occupy too much space here to trace all these disturbances. When Marwān II, the last of the Umayyads, a man by no means personally incapable, ascended the throne in the year 744, the game was already lost. Particularism had won the day. The general fight between all parties was however essentially a fight against Syria and the Umayyads. In this cause the new combination, which made its first efforts in the far east, in Khorāsān, attained success. In no other place were the Arabs so intermingled with the subject peoples as here, and here too the religious opposition against the Umayyads was taken up more vigorously than anywhere else. It has already been indicated above that the Shī'a was destined to prevail in Persia. In their fight for the family of the prophet, the Abbasids, under their general Abū Muslim, were victorious, and then, supported by the Persian element, they conquered first the eastern Arabs and subsequently the Syrians. In the year 750 the Umayyad rule was at an end.
The victory of the Abbasids was a victory of the Persians over the Arabs. The subjected classes had slowly raised themselves to a level with the Arabs. When Christians and Persians first accepted Islām it was not possible to include them in the theocracy in any other way than by attaching them as clients (Mawāli) to the Arabian tribal system. They were the better educated and the more highly cultivated of the two races. In the numerous revolts they fought on the side of the Arabs. The contrast between the Arabs and the Mawāli had its cause in the constitution of the State as founded by Omar. The more the Mawāli increased in importance and the more they permeated the Arabian tribes, so the universalistic, i.e. the democratic tendency of Islām was bound in corresponding degree to force its way into wider circles. On the other hand the continuous fights of the Arabian tribes against the authority of the State and against each other led to a dissolution of the political and ethnical conditions under which Islām had caused the preponderance of the Arabian element. Thus grew more and more a tendency to level Arabs and non- Arabs. Both became merged in the term Muslim, which even to this day represents for many peoples their nationality. The Persians were much more religious than the Arabs, and they accepted the political ideal of the Shī'a, which was tinged with religion, more than actually religious. This religious movement then swept away the dominion of the Umayyads, and thereby the international empire of the Abbasids took the place of the national Arabian Empire. The Arabian class disappeared and was superseded by a mixed official aristocracy, based no longer on religious merit and noble descent, but on authority delegated by the ruling prince. Thus arose out of the patriarchal kingdom of the Umayyads the absolutist rule of the Abbasids and therewith Persian civilisation made its entrance into Islām. The ancient East had conquered.
