biography
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Mokanna
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(Arabic ‘the Veiled One’), nickname of Hakim ben Atta
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| biography:
| Arab prophet, the founder of a sect in the Persian province of Khorasan. Ostensibly to protect onlookers from the dazzling rays from his divine countenance, but actually to conceal the loss of an eye, he wore a veil. Setting himself up as a reincarnation of God, he gathered enough followers to seize several fortified places, but the caliph Almahdi, son of Almansur, took his stronghold of Kash (778) after a long siege. With the remnant of his army, Mokanna took poison. His story is the subject of one of the poems in Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh. |
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