fabricated wholesale. Even Umayyad names were effaced from inscriptions on buildings, and the tombs of every Umayyad caliph except Muawiyah I and Umar II were violated and their corpses desecrated.
The most significant difference between this and the preceding caliphate, however, lay in the fact that the Abbasid was oriented Persia-ward. Persian protocol pervaded the court, Persian ideas dominated the political scene and Persian women prevailed in the royal harem. It was an empire of Neo-Moslems in which the Arabs formed but one of the component parts. The Iraqis felt relieved from Syrian tutelage. The Shiites felt avenged. Persians found high posts in the government open to them; they introduced and occupied a new office, the vizirate, highest after the caliphate. Khurasanians flocked to man the caliphal bodyguard. The Arabian aristocracy was eclipsed.
The first governor of Abbasid Syria was the caliph's uncle Abdullah, who had won the decisive battle over Marwan II. When al-Saffah died in 754, Abdullah disputed the caliphate with al-Mansur, brother of the deceased caliph. His claim rested on the huge disciplined army which he had assembled presumably for use against the Byzantines. He did not trust the Khurasanian troops, so had 17,000 of them butchered before moving eastward with the rest of his men, mostly Syrians. He was met and defeated by abu-Muslim, the virtually independent governor of Khurasan and idol of his people. So successful was he in suppressing all personal and official enemies that al-Mansur's suspicions were aroused, and he had the general to whom he owed so much treacherously put to death.
The caliphate founded by al-Saffah and al-Mansur was the longest-lived and the most celebrated of caliphates. All the thirty-five caliphs who succeeded al-Mansur (754-775) were his lineal descendants. As a site for his capital al-Mansur chose a Christian village on the west bank of the Tigris, Baghdad. The city was built in 762 and officially
