Butlerian Jihad: the war on thinking machines

The Butlerian Jihad, also called the Great Revolt and often shortened simply to the Jihad, was the crusade of free humanity against the computers, thinking machines and conscious robots that ruled the Synchronized Empire of Omnius. It began with the slave rebellion on Earth in 201 BG and was declared officially over after the Great Purge near the end of the century, though the final destruction of the machine evermind waited until the Battle of Corrin in 88 BG. The war was instigated and led by figures such as Serena Butler and Iblis Ginjo, and its decisive campaigns were commanded by Vorian Atreides and Xavier Harkonnen. Its lasting result was a quasi-feudal order that banned every form of thinking machine and gave rise to the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit and the mentats. Frank Herbert's Dune gives the outline and the dates 201 to 108 BG; the war itself is told in the expanded Legends of Dune trilogy. (Dune; Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad; Dune: The Machine Crusade; Dune: The Battle of Corrin)

Origins of the war#

For centuries the thinking machine empire of Omnius and the free humans of the League of Nobles had been locked in a standoff, with the machines launching an attack every few decades. The Twenty Titans, the cymek warlords who had first conquered humanity and then ceded control to the machines they built, remained unsatisfied and longed for revenge against free humanity. When the Titan Barbarossa won a wager against Omnius, the evermind agreed to escalate the conflict. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The first assault, the Battle of Zimia on Salusa Secundus, was beaten back when Xavier Harkonnen anticipated the invaders' goal and positioned his troops accordingly. The second attack, the brutal conquest of Giedi Prime, succeeded. During that conflict Serena Butler, the pregnant daughter of Viceroy Manion Butler, was captured and enslaved on Earth in the household of the robot Erasmus. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The rebellion on Earth#

On Earth, Erasmus had proposed an experiment to Omnius to test whether loyal humans could ever truly be trusted, and began spreading rumors of rebellion among the slave trustees. One recipient of these messages was Iblis Ginjo, who consulted the Cogitor Eklo and was told that any such movement would best be united under the banner of a holy war. Ginjo embraced the idea, ignorant of the messages' true origin, and quietly prepared rebel cells across the planet. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The spark came when Erasmus, troubled by Serena Butler's infant son Manion, murdered the child. The grief stricken Serena hurled herself against a sentinel robot and destroyed it with her own hands, an act that electrified the watching slaves. Primed by Ginjo's preparations, the slaves rose in revolt. The uprising spread like a chain reaction through the capital, and the Titan Ajax was pulled down and his brain canister smashed by the mob. Omnius answered by decreeing the complete extermination of all human life on Earth, a slaughter carried out by the Titans, cymeks and warrior robots until no person on the planet survived. In Frank Herbert's glossary the crusade begins in 201 BG. (Dune; Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The Battle of Earth#

Amid the chaos, the human trustee Vorian Atreides, son of the Titan Agamemnon, turned against the machines and carried Serena Butler and Iblis Ginjo off Earth aboard the update ship Dream Voyager, fleeing to the League capital of Salusa Secundus. There Serena pleaded before the League Parliament that only the destruction of the thinking machines could secure humanity's survival, and Xavier Harkonnen proposed the use of atomics, a doomsday weapon never before unleashed. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

The League assembled the most concentrated military force in thousands of years, much of it fitted with the new Holtzman shield generators. Under Xavier Harkonnen's command, and with Vorian Atreides providing inside knowledge of machine tactics, the Armada struck Earth. The Holtzman shields held against the machine defenses, the bombers broke through, and nuclear airbursts scoured the planet, obliterating Omnius and every gelcircuitry mind on it. Earth was left an irradiated husk. Vorian intercepted the fleeing update ship and seized its Omnius gelsphere, denying the surviving everminds the dead Omnius Prime's final orders to exterminate all human slaves. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad)

