 Their presence disrupted Umayyad supply lines and obliged them to permanently keep troops on standby to guard against their raids.The Byzantine counteroffensive represented the first challenge against a Muslim power by a people defeated in the early Muslim conquests.Moreover, the Mardaite raids demonstrated to Abd al-Malik and his successors that the state could no longer depend on the quiescence of Syria's Christian majority, which until then had largely refrained from rebellion.