The years 738-745/121-127, which this volume covers, saw the outbreak in Syria of savage internecine struggles between prominent members of the Umayyad family, which had ruled the Islamic world since 661/41. After the death of the caliph Hishm in 743-/125, the process of decay at the center of the Umayyad powerthe ruling family itselfwas swift and devastating. Three Umayyad caliphs (al-Wald II, Yazd III, and Ibrahim) followed Hishm within little more than a year, and the subsequent intervention of their distant cousin Marwn b. Muhammad (the future Marwn II) could not arrest the forces of opposition that were shortly to culminate in the Abbsid Revolution of 750/132.
In this volume al-abar deals extensively with the end of Hishm's reign, providing a rich store of anecdotes on this most able of Umayyad caliphs. He also covers in depth the notorious lifestyle of al-Wald II, the libertine prince and poet, whose career has attracted much scholarly attention in recent years. Moreover, al-abar chronicles at great length the events of the rebellion and death of the Shi'ite pretender, Zayd ibn Al, at al-Kfah, as well as recording in detail the activities farther to the east, where Nar ibn Sayyr was serving as the last Umayyad governor of Transoxiana and Khurasan, the very area from which the Abbsid Revolution was to spring. The text also contains several official letters which shed much light on Umayyad propaganda and on early Islamic epistolary style.
The hindsight conferred by subsequent centuries highlights the full significance of these half-dozen years or so. Al-abar documents the incubation of the Abbsid Revolution, an event of great importance in world history, and traces the failure of the principal Shi'ite revolt of the eighth century, a debacle which was also to have serious repercussions, for it generated the foundation of Zaydi principalities in Iran and the Yemen. Yet even these major themes are secondary to the epic tale that al-abar unfolds of the tragic downfall of the first dynasty in Islam.