With the expansion of the Arabs beyond the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh and early eighth centuries, increasing numbers of conquered populations began to embrace Islam. This process posed a significant social challenge: how to integrate converts into the structures of Arab society, which continued to operate according to a tribal logic of affiliation. The solution was the institution of walāʾ, or clientage, through which new Muslims obtained formal membership in the community by establishing a bond with an Arab tribe. This paper examines the status of non-Arab Muslims in the first centuries of Islam, with particular emphasis on the Umayyad period. On the one hand, converts came to play important roles in the administration, the army, and, over time, also in the political and intellectual life of the caliphate. On the other hand, they did not enjoy the full range of privileges reserved for Arabs in the emerging legal rules, and their social standing remained lower. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that the observable inequalities did not stem from the developing Islamic doctrine, but rather from Arab cultural traditions - specifically, the persistence of pre-Islamic social structures and the mechanisms of clientage.