Campaigns of the Jihad#

The first official offensive came at Bela Tegeuse, followed by decades of grinding warfare. At the Honru Massacre, Omnius lured an entire Jihad fleet into an ambush of ten thousand robotic ships and suicide vessels, killing over half a million free humans and prompting Ginjo to found the Jipol secret police. The tide began to turn with the arrival of Ginaz mercenaries and the development of foldspace travel. Vorian Atreides commanded the space defence at the Battle of IV Anbus, and Xavier Harkonnen led the liberation of Ix. (Expanded books: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad; Dune: The Machine Crusade)

Throughout these years Serena Butler served as High Priestess of the Jihad, giving blessings and inspirational speeches while the cunning Iblis Ginjo rose to the title of Grand Patriarch and gradually reduced her to a figurehead guarded by the Seraphim Order. When the war grew stagnant, Serena reasserted herself and pressed for the Jihad's continuation. (Expanded books: Dune: The Machine Crusade)

Martyrdom of Serena Butler#

The Ivory Tower Cogitors proposed a mutual truce between Omnius and the League. Serena volunteered as the League ambassador to Corrin, ostensibly to broker peace but secretly conspiring with Ginjo to die at the hands of the machines and become a martyr. On Corrin she provoked Omnius until the evermind ordered her embassy executed. Erasmus, recognizing from her smile that she intended to martyr herself, halted the execution, but the Seraphim Niriem followed Ginjo's contingency plan and killed Serena herself, ensuring her martyrdom. Ginjo then circulated fabricated images of her gruesome execution by the machines, using a Tlulaxa clone body grown from her own cells. The outrage reignited the Jihad and gave rise to the fanatical Martyrists. (Expanded books: Dune: The Machine Crusade)

The Omnius Scourge and the Great Purge#

In 108 BG, Omnius released the Omnius Scourge, a retrovirus developed for him by the Tlulaxa that attacked the liver and killed roughly half the population of the League Worlds. The annexation of Arrakis followed when it was discovered that melange slowed and sometimes cured the disease, touching off a spice rush. (Expanded books: Dune: The Battle of Corrin)

Learning that Omnius planned to follow the plague with a decapitating strike against Salusa Secundus, Vorian Atreides, now Supreme Commander, convinced the League to launch the Great Purge, a coordinated foldspace nuclear strike against every Synchronized World. Of the original fleet of 1,080 ships, only 266 survived the hazards of spacefolding to converge on the final target. The Purge wiped out Omnius incarnations and biological life across the machine worlds, leaving over a billion slaves dead as collateral losses, and culminated in the blockade of Corrin behind a net of pulse-scrambler satellites that trapped Omnius on the planet. With Corrin sealed, the Jihad was declared officially over, which fits the 108 BG end date in Frank Herbert's glossary. (Dune; Expanded books: Dune: The Battle of Corrin)

The Battle of Corrin and its legacy#

The blockade of Corrin held for some twenty years until renewed machine attacks, including the piranha mites and a cymek threat, convinced the League to mount a final assault. At the Battle of Corrin in 88 BG, Erasmus strung two million human slaves into orbit as the Bridge of Hrethgir, threatening to detonate them if the fleet advanced. Vorian Atreides ordered his forces through the barrier regardless, while his lieutenant Abulurd Harkonnen sabotaged the fleet's weapons in protest. The trigger never fired, defused by Erasmus over his own ward, and the League broke through to destroy the last thinking machines. (Expanded books: Dune: The Battle of Corrin)

The Jihad left its mark on everything after it. Its central commandment, recorded in the Orange Catholic Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind," outlawed thinking machines forever. In Dune, Reverend Mother Mohiam tells Paul that the Great Revolt took away a crutch and forced human minds to develop, and schools were started to train human talents; the mentats, the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild all fill the space the machines left. The Corrino Empire takes its name from the Battle of Corrin. It is the first great event on the full Dune timeline, more than ten thousand years before Paul Atreides was born. (Dune)