Walid II. reached Khorasan, Nasr b.
Sayyar did not at once acknowledge the Caliphate of Yazid III., but
induced the Arab chiefs to accept himself as amir of Khorasan, until a
caliph should be universally acknowledged. Not many months later
(Shawwal 126) he was confirmed in his post by Yusuf b. Omar, the
governor of Irak. But Nasr had a personal enemy, the chief of the Azd
(Yemenites) Jodai' al-Kirmani, a very ambitious man. A quarrel arose,
and in a short time the Azd under Kirmani, supported by the Rabi'a, who
always were ready to join the opposition, were in insurrection, which
Nasr tried in vain to put down by concessions.

So stood matters when Harith b. Soraij, seconded by Yazid III.,
reappeared on the scene, crossed the Oxus and came to Merv. Nasr
received him with the greatest honour, hoping to get his aid against
Kirmani, but Harith, to whom 3000 men of his tribe, the Tamim, had gone
over, demanded Nasr's abdication and tried to make himself master of
Merv. Having failed in this, he allied himself with Kirmani. Nasr could
hold Merv no longer, and retired to Nishapur. But the Tamim of Harith
could not endure the supremacy of the Azd. In a moment the allies were
divided into two camps; a battle ensued, in which Harith was defeated
and killed. Originally, Harith seems to have had the highest aims, but
in reality he did more than any one else to weaken the Arabic dominion.
He brought the Turks into the field against them; he incited the native
population of Transoxiana against their Arab lords, and stirred up
discord between the Arabs themselves. Being a Tamimite, he belonged to
the Modar, on whom the government in Khorasan depended; but he aided the
Yemenites to gain the upper hand of them. Thus he paved the way for Abu
Moslim.

Since the days of Ali there had been two tendencies among the Shi'ites.
The moderate party distinguished itself from the other Moslems only by
their doctrine that the imamate belonged legally to a man of the house
of the Prophet. The other party, that of the ultra-Shi'ites, named
Hashimiya after Abu Hashim the son of Mahommed b. al-Hanafiya, preached
the equality of all Moslems, Arabs or non-Arabs, and taught that the
same divine spirit that had animated the Prophet, incorporated itself
again in his heirs (see SHI'ITES). After the death of Hosain, they chose
for their Imam Mahommed b. al-Hanafiya, and at his decease his son Abu
Hashim, from whom Mahommed b. Ali, the grandson of Abdallah b.