Following the Zanj victory at the Battle of the Barges, the Abbasid government in Samarra sent a force under the command of Ju'lan al-Turki to put an end to the rebellion.

[2] Ju'lan spent the next six months in the field, but he soon found that his mounted troops could not easily move through the dense landscape, and he was unable to make any headway against the Zanj.

Ju'lan's withdrawal convinced the government that he was unsuitable for the task of defeating the rebels; he was therefore dismissed and his command was given to Sa'id ibn Salih al-Hajib instead.

[3] Ju'lan's withdrawal to Basra and the weakness of the government forces allowed the Zanj to continue their raiding activities in lower Iraq unimpeded.

The Zanj then began to plunder al-Ubulla and collected large number of spoils, but by that point most of the city's goods had been destroyed by the flames.

[8] The people of Basra were also panicked by the news; the fall of al-Ubulla, together with that of al-Ahwaz later that year, caused many to flee the city, moving to safer areas not subject to Zanj attack.