The Abbasid Revolution, also called the Movement of the Men of the Black Raiment,[2] was the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE), the second of the four major Caliphates in early Islamic history, by the third, the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1517 CE). Coming to power three decades after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad and immediately after the Rashidun Caliphate, the Umayyads were a feudal Arab empire ruling over a population which was overwhelmingly non-Arab as well as primarily non-Muslim. Non-Arabs were treated as second-class citizens regardless of whether or not they converted to Islam, and this discontent cutting across faiths and ethnicities ultimately led to the Umayyads' overthrow.[
