Abu Sa'id al-Jannabi
Abu Sa'id Hasan ibn Bahram al-Jannabi (Arabic: أبو سعيد حسن بن بهرام الجنابي, romanized: Abū Saʿīd Ḥasan ibn Bahrām al-Jannābī; 845/855–913/914) The founder of the Qarmatian state in Bahrayn (an area comprising the eastern parts of modern Saudi Arabia as well as the Persian Gulf).
His religious teachings and political activities are somewhat unclear, as they are reported by later and usually hostile sources, but he seems to have shared the millennialist Isma'ili belief about the imminent return of the mahdī, hostility to conventional Islamic rites and rituals, and to have based the Qarmatian society on the principles of communal ownership and egalitarianism, with a system of production and distribution overseen by appointed agents.
In the period about 874/884, Abu Sa'id was then in turn sent as a dā'ī to proselytise in Fars, in the area of Jannaba, Siniz, Tawwaj, and Mahruban.
[2][3] According to the report of Ibn Hawqal, at that time he met with Hamdan Qarmat, who recognized Abu Sa'id's abilities and entrusted him with leading the missionary effort in Bahrayn, a region encompassing all of eastern Arabia from the borders of Iraq to Qatar.
[7] With the backing of a strong Bedouin army, Abu Sa'id began attacking towns in the area: Qatif, Zara, Safwan, Zahran, al-Hasa, and Juwata.
Shortly after that, Hamdan Qarmat disappeared, while Abu Muhammad was murdered in the same year at the instigation of Zakarawayh ibn Mihrawayh, apparently on the instructions of Salamiya.
[8][9] After Hamdan's disappearance, the term "Qarmatians" was retained by all Isma'ilis who refused to recognize the claims of Sa'id, and subsequently of the Fatimid dynasty.
[14] Neither, however, did Abu Sa'id try to coordinate his movements with the other Qarmatian groups active in the Abbasid territories, such as the rebellions launched in Syria and Iraq by Zakarawayh ibn Mihrawayh and his sons in 901–907.
[16] The news of the siege prompted the reaction of the Abbasid caliph al-Mu'tadid, who in April 900 named his general al-Abbas ibn Amr al-Ghanawi governor of Bahrayn and Yamama, and sent him with 2,000 soldiers, augmented with volunteers, against Abu Sa'id's forces.
[1][2][17] In the aftermath of this success, Hajar was captured, only to be lost again after the arrival of a new Abbasid governor in 901, while Abu Sa'id was leading an expedition in the vicinity of Basra.
[2] In late 903, the Abbasid governor Ibn Banu reported to the central government in Baghdad that he had captured Qatif and defeated and killed Abu Sa'id's designated successor there.
[16] From Bahrayn, the Qarmatians launched a series of raids against the vicinities of Basra, both to capture slaves and in retaliation for the participation of the local Zabba tribe in the 900 campaign against them.
[2] Workers and artisans were organised into primitive guilds,[19] and a council, the al-ʿIqdāniyya, comprising representatives of leading families and senior officials, was also established in an advisory capacity.
[20] Some modern commentators have described this system as a "kind of socialism",[21] the Qarmatians as the "Bolsheviks of Islam",[22] and their state as the "only communist society to control a large territory, and to endure for more than a generation, before the twentieth century".
[2] When the date passed without incident—in the meantime Sa'id had declared himself as the mahdī and founded the Fatimid Caliphate in Ifriqiya—the failure of the prophecy is said to have caused considerable embarrassment to the Qarmatian regime.
