Al-Ashdaq

When the Umayyads were driven out of Mecca during the revolt of Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr in 682, al-Ashdaq was ordered by Yazid to send an army against the Zubayrids in the city.

When the pro-Umayyad Arab tribal nobility of Syria, chief among them the chief of the Banu Kalb, elected Marwan ibn al-Hakam as caliph at the Jabiya summit of 684, it was stipulated that Yazid's then-young son Khalid would succeed Marwan, followed by al-Ashdaq.

[4] The latter commanded the right wing of Marwan's army during the Battle of Marj Rahit later that year, in which the Umayyads scored a resounding victory over the pro-Zubayrid Qaysi tribes of Syria.

After the Umayyad victory, al-Ashdaq proclaimed Marwan's sovereignty from the pulpit of the mosque in the provincial capital Fustat.

The latter did not relinquish his claims and viewed Abd al-Malik's accession as a violation of the arrangements reached in Jabiya.

When the caliph left Damascus on a military campaign against Zubayrid-held Iraq in 689, al-Ashdaq took advantage of his absence to launch a revolt, seize the city and declare his right as sovereign.

[9] Isma'il, who also participated in his father's rebellion, lived in ascetic seclusion near Medina into the beginning of the Abbasid period (post-750) and the Umayyad caliph Umar II (r. 717–720) reportedly considered appointing him his successor for his reputed piety.