Abbasid Caliphate - Rise

Rise

The Abbasid caliphs were Arabs descended from Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, one of the youngest uncles of Muhammad, because of which they considered themselves the true successor of Muhammad as opposed to the Umayyads. The Umayyads were descended from Umayya,

The Abbasids also distinguished themselves from the Umayyads by attacking their moral character and administration in general. According to Ira Lapidus, "The Abbasid revolt was supported largely by Arabs, mainly the aggrieved settlers of Marw with the addition of the Yemeni faction and their Mawali". The Abbasids also appealed to non-Arab Muslims, known as mawali, who remained outside the kinship-based society of the Arabs and were perceived as a lower class within the Umayyad empire. Muhammad ibn 'Ali, a great-grandson of Abbas, began to campaign for the return of power to the family of Muhammad, the Hashimites, in Persia during the reign of Umar II.

During the reign of Marwan II, this opposition culminated in the rebellion of Ibrahim the Imam, the fourth in descent from Abbas. Supported by the province of Khorasan, Iran, he achieved considerable success, but was captured in the year 747 and died in prison; some hold that he was assassinated. The quarrel was taken up by his brother Abdallah, known by the name of Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah, who defeated the Umayyads in 750 in the Battle of the Zab near the Great Zab and was subsequently proclaimed caliph.

Immediately after their victory, Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah sent his forces to North Africa and Central Asia, where his forces fought against Tang expansion during the Battle of Talas (the Abbasids were known to their opponents as the: "Black robed Tazi" ("Tazi", Chinese: 大食 is borrowed from Persian.)). Barmakids, who were instrumental in building Baghdad; introduced the world's first recorded paper mill in Baghdad, thus beginning a new era of intellectual rebirth in the Abbasid domain. Within 10 years, the Abbasids built another renowned paper mill in the Umayyad capital of Córdoba in Spain.