ABSTRACT
The third civil war, 1 designated as a Fitna like the first two, may be said to open with the rebellion against Hisham’s successor al-Walid II in 744 and to end with the establishment of control by Marwan II over the central provinces of the empire in 747. Since it was followed almost immediately, however, by the outbreak of the movement in Khurasan which was to lead to the final collapse of Umayyad power a couple of years later, and since Marwan II’s authority never had the same extent as that of earlier Umayyad caliphs, it is not possible to be precise about the chronological limits of this third fitna. The period was one of complex military and political turmoil and a breakdown of order. As in the second civil war, the Arabs of Syria were divided into ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ factions supporting different contenders for the caliphate, again the Umayyad family was split by internal divisions, again Kharijite and Shi‘ite movements were able to take advantage of the situation to establish temporary control over fairly large expanses of territory, and again religious issues were entwined with the struggles between rival contenders for power. In spite of these superficial similarities, however, it is clear that the third civil war was not merely a rerun of the second, and that is why Marwan II, on emerging from it, was unable to establish his rule in the same way as had Mu‘awiya and ‘Abd al-Malik when they reestablished unity in 661 and 692.
