The most immediate threat arose in southern Ifriqiya, where the Sufrite leader Oqasha ibn Ayub al-Fezari raised a Berber army and laid sieges to Gabès and Gafsa. By a rapid sally south with the remnant of the Ifriqiyan army, the Kairouan "qadi" Abd al-Rahman ibn Oqba al-Ghaffari managed to defeat and disperse Oqasha's forces near Gafsa in December, 741. But the qadi possessed far too few Arab troops to put up a pursuit, and Oqasha immediately set about re-assembling his forces quietly around Tobna in the Zab valley of western Ifriqiya.