‘It was not to shed blood and act unjustly that we followed the Family of Muhammad‘’ – so proclaimed Sharik b. Shaykh when he rebelled against Abu Muslim in 133/750. Or at least that is what al-Tabari reports that he said, since here he follows the historiographic convention of ascribing motivation through the direct speech of the figure in question. Al-Ya‘qubi has a variant: ‘It was not to shed blood and act unjustly that we gave the oath of allegiance to the Family of the Prophet.’ Precisely what Sharik b. Shaykh actually said or thought, we shall never know; nor, for that matter, can we say much about his movement in Bukhara beyond that it apparently fizzled out quickly, despite what Narshakhi reports as some broad support. But whatever the precise depth and breadth of that support, we can be sure that others felt the same way. The blood-letting of the Abbasid Revolution had gone too far, and one set of tyrants had been replaced by another: in the eyes of Sharik and those like-minded, the principles for which the Hashimiyya had fought – just rule under a member of the Family of the Prophet, in accordance with God's Book – had been betrayed.

The two ideas – blood and tyranny – are neatly combined in two lines of poetry, which were reportedly inscribed on a sword that had killed innocents in the wake of that Revolution: