The leader of the revolt was a Ali ibn Muhammad, an Islamic scholar of uncertain background. Little is known about his family or early life due to a scarcity of information and conflicting accounts. According to one version, his paternal grandfather was descended from the Abd al-Qays and his paternal grandmother was a Sindhi slave woman, while his mother, a free woman, was a member of the Banu Asad ibn Khuzaymah. Some later commentators have presumed him to have been of Persian rather than Arab background, but other historians consider this to be unlikely. Ali himself claimed to have been descended from Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and fourth caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, but this was largely rejected by Muslim historians of the era as false.