Did islam ever have a perdiccas analogue?

Howdy there! It's superninja76, back with some more random thoughts of mine.

Recently I've been reading up on islamic history, and I've noticed the sort of..total collapse of the caliphate as a true representative of the whole of islam, after the ummayads. Was there anyone who, like perdiccas, valiantly (or not so valiantly) tried to save the caliphate so everything didn't go to shit?

I can't seem to find anything on my own, but of course there's always someone more knowledgable than I, so I've decided to consult you guys!

Was there a perdiccas analogue, for islam?
 
Well... the Early Abbasids insisted as being the true representatives of the whole of Islam, and they had some limited success at that until about the times of al-Mutawakkil (mid-ninth century). At that point, however, the Shiites had basically gone their own way, the seeds of which had been planted a lot earlier.
The Umayyads had also their legitimacy bitterly contested (right from the start) and, considering the conflicts surrounding the Caliphal institution even in the earliest times according to the known sources, it may be said that only the first two Caliph enjoyed general acceptance as "true representatives of the whole of Islam". Even that is not fully true in retrospective visions of history held by Sunnis (who extend that to all the four "elective" Caliphs") and most Shiites (many of them only accept Ali) respectively.
I am not sure who would be a Perdiccas analogue here, but you may construe a case for many people in the first couple of centuries of Islam who were trying, from their perspective, to "save" the Caliphate. This includes at least Abd al-Malik, Abdallah bin al-Zubayr, Umar II, the early Abbasids, some Alid rebels (arguably Husayn and Zayd) and maybe, one could say, even al-Ma'mun and his immediate successors. The fact that some of the people I named were fighting each other is telling.
 
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