Khuramdins and Rise of a New Resistance Front in Newly Converted Persia

By eighth century, the uprising had spread to the west of Iran, under the leadership of the Khurramdins. The endurance and recurrence of the Khurramdins’ activities has distinguished them from the other popular movements of the period. Their movement had had time to spread all over Iran among the lower social classes. Like the previous dissident movements they rose in Khurasan. Their name appears in the Islamic historiography for the first time in 736, but their political activities become more manifest after the death of Abu Muslim in 754. Their movement spread in Gurgan and the regions between Rayy and Isfahan, and then finally to Azerbaijan when Babak appeared on the scene in 816. The most famous and charismatic leader ofthe Khurramdins was indisputably Babak. Babak’s family belonged to the wave of Iranians who, due to the social and political pressures of the time, had turned Muslim, and who had seen the death of Abu Muslim and the successive uprisings as an opportunity to apostatize. Babak’s forsaking of his Arabic name,141 and taking of a Persian one, confirms his apostasy, as it was a common practice for those who changed religions to signal their new identity by adopting a new name. The tenacity of Babak’s militancy, along with the outstanding support he received in Iran, made the Khurramdin’s movement even more important then the preceding Iranian uprisings. For about twenty years Babak’s legions remained victorious against the caliphate’s army. Even Abdallah b. Tahir, the governor of Khurasan, feared Babak, and declined the governorship of Azerbaijan, as it was the centre of Babak’s operation (Source: the Fire, the Star and the Cross).