Battle of Maskin

The Battle of Maskin, also known as Battle of Dayr al-Jathaliq from a nearby Nestorian monastery, was a decisive battle of the Second Islamic Civil War (680s-690s), fought on the western bank of the river Tigris between the army of the Umayyads under Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and the forces of Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr, governor of Umayyad Iraq for his brother, the Meccan anti-Caliph Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr. Abd al-Malik had carefully cultivated contacts among the Arab tribal leaders of Iraq, and most of Mus'ab's army deserted him. With a few followers, Mus'ab fought on and was killed. His tomb later became a site of pilgrimage. The battle was the turning point of the long civil war, as Abd al-Malik took possession of Umayyad Iraq. Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr was now isolated in his original stronghold of Mecca, which was retaken after a siege in 692.

Sources

• Kennedy, Hugh N. (2001). The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State. London and New York: Routledge. p. 33. ISBN 0-415-25093-5. 
• Kennedy, Hugh N. (2004). The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the 6th to the 11th Century (Second ed.). Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd. pp. 97–98. ISBN 0-582-40525-4. 
• Streck, M. (1987). "Dair al-Djāthalĩq". In Houtsma, Martijn Theodoor. E.J. Brill's first encyclopaedia of Islam, 1913–1936, Volume II: Bābā Fighānī–Dwīn. Leiden: BRILL. pp. 897–898. ISBN 978-90-04-08265-6.