Abū 'Ubayd ibn Mas'ūd ibn 'Amr ibn 'Umayr ibn 'Awf ibn Uqda ibn Ghayra ibn Awf ibn Thaqif al-Thaqafiأسد الغابة، جـ6/ص 201. (), or simply Abu Ubayd (), was a commander in the army of the Rashidun Caliphate. He was from Ta'if in western Arabia,Mazhar-ul-Haq, A Short History of Islam: From the Rise of Islam to the Fall of Baghdad, 571 A.D. to 1258 A.D., 2nd edition, Bookland, 1977, p. 229. and belonged to the tribe Banu Thaqif.
Al-Muthanna, commander of the Muslim Arabs in al-Hira, had asked Abu Bakr and later Caliph Umar for reinforcements against the Sasanians in Mesopotamia, who were fighting back. Umar chose Abu Ubayd who volunteered first, although he was not among the Muhajirun or Ansar (the companions of Muhammad), and dispatched him. Abu Ubayd arranged a force of 1,000 from his Thaqif tribe and increased his numbers on the way north. He took over command from al-Muthanna for the second time, becoming commander of the forces in the al-Hira region. The combined Arab forces conducted raids on the plains between al-Hira and Ctesiphon (the Sawad). The commander of the Sasanian army Rustam Farrukhzad dispatched an army under Bahman Jadhuyih to attack them. In a battle on the bank of the Euphrates river near Babylon, known as the Battle of the Bridge, a white war elephant tore Abu Ubayd from his horse with its trunk, and trampled him under its feet. The Arab forces panicked and were defeated. Abu Ubayd's brother al-Hakam and his son Jabr were also killed.Richard Nelson Frye, The Cambridge History of Iran: The period from the Arab invasion to the Saljuqs, (Cambridge University Press, 1975), 8-9.
Abu Ubayd was the father of the revolutionary leader al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi, who rebelled against the Umayyads to avenge the Karbala event during the Second Fitna. Safiyah, wife of Abdullah ibn Umar, was one of his daughters.Muhammad ibn Saad. Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir vol. 8. Translated by Bewley, A. (1995). The Women of Madina. London: Ta-Ha Publishers. Jariah, another of his daughters, was married to Umar ibn Sa'ad.
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