He fled the post in 747/48 after failing to prevent the takeover of the two Islamic holy cities by the Kharijites during the Ibadi revolt.
[2] According to a contemporary poem preserved in the 10th-century Kitab al-aghani (Book of Songs), Abd al-Wahid rewarded the Taghlibite poet al-Qutami (d. 747) with fifty camels loaded with wheat, dates and clothing for a panegyric praising the prince during the rule of Caliph Umar II (r. 717–720); Abd al-Wahid made the gift to al-Qutami shortly after hearing that Umar had refused to gift him the thirty camels al-Qutami had requested due to the caliph's apparent disdain for poetry.
[3] In 747 Abd al-Wahid was appointed the governor of Mecca and Medina by Caliph Marwan II (r. 744–750), his distant cousin.
[7] The Kharijites subsequently entered Medina in late 747 or early 748, spurring Abd al-Wahid to flee for Syria, the center of the Umayyad Caliphate.
[10] A number of Umayyads fled the massacres of their family in Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Arabia and found refuge in al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula) where Abd al-Rahman I, a son of Abd al-Wahid's cousin Mu'awiya ibn Hisham, established the Cordoba-based Umayyad emirate in 756.