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| c. 730 |
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| Death of al-Farazdaq (Tammam ibn Ghalib), a poet born in Arabia who made his fortune and name at the Umayyad court in Damascus. He had a special flair for panegyrics and was paid to write many for famous officials. | 1 |
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| 737–38 |
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| Campaigns against the Khazars, Turks from southern Russia, who invaded the Caucasus and threatened Arab possessions in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and northern Iraq. The Umayyads defeated the Khazars and conducted raids as far as their capital on the lower Volga. | 2 |
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| 740–42 |
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| Berber revolt in North Africa, provoked by unjust treatment and Khariji propaganda. The uprising forced the retreat of Arab-Umayyad forces, but was quelled by fresh reinforcements from Damascus, although the Umayyad link to Spain was severed. | 3 |
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| 740 |
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| Death of Zayd ibn Ali, the fifth Shi’ite imam, after an unsuccessful revolt at Kufa in which he claimed the caliphate as the grandson of Ali's son Husayn. After Zayd's death, his followers were known as Zaydi Shi’ites, or Fivers. They argued that any descendant of Ali and the Prophet's daughter Fatima had the right to military support against unjust rule. Unlike other Shi’ite groups, they would not condemn the three caliphs preceding Ali. | 4 |
| The Zaydis maintained a base in Kufa and sponsored many unsuccessful revolts in the 8th and 9th centuries. They found many adherents in Tabaristan (Iran), where they converted local tribes, and in Yemen, where the Zaydi community survives to the present day. | 5 |
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| 744–50 |
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| MARWAN II. The last of the Umayyad rulers, he came to power after a brief civil war. Marwan moved the capital to Harran in northeast Syria, to be near his most loyal troops. A seasoned warrior, he was known for his strength and endurance. Much of his reign was spent attempting to hold the Umayyad Caliphate together. | 6 |
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| 747–50 |
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| THE ABBASID REVOLUTION. In June 747 an anti-Umayyad rebellion erupted that toppled the dynasty in the span of three years of bloody warfare and, more important, brought a major transformation of the Islamic polity. The system of rule based on Arab caste supremacy, upheld by the Umayyads, was shattered and replaced by a more cosmopolitan conception of Islam. | 7 |
| The rebels began their struggle in northeastern Iran, where they assembled armies and popular support. They steadily took over the territories of Iran, Iraq, and Syria, occupied the Umayyad capital of Damascus (Apr. 750), and killed off the Umayyad ruling house. Marwan II suffered a major defeat at the Battle of the Great Zab near Mosul (Jan. 750) and fled to Egypt, where he was captured and killed (Aug. 750). | 8 |
| In Nov. 749, as the Umayyad regime disintegrated, the rebels proclaimed a new caliph, Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah of the Arab family of al-Abbas. With him began the dynastic line of the Abbasids, who held the caliphate in Baghdad until 1258. The Abbasids claimed the caliphate as blood relatives of the Prophet Muhammad through his uncle al-Abbas. They had begun subversive activities against the Umayyads some 30 years before the open revolt, building an organized underground network of agents and propagandists who cultivated disaffected people, especially in the area of Khurasan. Their most famous agent was Abu Muslim, an Iranian convert to Islam who declared the opening of the revolt. The multitudes who rallied behind the Abbasids were driven by various grievances and aspiration for change. Among them were the non-Arab converts to Islam (the mawali), who were attracted by the Abbasid promise of egalitarian treatment for all Muslims. Shi’ite groups, too, gave important support to the revolution, in the expectation of seeing an Alid candidate installed, but they would be bitterly disappointed by the outcome. | 9 |
| The Abbasid Revolution marked a great watershed in Middle Eastern history. It swept away the Arab monopoly on power and ushered in a new order in which all Muslims, regardless of origin, could participate in the political, social, and cultural life of the empire. | 10 |
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