Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

local rebellion in the eastern city of Merv, they spread the spirit of full revolution throughout the caliphate, igniting a third fitna, which ended with military defeat for the caliph Marwan II at the battle of Zab (Iraq) in January 750. Three months later Damascus fell, and after this the surviving members of the dynasty were hunted and assassinated, one by one. Marwan was murdered after he fled to Egypt and replaced by a Jordanian Arab called Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah—whose sobriquet translates to English as “blood spiller.” Al-Saffah was thus the founder of a new dynasty named the Abbasids, who claimed descent from Muhammad’s uncle al-Abbas and identified themselves with a plain black flag.*