Al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf al-Thaqafi

Sepoy has found an editorial cartoon suggesting the U.S. clone al-Hajjaj b. Yusuf al-Thaqafi, who served the Umayyad caliphs Abd al-Malik and al-Walid I as governor in Iraq. Al-Hajjaj arrived on the scene following a civil war in which the tribes of the garrison towns Basra and Kufa had exercised a great deal of independence, and his reputation for harshness stems in large part from his trampling over tribal independence. At some point I need to post some excerpts from the speech he gave when he took over the governorship. I'll let you click on through for the rest, with the minor correction that al-Hajjaj was beseiging Abdullah b. az-Zubayr in Mecca, not Kharijites.