ABSTRACT
The Umayyad regime may be said to have arisen organically out of the original intentions of Muhammad and the first four caliphs. These had all meant Islam to become a theocracy, but what had happened, since in fact all the early Muslims were Arabs, was that the regime rooted in these pious intentions was simply an Arab dynasty organized along national lines. The folk migration had prevailed, for the time being, against the religious impulse; this was given formal expression by the eclipse of Muhammad’s pious comrades, by the decline of the Helpers and Emigrants as wielders of authority, and by the rise of the old Arab aristocracy and of the great tribes of Syria and Iraq.
