164 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINSimilarly, the chronicler's enthusiastic report that property was
returned to the Christians by YaQya should not be taken so much as
social justice as maximising of government revenues: land held by
Christians was taxable, that of Muslims was not. Thus, returning prop-
erty to the former, improperly taken from them by the latter, had
clear benefits for the governors and for the rulers in whose name
they acted. In general the reign of the caliph Hisham (724-743) was
marked by attempts to increase the tax revenues of the Umayyad
state, and what was happening in Al-Andalus was thus not just the
solving of problems created by the conquest, but also part of a wider
process taking place throughout the Arab empire.
What was perceived as the increasing avarice of the fisc in the reign
of Hisham contributed to the growing discontent with the Umayyad
regime throughout the empire. This was exacerbated by an outbreak
of factional conflict after the death of Hisham in 743. This has often
been presented in terms of a traditional feud between two groups of
tribes, known as the Qaysiyya and the Yamaniyya, or the 'Syrians' and
the 'Yemenis'. This latter distinction was not a geographical one in
terms of northern and southern Arabian locations for these confed-
eracies, but one reflecting their legendary places of origin. Indeed,
the whole division is perhaps better seen as rivalry between two mili-
tary factions, who backed rival claimants to the caliphate in attempts
to secure their own power. Thus, Walid II (743-744), Hisham's im-
mediate successor, was murdered by the supporters ofYazid III (744),
whose sudden death a matter of months later left the way open to the
succession of the third possible candidate, Marwan II (744-750).
Yazid had been the favoured candidate of the Yamaniyya or 'Yemeni'
military; while Marwan II based his support on the rival Qaysiyya. The
roots of this conflict lay in the latter part of Hisham's relatively long
reign, when rival military leaders and their followers began taking
sides with members of the next generation of the Umayyad dynasty.
This growth of tension had an impact on Spain even before the
outbreak of factional conflict in Syria in 744. In 739 some of the
Berbers in North Mrica, many of whom had become not only com-
mitted but also fundamentalist Muslims, rebelled against what they
saw as oppressive Arab domination, which denied them the equality
of status that should have been theirs as fellow believers. Initially the
revolt was highly successful, and an army was sent from Syria to Ifriqiya
to help suppress it. This force, composed of Qaysiyya units, was de-
feated by the rebels and its commander, Kulthiim, was killed. The