We may now reverse the perspective and look at the evolution of the conquest society from the point of view of the non-Arab convert. The non-Arab converts were the representatives of the two empires which the Arabs had respectively truncated and destroyed, and in the Marwānid period such converts were becoming increasingly numerous. Yet they signally failed to direct the political evolution of their conquerors: just as the Arab conquerors contrived to keep up their fixation on the tribal past, so the non-Arab converts remained in the position of mere clients to the Arab tribes.

Clientage among the Arabs was known as walāʼ, a term which also designated the patronate. It always bound two individuals, both known as mawālī but never groups. And it arose on either manumission or voluntary commendation, the latter being known as tibāʻa luzūm, inqiṭāʻ kbidma, or generically as muwālāt, The clientage which arose on conversion can readily be seen as a special form of voluntary clientage. Walāʼ was in all likelihood a Fortleben of Roman clientage, the Arabs having borrowed it from their subjects with their usual lack of acknowledgement, and to that extent it is comparable with Frankish ties of depèndence. But whereas in Gaul Roman clientage fused with a Germanic political tradition and operated in a context of disintegrating state structures, in the Middle East it fused with a Judaic tradition and operated in the context of a fully bureaucratic state.