The Marwānid faction is identified as such by the fact that the interests involved were not susceptible of rationalization. The parties were drawn from the same army and fought for the same spoils; they merely happened to be too many for the spoils available. Accordingly, they offered no programmes, demanded no reforms and laid no claim to the possession of truth until the faction came home to the metropolis as civil war: it is this failure to argue, as opposed to merely pour abuse, which is such a tell-tale indication of the nature of Marwānid ʻaṣabiyya.

The faction was articulated in a tribal language because the soldiers aligned themselves by the nearest criteria to hand, that is to say along the lines of their regimental units. These, as will be remembered, bore tribal names, and it was thus the archaic labels of the Sufyānid period which were bandied about as factional slogans. Since a soldier was assigned to his particular regiment on the strength of his tribal background, it is not surprising that tribal and factional membership virtually always coincide : a Kindī by tribe is a Kindī by regiment and a Kindī, that is to say a Yemeni, by factional affiliation. This does not of course mean that the loyalties were tribal, for the labels meant nothing to an Arab civilian, while conversely they meant much to a non-Arab soldier. But nor does it mean that the tribal language was wholly inert. The factional issues and the tribal language interacted in three major ways.