Karbala, a Rival Caliphate, and the Umayyad Restoration

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Second Fitna was a civil war within the Umayyad Caliphate that broke out after the death of the caliph Mu'awiya I in 680, when his son and successor Yazid I's own succession was rejected outright by rival claimants, most consequentially by Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad himself, and separately by Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, who declared his own rival counter-caliphate from the holy city of Mecca in open defiance of Damascus.

Husayn's small band was surrounded and killed at Karbala in October 680, while Ibn al-Zubayr's own rival caliphate held Mecca, Medina and much of Iraq for over a decade before Umayyad forces under the later caliph Abd al-Malik finally besieged and killed him at Mecca itself in 692. The Umayyad dynasty emerged in full control of the caliphate after more than a decade of open division, but the war's religious consequences outlasted its military resolution by many centuries afterward. The war's two fronts, Husayn's rising in Iraq and Ibn al-Zubayr's counter-caliphate centered on Mecca, were never closely coordinated with one another, and Umayyad forces under Yazid I and later Abd al-Malik were able to confront each in turn rather than face a single unified rebellion.