Mūsā ibn ʿĪsā ibn Mūsā al-Hāshimī (Arabic: موسى بن عيسى بن موسى بن محمد بن علي بن عبد الله بن العباس) was an 8th-century AD Abbasid prince. The son of Isa ibn Musa, he was posted to various governorships throughout his career, including Kufa, Egypt, Damascus, Mecca, Medina, and Arminiya, and was a leading commander at the Battle of Fakhkh.
Contents
Career
Background and succession dispute
Musa was born (according to one account, in c. 746) to Isa ibn Musa, a member of the Banu al-Abbas who served as a long-running governor of Kufa during the first years of the Abbasid Caliphate. An extended relation of the Abbasid dynasty, Musa was a great-nephew of its first two caliphs al-Saffah (r. 750–754) and al-Mansur (r. 754–775); he was also connected to the ruling line by his marriage to Ulayya, daughter of the third caliph al-Mahdi.
Under the succession arrangements made by al-Saffah in 754, Musa's father Isa was originally the designated second heir-apparent to the caliphate after al-Saffah's brother al-Mansur; in 764/5, however, Isa was pressured by al-Mansur into yielding his rights and recognizing the caliph's son al-Mahdi's claims to the throne ahead of his own. According to some versions of this event, Musa feared that al-Mansur would have his father killed if he refused to step aside; he therefore worked together with the caliph and helped to convince Isa to withdraw from the succession.