The Caliphs

The Abbasid revolution showed what it took to overthrow a dynasty; establishing a new one brought a whole other set of challenges. The clan’s first caliph, al Saffah, took an aggressive posture to scare off any would-be challengers to his power. Legitimacy was his chief concern, and he found the best way to attain it was to assert his claim as fiercely as possible.

The Abbasid path to power required stealth, deceit, and most of all patience. The Hashemite family managed to unseat the Umayyads through cultivating a secret movement that benefitted from all the social tensions which plagued the umma. They drew on Hashemite support by calling for the rights of the prophet’s clan, they championed the southern or Yemeni side of the tribal feud, and they were deeply anti-Umayyad. Their success would have been unlikely in Hisham’s age, but times had changed in the few years since then.

While the Umayyads fought among themselves in distant Syria, dangerous developments were underway in Khurasan. The umma’s divisions in the Eastern province were deep enough to give the coming revolution its first foothold in the caliphate. Its final Umayyad governor, Nasr ibn Sayyar, bore witness to the entire transformational era in the region, and he did an admirable job holding things together until his final breath.

Yazid III’s successful coup against Walid II blew up the tribal feud. Syrian unity had long undergirded Umayyad power in Syria and from there, the entire caliphate; it had now been torn asunder in bloody warfare. Even when the clan finally had someone strong enough to make a play at stabilizing the situation, the caliphate was far too weak, a mere shadow of its former self, its armies comprised entirely of men animated by tribal loyalties.

It took Hisham two decades to undo the damage his half-brothers had wrought upon the umma with their careless administration. It took his successor Walid ibn il Yazid less than two years to wreck things beyond repair. While it was almost entirely his fault that things fell apart for his clan, he's not the one who opened pandora’s box, that was his cousin. Umayyad chaos quickly ensued.

The capable Hisham protected his caliphate from the many enemies who lined its borders. These were not the only ones he had to contend with however, the umma itself was somewhat fragmented, and opposition to the Umayyads had swelled during the short and tumultuous reigns of his predecessors. As a result, Hisham had to face resistance from Arabs with kharijite or Hashemite loyalties. There was no stopping this effective caliph though, and he came out on top in all issues, save one.

Khurasan and the East remained as volatile as ever, and Hisham had to contend with the new threat of the Turgesh throughout his long reign. We’re fortunate that our sources contain so much information on the region during this chaotic time, especially because the area will be of pivotal importance to the caliphate before too long. The Arab struggle in the region reveals how riven by disagreements the umma had become East of Iraq.

Hisham’s armies faced many different opponents during his long and formidable reign. The mismanagement of the half-brothers who preceded him had taken its toll on the umma’s unity, and the caliphate’s borders were no longer as secure as they had once been. We’ll take a whirlwind tour of the fighting along its edges to show just how many threats the capable caliph beat down during his two decades in charge.

In the nine years between al Walid’s death in 715 and Hisham’s ascension in 724 the umma went through three caliphs, each with a radically different vision for its future. This swinging between political projects greatly undermined any stability Umayyad power was founded upon, an important development which is unfortunately difficult to trace in our sources. A quick look at some of the unspoken changes will reveal the unenviable work ahead that lay ahead of our latest caliph.

Yazid came to power following the transformative reign of the pious Omar II. The new caliph faced some immediate resistance, and after dealing with it he went about undoing all his predecessors reforms, effectively returning the caliphate to what it had been before. While the cracks are too fine to see in this episode, Yazid’s reign will prove to be disastrous for his clan and the caliphate in the long run.