Victims of the Abbasids’ campaign of extermination against the Umayyads had included eighty Marwanid family members at Antipatris near present day Rosh Ha'ayin, but one of the survivors, 'Abd ar-Rahman, had escaped, barely.

Abd al-Rahman and Bedr, his former Greek slave (a freedman), had continued south through Palestine, the Sinai, and then into Egypt.

Abd al-Rahman had had to keep a low profile as he traveled.

It may be assumed that he intended to go at least as far as northwestern Africa (Maghreb), the land of his mother, which had been partly conquered by his Umayyad predecessors.

The journey across Egypt had proved perilous.

Abd al-Rahman ibn Habib al-Fihri is the semi-autonomous governor of Ifriqiya (roughly, modern Tunisia) and a former Umayyad client.

The ambitious Ibn Habib, a member of the illustrious Fihrid family, has long sought to carve out Ifriqiya as a private dominion for himself.

At first, he seeks an understanding with the Abbasids, but when they refuse his terms and demand his submission, Ibn Habib breaks openly with the Abbasids and invites the remnants of the Umayyad dynasty to take refuge in his dominions.

Abd al-Rahman is only one of several surviving Umayyad family members to make their way to Ifriqiya at this time.