Busr ibn Abi Artat

Busr ibn Abi Artat al-Amiri^[a] (Arabic: بسر بن أبي أرطأة العامري, romanized: Busr ibn Abī Arṭāt al-ʿĀmirī; 620s–c. 690–700s) was a prominent Arab commander in the service of Mu'awiya I, the governor of Islamic Syria (640s–661) and the first Umayyad caliph (661–680). A veteran of the early Muslim conquests in Syria and North Africa, Busr became an ardent partisan of Mu'awiya against Caliph Ali (r. 656–661) during the First Muslim Civil War. He led a large-scale campaign against Ali's supporters in Arabia, gaining the submission of Medina, Mecca and Ta'if to Mu'awiya's caliphate and carrying out punitive measures against the inhabitants of Yemen. His actions in Arabia, which included executing two young sons of Ali's cousin, the governor of Yemen Ubayd Allah ibn Abbas, and taking captive women from the Muslim tribe of Hamdan, were condemned as unprecedented atrocities by the traditional Muslim sources, particularly Shia Muslim writers.

Following Ali's death and the abdication of his son Hasan in 661, Busr was appointed governor of Basra. There he was instrumental in securing the submission of Ziyad ibn Abihi, a loyalist holdover of Ali's administration, by holding his sons as hostages. He led a number of land and sea raids against the Byzantine Empire between 662 and 672. He remained in Mu'awiya's court until the caliph's death in 680. Busr died at an old age during the reign of Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) or al-Walid I (r. 705–715).
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