Abu Yazid Makhlad ibn Kaydad (; – 19 August 947), known as the Man on the Donkey (), was an Ibadi Berber of the Banu Ifran tribe who led a rebellion against the Fatimid Caliphate in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia and eastern Algeria) starting in 944. Abu Yazid conquered Kairouan for a time, but was eventually driven back and defeated by the Fatimid caliph al-Mansur bi-Nasr Allah. Early life Abu Yazid's father Kayrad was a Zenata Berber trans-Saharan trader from Taqyus or Tozeur in the district of Chott el Djerid, then still known by its ancient name, Qastiliya. His mother Sabika was a Black African slave, bought by Kayrad at Tadmakat. Abu Yazid was born , south of the Sahara Desert, either in Gao or in Tadmakka (modern-day Essouk). Coupled with his mother's descent, this brought him the sobriquet "the Black Ethiop" (al-Ḥabashī al-Aswad). Abu Yazid studied the Ibadi doctrine (madhhab) and worked in Tahert as a schoolmaster, before moving to Takyus around 909, during the overthrow of the Aghlabid emirs and the establishment of the Fatimid Caliphate by Abdullah al-Mahdi Billah (). In 928, Abu Yazid began his anti-Fatimid agitation. He was arrested but quickly released, and moved to the Aurès Mountains in what is now eastern Algeria, finding refuge with the Hawwara tribe. The area had in the previous decades been converted to the Nukkari branch of Ibadi Islam, and was a major centre of the sect, with its own local imam, Abu Ammar Abd al-Hamid al-A'ma. Abu Yazid soon succeeded in gaining a large following among the Hawwara, and was elected by them as their leader (shaykh al-Muslimīn, "elder of the true believers"). Thereupon Abu Ammar relinquished his leadership to him as the more worthy one (afḍal), in accordance with the Nukkari doctrine. When Fatimid agents arrested Abu Yazid again in Tozeur, Abu Ammar broke him out of prison. Abu Yazid then spent a year at Sumata, before returning to the Aurès. Rebellion From 937, Abu Yazid began to openly preach holy war against the Fatimids. His movement was the spiritual heir to a number of tendencies endemic in the Maghreb: the Ibadi movement, with its anti-Arab and pro-Berber chauvinism and its insistence that leadership belonged to the "best Muslim", in marked contrast to the Fatimids' claims to a hereditary imamate; the anti-imperial traditions of the great Berber Revolt against the Umayyad Caliphate in 740; and the strong