Busr ibn Abi Artat

Busr ibn Abi Artat al-Amiri was a prominent Arab commander in the service of Mu'awiya I, the governor of Islamic Syria (640s-661) and the first Umayyad caliph (661-680). A veteran of the early Muslim conquests in Syria and North Africa, Busr became a staunch Uthmanid partisan and supporter of Mu'awiya I against Caliph Ali during the First Fitna. He led a large-scale campaign against Ali's supporters in Arabia, gaining the submission of Medina, Mecca and Ta'if to Mu'awiya's rival caliphate and carrying out punitive measures against the inhabitants of Yemen. His actions in Arabia, which included executing two young sons of Ali's cousin, the governor of Yemen Ubayd Allah ibn Abbas, and taking captive women from the Muslim tribe of Hamdan, were condemned as unprecedented atrocities in traditional Muslim sources, a view emphasized particularly by Shia writers