Isa's early life is obscure. He was a member of the
Shayban tribe from the
Jazira, but otherwise not even the exact name of his father is known, it being variously given as al-Shaykh, Ahmad or Abd al-Razzak. Isa first appears in 848, in the ranks of the
Abbasid army under
Bugha al-Sharabi that was sent against the rebel
Muhammad ibn al-Ba'ith in his stronghold of
Marand. Muhammad and most of his followers belonged to the
Rabi'a tribal group, the same that the Shayban were part of. Consequently, Bugha employed Isa as an envoy to the rebels, and Isa managed to convince several among them to surrender.
Career in Syria and Palestine '') under the Abbasid Caliphate It has been suggested that Isa served as governor of
Damascus in 861, but according to
Marius Canard this is a confusion with
Isa ibn Muhammad al-Nawshari. In 865, according to
al-Tabari, he defeated and captured a
Kharijite rebel named al-Muwaffaq. He was probably already governor of
Jund Filastin (Palestine) district at the time, a post which he seems to have held, according to
Ya'qubi, at the time of the deposition of Caliph
al-Musta'in in January 866. According to Ya'qubi, Isa was one of the governors who refused to immediately acknowledge the new Caliph,
al-Mu'tazz, perhaps because his old patron Bugha still remained loyal to al-Musta'in. This led al-Nawshari to campaign against him, and the two armies clashed by the
Jordan River. Al-Nawshari's son was killed, but Isa was defeated and fled to Egypt with what wealth he could gather, while al-Nawshari occupied the capital of Palestine,
Ramla. There, in December 866, Isa secured his re-appointment to the governorship of both Palestine and the province of Jordan (
Jund al-Urdunn). Al-Tabari attributes this to the influence of Bugha al-Sharabi, whom he bribed with 40,000
gold dinars, while
al-Mas'udi claims that this was because of the riches he brought with him from Egypt, as well as 70
Alids who had fled from the
Hijaz. He did not immediately return to Palestine, instead sending his lieutenant
Abu'l-Maghra ibn Musa ibn Zurara there as his deputy. When he finally arrived in Ramla, Isa used the ongoing
anarchy in Iraq to set himself up as a virtually independent ruler. He kept the province's revenues for himself, and even intercepted the tax caravans from Egypt. He then used this money to secure the loyalty of the local Arab tribes, the Rabi'a in the north and the
Banu Kilab in the south, with whom he even formed a marriage alliance, marrying a Kilabi wife. Soon, his nascent Bedouin state was strong enough that he took control of Damascus itself. When Caliph
al-Muhtadi ascended the throne in July 869, he offered a general amnesty, and wrote to Isa, offering a pardon in exchange for him handing over the treasure he had wrongfully appropriated, according to
al-Kindi amounting to a sum of 750,000 dinars. When Isa refused, the Caliph ordered the new governor of Egypt,
Ahmad ibn Tulun, to march against him. Ibn Tulun complied, but no sooner had he reached
Arish with his army orders came to turn back. In 870, the new Caliph,
al-Mu'tamid, again sent envoys to Isa to persuade him to return the money, but Isa again refused, and an army under the Turk
Amajur al-Turki, who was named governor of Damascus. Initially based in Tyre, Isa managed to push back Amajur's numerically much inferior forces—al-Tabari reports that Isa had 20,000 men while Amajur only 200–400—to Damascus, but in a battle before the city Isa's son al-Mansur fell, and he was defeated and he was forced to withdraw to Ramla. Instead of an army there came a new embassy from the Caliph (in 870 or 871), offering him the governorship of
Armenia if he would abandon Syria. Isa agreed, and left for his new post in May 871. Soon after his appointment, Isa (called "Yise, son of Šeh" by Armenian sources) was approached by the
Uthmanids and the
Kaysites, local dynasties of Arab emirs established around
Lake Van, who were threatened by the rise of the Christian Armenian ruler
Ashot I Artsruni, prince of
Vaspurakan. Ashot was preparing to besiege the Uthmanid fortress of Amiwk, when Isa assembled a league of the emirs of Armenia, and with 15,000 men came to Vaspurakan. Unable to confront these numbers, the
Artsruni backed down and concluded a peace with Isa. Isa's situation in Armenia was precarious, however, as he was without any hope of support from the Abbasid government. Armenia was effectively left to its own devices, and the two great Christian dynasties of the Artsruni in the south and the
Bagratuni in the north effectively partitioned the country and acted as independent princes. This necessitated a careful balancing act by Isa, who could not afford to alienate the various Armenian rulers, especially after his lieutenant in Azerbaijan, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahid al-Tamimi al-Yamami, rebelled in 877. Isa besieged Muhammad in the provincial capital,
Bardha'a, but despite receiving aid from
Ashot Bagratuni (the future
King of Armenia), after 13 months of fruitless siege he was forced to abandon it. Isa then departed Armenia altogether, returning to
Amid in the Diyar Bakr. Although regarded by the Armenian and Arab historians as nominal governor of Armenia until his death in 882/3, he never again left the Jazira. (Upper
Mesopotamia), with its provinces, in medieval times In the Jazira, he faced a major rival in the person of the Turk
Ishaq ibn Kundajiq, who ruled
Mosul and had ambitions to govern all of the Jazira. Isa and his long-time lieutenant, Abu'l-Maghra, allied with other enemies of Ibn Kundajiq, the local Kharijites under a certain Ishaq ibn Ayyub and the
Taghlibi chieftain
Hamdan ibn Hamdun. Isa was succeeded by his son
Ahmad, who ruled the Diyar Bakr as an independent prince. Ahmad expanded his territory into southern Armenia, and, after Ibn Kundajiq's death in 891/2, occupied even Mosul. In the next year, however, the resurgent Abbasids under Caliph
al-Mu'tadid wrested the city from him, and in 899 the rest of the family's Jaziran domains from Ahmad's heir,
Muhammad. ==Legacy==