ABSTRACT
Just as fitna had ushered in the beginning of Syrian-Umayyad appropriation of trans-regional leadership, so too was the end of Umayyad-Marwanid rule heralded by a widespread series of conflicts that would be remembered as a period of social and political disintegration, apocalyptic chaos, and fitna. This formation of a patrimonial-bureaucratic apparatus of power, and this expansion, diversification, and specialization of competition in the center and at the many peripheries of Abbasid authority also urged for dynastic claims to be articulated in more creative and distinctive ways. The center of Abbasid subversive action is said to have been situated in Humayma, a remote site in southern Syria, one of those many grey zones of Marwanid authority, but at the same time connected to the wider world by caravan routes that passed through. Harun al-Rashid’s very active patrimonial leadership had obviously managed, although not without difficulty, to safeguard his Abbasid priority at court and in the empire’s main regions.
