ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Kawwāʾ, Abū ʿAmr (d. after 44/664) was a prominent leader of the Khārijīs during the formative stage of the Khārijī movement. Al-Kawwāʾ (which means a cowardly or weak-hearted person) was the laqab or title of his father ʿAmr b. Nuʿmān, who was a genealogist, a skill inherited from his forefathers, and which he then handed down to his descendants, the Banū Kawwāʾ (al-Jāḥiẓ, 1/185; Ibn al-Nadīm, 102). ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Kawwāʾ was himself a Kūfan, from the Banū Yashkur, a branch of the tribe of Bakr b. Wāʾil (Ibn a…