Abd al-Malik's reign after his victory in the civil war (692–705) marks a turning point in the political history of the new empire. Kinship had always been a powerful factor in the politics of the Quraysh, but no leader before ‘Abd al-Malik had been succeeded by a son without violent opposition and no leader could be said to have successfully established a dynasty. In contrast, ‘Abd al-Malik was succeeded peacefully by nine members of his family, in three generations – between 705 and 743 two of his sons, a nephew, and then two more of his sons and a grandson held power. Even when violent conflict broke out within the dynasty after 743, another two grandsons and then another nephew ruled, until the fall of the Umayyads in 750. For this reason, the period 684–750 is usually known as the era of the Marwanid Umayyads, or Marwanids, after ‘Abd al-Malik's father and predecessor as caliph in Syria, Marwan b. al-Hakam (r. 684–5), the progenitor of all the subsequent Umayyad caliphs (see Chart II.1).

The ability to pass power relatively smoothly within the Marwanid branch of the Umayyad clan for fifty years reflects the comprehensive nature of the victory of ‘Abd al-Malik and the Syrian tribes in the campaigns of 689–92. Thereafter, the main Qurashi tribal groups who had contended for leadership of the empire in the seventh century abandoned their efforts to take power, some permanently and some only temporarily. None of Abu Bakr's Zubayrid relatives sought power for themselves again, and many of his former supporters went over to the Marwanids or at least tolerated their rule. In contrast, the claims of the Prophet's tribe, the Banu Hashim, retained their political potency; when the Umayyad caliphate collapsed in 750, it was the Abbasid branch of Banu Hashim (that is, the descendants of the Prophet's and ‘Ali's uncle al-‘Abbas b. ‘Abd al-Muttalib) who took power. However, no member of Hashim was the figurehead for a rebellion between 687 and 740; after the debacles of the killing of al-Husayn in 680, the massacre of the Penitents in 685 and the failure of al-Mukhtar's rebellion in the name of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya in 687, it took a particular set of circumstances for the ideological potential of close kinship with the Prophet Muhammad to again be realised in effective militant political action.