Sykes' History of Persia Vol 2 (pdf) - Heritage Institute

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ABU MUSLIM.
CHAPTER XLIX
PERSIAN ASCENDANCY IN THE EARLY ABBASID PERIOD
The ascendancy of the Persians over the Arabs, that is to say of the conquered
over the victors, had already for a long while been in course of preparation
;
it became complete when the Abbasids, who owed their elevation to
the Persians, ascended the throne. These princes made it a rule to be on their
guard against the Arabs, and to put their trust only in foreigners, Persians,
especially those of Khorasan, with whom, therefore, they had to make friends.
DOZY, Histoire d'lslamisme.
The End of Moslem Unity. The Omayyad dynasty
and the empire of Islam were interchangeable terms, but
this is not true of the Abbasid dynasty, which was never
acknowledged in Spain and from the first but intermittently
in Africa. In Persia, as will be seen, independent
dynasties arose as the Caliph grew weak, until
the appalling cataclysm of the Mongol invasion, sweeping
across Iran, ended the degenerate house of Abbas and
with it the Caliphate.
A second fact of special importance, so far as Persia
is concerned,
is that the Abbasids owed their success to
armies raised in Khorasan, on which they relied to maintain
the dynasty against the Arabs. The martial vigour
of the latter had naturally deteriorated, owing to the
luxury which their extraordinary successes had induced
and the system whereby they were maintained, without
as in
working, at the expense of the Moslem empire, just later days the Manchus were maintained in China. So
hostile was the dynasty to the Arabs that Abu Muslim's
orders from Ibrahim, the brother of Abul Abbas, were to
" see that there be not one left in Khorasan whose tongue
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