In the 10th century, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi carried out observations on the stars and described their positions, magnitudes and star color, and gave drawings for each constellation, in his Book of Fixed Stars.

Abd al-Rahman I, or, his full name by patronymic record, Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu ' awiya ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ( 731 – 788 ) ( Arabic: عبد الرحمن الداخل ) was the founder of the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba ( 755 ), a Muslim dynasty that ruled the greater part of Iberia for nearly three centuries ( including the succeeding Caliphate of Córdoba ).

Born near Damascus in Syria, Abd al-Rahman, grandson of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, was the son of the Umayyad prince Mu ' awiyah ibn Hisham and a Berber mother.

Abd al-Rahman and a small selection of his family fled Damascus, where the center of Umayyad power had been ; people moving with him include his brother Yahiya, his four-year old son Sulayman, and some of his sisters, as well as his former Greek slave ( a freedman ), Bedr.

Abbasid agents closed in on Abd al-Rahman and his family while they were hiding in a small village.

Some histories indicate that Bedr met up with Abd al-Rahman at a later date.

Abd al-Rahman, Yahiya and Bedr quit the village narrowly escaping the Abbasid assassins.

Later, on the way south, Abbasid horsemen again caught up with the trio: Abd al-Rahman and his companions then threw themselves into the River Euphrates.

While trying to swim across the dangerous Euphrates, Abd al-Rahman is said to have become separated from his brother Yahiya, who began swimming back towards the horsemen, possibly from fear of drowning.

Al-Maqqari quotes prior Muslim historians as having recorded that Abd al-Rahman said he was so overcome with fear at that moment, that once he made the far shore he ran until exhaustion overcame him.

After barely escaping with their lives, Abd al-Rahman and Bedr continued south through Palestine, the Sinai, and then into Egypt.

Abd al-Rahman had to keep a low profile as he traveled.

At the time, Abd al-Rahman ibn Habib al-Fihri was the semi-autonomous governor of Ifriqiya ( roughly, modern Tunisia ) and a former Umayyad client.

Abd al-Rahman was only one of several surviving Umayyad family members to make their way to Ifriqiya at this time.

At the time, Abd al-Rahman and Bedr were keeping a low profile, staying in Kabylia, at the camp of a Nafza Berber chieftain friendly to their plight.

When Ibn Habib's soldiers entered the camp, the Berber chieftain ’ s wife Tekfah hid Abd al-Rahman under her personal belongings to help him go unnoticed.

In 755, Abd al-Rahman and Bedr reached modern day Morocco near Ceuta.

Their next step would be to cross the sea to al-Andalus, where Abd al-Rahman could not have been sure whether or not he would be welcomed.

At that moment, the nominal ruler of al-Andalus, emir Yusuf ibn ' Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri ( another member of the Fihrid family, and a favorite of the old Arab settlers ( baladiyun ), mostly of south Arabian or ' Yemenite ' tribal stock ) was locked in a contest with his vizier ( and son-in-law ) al-Sumayl ibn Hatim al-Qilabi, the head of the new settlers ( shamiyum, the Syrian junds or military regiments, mostly of north Arabian Qaysid tribes, which had arrived only in 742 ).

Abd al-Rahman hand-picked 700 fighters from his army and led them to Carmona's main gate.

In the following spring, after sixty-five days of meticulous preparations, Abd ar-Rahman personally led an expedition to the south of his realm.

In 1991 the DFLP split, with a minority faction led by Yasser Abd Rabbo ( who had become increasingly close to Yasser Arafat ) favouring the Madrid negotiations that led initially to limited Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

* 1333 June – A Marinid army, led by Abd al-Malik, the son of Abul Hassan, the Marinid sultan, recovered Gibraltar, after a five-month siege ( Third Siege of Gibraltar ).

In 1958, a year after Saddam had joined the Ba ' ath party, army officers led by General Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq in the 14 July Revolution.

* 1147: A new Berber dynasty, the Almohads, led by Emir Abd al-Mu ' min, takes North Africa from the Almoravides and soon invades the Iberian Peninsula.

Further north, a fleet led by Abd Allah b. Ishaq b. Jami is sailing to attack Lisbon but is repelled by the Portuguese admiral D. Fuas Roupinho near the Cape Espichel.

Around 1058, a revolt on the island of Bahrain led by two Shi ' a members of the Abd al-Qays tribe, Abul-Bahlul al -' Awwam and Abu ' l-Walid Muslim, precipitated the waning of Qarmatian power and eventually the ascendancy to power of the Uyunids, an Arab dynasty belonging to the Abdul Qays tribe.

* The Hafsid ruler, Ibrahim I, is toppled by a Bedouin rebellion led by Abd al-Aziz I.

* Abd el-Krim led resistance in Morocco from 1920 to 1924 against French and Spanish colonial armies ten times as strong as the guerilla force, led by General Philippe Pétain.

Hajjaj's success led Abd al-Malik to assign him the role of governor of Iraq and give him free rein in the territories he controlled.

* Third Siege of Gibraltar ( 1333 ) – Siege of Gibraltar, by a Marinid army, led by Abd al-Malik in the Reconquista

Emir Abd ar-Rahman II of Córdoba likewise had to face Viking invaders, as well as internal rebellions led by Musa ibn Musa, of the Banu Qasi family.

Abd ar-Rahman II dispatched both the Vikings and the rebels, and in 846 sent an army led by his son ( later Muhammad I of Córdoba ), forcing the Christians to evacuate León, which the Muslims burned.

Perhaps inspired by the contemporary Turkish War of Independence ( 1919-1921 ), similarly, the Great Revolt for Syrian Independence began in the countryside of Jabal al-Druze, led by Sultan al-Atrash, as a Druze uprising ; the movement was adopted by a group of Syrian nationalists led by Dr Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar and spread to the States of Aleppo, Damascus.

The most serious of these was a Berber uprising in the Rif Mountains, led by Abd el-Krim.

Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi ( died 732 ; ), also known as Abd er Rahman, Abdderrahman, Abderame, and Abd el-Rahman, led the Andalusian Muslims into battle against the forces of Charles Martel in the Battle of Tours on October 10, 732 AD.

When all of them arrived in the courtyard they were told to turn towards the palace wall, and were all shot down by Captain Abdus Sattar As Sab ’ a member of the coup led by Colonel Abd al-Karim Qasim.

This inactivity and defensive posture led to Abd al-Malik dispatching an expedition to take Carthage which fell in 697.

In 1948, al-Qastal was a key position on the Jaffa-Jerusalem road that was used by Arab forces to besiege the Jews of Jerusalem. It was occupied by the Arab Liberation Army led by Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, the Arab Jerusalem Hills sector commander.

So the caliph's brother, Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik became temporarily in charge, and asked Musa, who was arriving with a cavalcade of soldiers and spoils, to delay his grand entry into the city.

Juhayman said that his justification was that the Al Saud had lost its legitimacy through corruption and imitation of the West, an echo of his father's charge in 1921 against Abd al Aziz.

Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa is left in charge and makes his capital the city of Seville, where he marries Egilona, widow of King Rodrigo, who encourages him to convert to Christianity.

After that defeat Abd al-Rahman III resolved never to take personal charge of another expedition.