MUKHTAR IBN ABU 'UBAYD AT-THAQAFL, AL-

born c. 622, , at-Ta'if, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia] died March 687, Kufah, Iraq Shi'ite Muslim leader who in 686 championed the unenthusiastic Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyah, a son of 'Ali (the fourth caliph in Islam), as leader of the Islamic community in opposition to the Umayyad dynasty. In his call for revolt, Mukhtar appealed to the pro-Shi'ite sentiments of Iraq's Arab tribesmen. He also rallied the mawali, non-Arab (mainly Persian) Muslims of Kufah, to his cause by preaching the imminent coming of a Mahdi, or saviour, who would wipe out ethnic and class distinctions and implant the egalitarian society of believers envisioned in the Qur'an. His troops defeated an Umayyad army on the banks of the Khazir River in August 686, but the following year Mukhtar was defeated and slain by the forces of the anticaliph 'Abd Allah ibn az-Zubayr. As a promoter of the idea of the Mahdi and of equality of Arab and non-Arab Muslims, Mukhtar influenced the course of later Shi'ite Islam and is thus more important than his brief success as leader of an egalitarian revolutionary movement would indicate.