Herbert Mason

The Role of the Azdite Muhallabid Family in Marw's Anti-Umayyad Power Struggle

T N their studies of the Arab conquest of Persia and, specifically, in their analyses of the Arab himself in this phase of Islamic history, Western historians, such as Wellhausen, Van Vloten and Gibb, have generalized the story of the tribes. The rivalries and internecine outbreaks which had their origins, in some cases, in Arabia before the time of Muhammad and which spread, during the successive waves of Arab expansion, to Iraq and then to that area « to the East » known as Hurasan, are contrasted in these studies with the Umayyad dynastys efforts at establishment of a central authority and a dependable system of control over the outlying areas under Arab influence. In opposition to what is called