 After Marwan 's 732 expedition , a period of quiet set in . Marwan was replaced as governor of Armenia and Adharbayjan in spring 733 by Sa 'id al @-@ Harashi , but he undertook no campaigns at all until 735 , when he lost his sight and resigned . Marwan was then re @-@ appointed to the post , but he too was unable to launch anything but local expeditions until 737 : three fortresses near the Darial Pass and the ruler of a North Caucasian principality , Tuman Shah , were captured in 735 , while another local prince , <unk> , was defeated and killed in 736 . Blankinship attributes this inactivity to the exhaustion of the Arab armies and draws a parallel with the contemporaneous quiet phase in Transoxiana in 732 – 734 , where the Arabs had also suffered a series of costly defeats at the hands of Turkic nomads . In addition , Agapius and Michael the Syrian record that the Arabs and the Khazars concluded peace , information which Muslim sources ignore or downplay to a tactical ruse by Marwan designed to gain time for his preparations . 
