the Prophet ﷺ, al-Aswad came forth claiming that he was a prophet to whom revelation descended, and he found a ready hearing among his tribe and among those restless under the new order. His following grew swiftly, and he gathered a force with which he moved against the centers of Muslim authority in the land.

Advancing upon Ṣanʻāʼ, al-Aswad overcame and killed Shāhr ibn Bādhān, the son of the Persian governor whom the Prophet ﷺ had confirmed over Yemen, and seized the city, taking to himself the widow of the slain man. He drove out or overawed the agents of the Prophet ﷺ, among them Muʻādh ibn Jabal, and within a short time his power extended over a great part of Yemen, from Ḥaḍramawt to al-Ṭāʼif’s borders, so that the land which had lately entered Islam was largely lost to his control. His rule, however, was harsh and capricious, and he soon alienated even those who had supported him.

The Prophet ﷺ, learning of the revolt, sent letters to the faithful among the Muslims and the Persian abnāʼ of the Yemen—the descendants of the Persian garrison settled there—urging them to oppose al-Aswad and to put him down by whatever means they could. A conspiracy was accordingly formed against him, led by Fayrūz al-Daylamī, one of the abnāʼ, together with his kinsmen and with the connivance of al-Aswad’s own wife, whom he had wronged and who turned against him. Entering his chamber by night, the conspirators fell upon him and killed him, and Fayrūz is named in the reports as the one who slew him.

It is among the marvels recorded in the sīra that the Prophet ﷺ, in Madīnah, was informed of the death of al-Aswad on the night it took place, the news being conveyed to him, the tradition holds, from heaven; and in the morning he gave the tidings to his companions, naming Fayrūz as the slayer and pronouncing a blessing upon him. Word of the event reached Madīnah by the ordinary means only afterward, confirming what had already been made known. The killing of al-Aswad is generally placed but a few days before the death of the Prophet ﷺ, or, by some accounts, very shortly after it, so that the tidings and the Prophet’s ﷺ own final illness nearly coincided.

the death of al-Aswad his movement collapsed as swiftly as it had risen, and the Muslims regained control of Ṣanʻāʼ and Yemen, though the land remained unsettled, and a renewed disturbance among the ʻAns and their allies formed part of the wider wars of the riddah under the caliph Abū Bakr. The brief ascendancy of al-Aswad had shown the fragility of the new order on the far southern margins of Arabia, where the authority of Islam was most recently established, and his revolt is reckoned the earliest of the risings of the false prophets that troubled the close of the Prophet’s ﷺ life and the beginning of the caliphate.

In the historical tradition al-Aswad is classed, with Musaylima of the Yamāma and Ṭulayḥa of the Banū Asad, among the false prophets of the riddah, and he is commonly counted the first of them to declare himself. The sources describe him as a deceiver who worked upon the credulity of the people with conjuring and oracular speech, and they contrast the swift and ignominious end of his pretension with the truth of the prophethood he had presumed to imitate. Unlike some who rose in those years, al-Aswad did not live to repent, but was cut off in his revolt.

In the sīra tradition, al-Aswad al-ʻAnsī is remembered as the false prophet of the Yemen whose rising marked the beginning of the riddah: a soothsayer who seized Ṣanʻāʼ and the southern land by deceit and force, and who was struck down by a conspiracy of the faithful even as the life of the Prophet ﷺ drew to its close. The report that the Prophet ﷺ knew of his death on the night it befell, before any messenger could bring it, was preserved among the signs of his prophethood, and the fall of al-Aswad stood in the memory of the community as the swift undoing of one who had laid false claim to the office of the Messenger ﷺ.