The Abbasids followed their re-imposition of control over Armenia by a similar purge of the native Christian nobility in neighbouring Iberia in the 780s, as well as by a new settlement policy which saw increasing numbers of Arab Muslims settled in the Transcaucasus, with the effect that by the turn of the 9th century, the Arab element predominated in the towns and lowlands. In the next century, Caucasian Albania was effectively Islamicized, while Iberia and much of Armenia came under the control of a series of Arab emirates.[2][6]