Taqlid ("tradition") was an integral part of Abbasid recruiting propaganda in its struggle to overthrow the Umayyads in the eighth century. Al-Bukayr invoked the memory of Second Aqaba in a successful campaign to enlist the Khurasani Shi’a Muwallin (Shiites living under Sunni "protection"). Al-Bukayr takes liberties with the history of one of the companions of the Prophet, Sa’ad bin Mu’adh, and his role in the events surrounding Second Aqaba: how he had been convinced to join Muhammad's ranks to help the Prophet battle the enemies surrounding him and his fledgling community of Muslims. This is a story that by Abbasid times had already begun to fall under a cloud of doubt. Sa’ad’s role in actuality may have been considerably less central than al-Bukayr would have had the Muwallis believe. Al-Bukayr’s purpose in narrating the story of Sa’ad’s enlistment into the ranks of the Prophet was to persuade the Muwallis to imitate the example of Sa’ad, an outsider like them, and join the Abbasid vanguard of Islam as it battled to overthrow the Umayyad "infidels."
Al-Bukayr's aim in his recruiting talk was to bring the spirit of Second Aqaba rocketing forward in time a hundred and fifteen years to his own day. He strove to recreate the event as a way of inciting the Khurasanis to join the jihad against the Umayyads. Revolution for the Abbasids, then, was seen as a reenactment of the glories of the Islamic past.
Al-Bukayr’s way with Islamic history was to become a paradigm for future Abbasid attitudes toward the past. The Abbasids made good use of the principle of rewriting history to their own advantage once they gained power. And, since virtually all surviving writings on pre-Abbasid Islam come out of the Abbasid period there is reason to consider Abbasid motives whenever we study the earliest records of Islam.
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