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Its political condition had never been very stable, and it seems to have preserved during the Omeyyad ascendancy the same loose but roughly effective organisation that it possessed under the Hashim branch.

His Christian soul was mightily stirred by seeing an infidel kingdom set up in Andalusia; and when, in 777, the Saracen governor and two other Arab chiefs appealed to him for aid against the Omeyyad usurper, Abd-er-Rahman, he eagerly responded.

The family of Omeyyad had given fourteen Khalifs to the Mahommedan empire from 661 to 750; at which time the then reigning Omeyyad was deposed, and the second dynasty of Khalifs commenced, called Abbaside, after Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet. Abd-er-Rahman was a Prince belonging to the deposed family of the Omeyyads.

Mahomet's followers are now not only the opponents of the Kureischite faith and the enemies of their idols, but they are also their political foes, and have drawn the whole house of Hashim into faction against the ruling power the Omeyyad house.

As soon as the hand of Abd-er-Rahman I. was removed disintegration began. Clashing races, clans, and political parties had in a few years made such havoc that it seemed as if the Omeyyad dynasty was crumbling. It might have been an Arab who said "he cared not who made the laws of his country, so he could write its songs."