Battle of the Nobles
740 battle
The Battle of the Nobles (Arabic: غزوة الأشراف, romanized: Ghazwat al-Ashrāf) was an important confrontation in the Berber Revolt in c. 740 AD. It resulted in a major Berber victory over the Arabs in banks of the Chelif River, near Chlef (Algeria). During the battle, numerous Arab aristocrats were slaughtered, which led to the conflict being called the "Battle of the Nobles". Zenata Berber chieftain Khalid ibn Hamid al-Zanati led the revolting Berber soldiers.
Location
According to the majority of historian, the battle took place on the wadi Chelif (present-day Algeria).
Charles-André Julien, while also reporting that the battle took place on Chelif, notes that this would imply that the Kharejite revolt would have reached central Zenetia, which would confirm the thesis of Émile-Félix Gautier. According to him, Arab historians other than Ibn Khaldun place the battle in northern Morocco. The discrepancy perhaps comes from the copy of Ibn Khaldun's text which would have substituted, in Arabic, the word "Chelif" for "Sebou" which have a similar spelling in this language. This uncertainty therefore casts doubt on the location of the battle.
Background
The Maghreb in the early eighth century was under Umayyad rule.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Battle of the Nobles” is 740 battle. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Battle, Nobles and battle, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4872968. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of the Nobles” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.