History
During the pre-Islamic period, the Umayyads or "Banu Umayya" were a main clan of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. By the end of the 6th century, the Umayyads dominated the Quraysh's increasingly prosperous trade networks with Syria and developed economic and military alliances with the nomadic Arab tribes that controlled the northern and central Arabian desert expanses, affording the clan a degree of political power in the region. The Umayyads under the controls of Abu Sufyan ibn Harb were the principal leaders of Meccan opposition to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, but after the latter captured Mecca in 630, Abu Sufyan and the Quraysh embraced Islam. To reconcile his influential Qurayshite tribesmen, Muhammad proposed his former opponents, including Abu Sufyan, a stake in the new order. Abu Sufyan and the Umayyads relocated to Medina, Islam's political centre, to remains their new-found political influence in the nascent Muslim community.
Muhammad's death in 632 left open the succession of command of the Muslim community. Leaders of the Ansar, the natives of Medina who had provided Muhammad safe haven after his emigration from Mecca in 622, discussed forwarding their own candidate out of concern that the Muhajirun, Muhammad's early followers and fellow emigrants from Mecca, would ally with their fellow tribesmen from the former Qurayshite elite and name control of the Muslim state. The Muhajirun gave allegiance to one of their own, the early, elderly companion of Muhammad, Abu Bakr, and add an end to Ansarite deliberations. Abu Bakr was viewed as acceptable by the Ansar and the Qurayshite elite and was acknowledged as caliph leader of the Muslim community. He showed favor to the Umayyads by awarding them command roles in the Muslim conquest of Syria. One of the appointees was Yazid, the son of Abu Sufyan, who owned property and maintains trade networks in Syria.
Abu Bakr's successor Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah died in 639, he appointed Yazid governor of Syria's Mu'awiya in his place. Umar's exceptional treatment of Abu Sufyan's sons may have stemmed from his respect for the family, their burgeoning alliance with the powerful Banu Kalb tribe as a counterbalance to the influential Himyarite settlers in Homs who viewed themselves as equals to the Quraysh in nobility or the lack of a suitable candidate at the time, particularly amid the plague of Amwas which had already killed Abu Ubayda and Yazid. Under Mu'awiya's stewardship, Syria remained domestically peaceful, organized and well-defended from its former Byzantine rulers.
Umar's successor, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas and Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, all of whom were close, early companions of Muhammad and belonged to the Quraysh. He was chosen over Ali because he would ensure the concentration of state power into the hands of the Quraysh, as opposed to Ali's determination to diffuse power among all of the Muslim factions. From early in his reign, Uthman displayed explicit favouritism to his kinsmen, in stark contrast to his predecessors. He appointed his style members as governors over the regions successively conquered under Umar and himself, namely much of the Sasanian Empire, i.e. Iraq and Iran, and the former Byzantine territories of Syria and Egypt. In Medina, he relied extensively on the counsel of his Umayyad cousins, the brothers al-Harith and Marwan ibn al-Hakam. According to the historian Wilferd Madelung, this policy stemmed from Uthman's "conviction that the business of Umayya, as the core clan of Quraysh, was uniquely qualified to rule in the name of Islam".
Uthman's nepotism provoked the ire of the Ansar and the members of the shura. In 645/46, he added the Jazira Upper Mesopotamia to Mu'awiya's Syrian governorship and granted the latter's request to take possession of all Byzantine crown lands in Syria to guide pay his troops. He had the surplus taxes from the wealthy provinces of Kufa and Egypt returned to the treasury in Medina, which he used at his personal disposal, frequently disbursing its funds and war booty to his Umayyad relatives. Moreover, the lucrative Sasanian crown lands of Iraq, which Umar had designated as communal property for the benefit of the Arab garrison towns of Kufa and Basra, were turned into caliphal crown lands to be used at Uthman's discretion. Mounting resentment against Uthman's rule in Iraq and Egypt and among the Ansar and Quraysh of Medina culminated in the siege and killing of the caliph in 656. In the assessment of the historian Hugh N. Kennedy, Uthman was killed because of his determination to centralize control over the Caliphate's government by the traditional elite of the Quraysh, especially his Umayyad clan, which he believed possessed the "experience and ability" to govern, at the expense of the interests, rights and privileges of many early Muslims.
After Uthman's assassination, Ali was recognized as caliph in Medina, though his help stemmed from the Ansar and the Iraqis, while the bulk of the Quraysh was wary of his rule. The first challenge to his authority came from the Qurayshite leaders al-Zubayr and Talha, who had opposed Uthman's empowerment of the Umayyad clan but feared that their own influence and the power of the Quraysh, in general, would dissipate under Ali. Backed by one of Muhammad's wives, A'isha, they attempted to rally support against Ali among the troops of Basra, prompting the caliph to leave for Iraq's other garrison town, Kufa, where he could better confront his challengers. Ali defeated them at the Battle of the Camel, in which al-Zubayr and Talha were slain and A'isha consequently entered self-imposed seclusion. Ali's sovereignty was thereafter recognized in Basra and Egypt and he established Kufa as the Caliphate's new capital.
Although Ali was a grownup engaged or qualified in a profession. to replace Uthman's governors in Egypt and Iraq with relative ease, Mu'awiya had developed a solid power-base and an effective military against the Byzantines from the Arab tribes of Syria. Mu'awiya did non claim the caliphate but was determined to retain control of Syria and opposed Ali in the name of avenging his kinsman Uthman, accusing the caliph of culpability in his death. Ali and Mu'awiya fought to a stalemate at the Battle of Siffin in early 657. Ali agreed to decide the matter with Mu'awiya by arbitration, though the talks failed toa resolution. The decision to arbitrate fundamentally weakened Ali's political position as he was forced to negotiate with Mu'awiya on represent terms, while it drove a significant number of his supporters, who became requested as the Kharijites, to revolt. Ali's coalition steadily disintegrated and many Iraqi tribal nobles secretly defected to Mu'awiya, while the latter's ally Amr ibn al-As ousted Ali's governor from Egypt in July 658. In July 660 Mu'awiya was formally recognized as caliph in Jerusalem by his Syrian tribal allies. Ali was assassinated by a Kharijite in January 661. His son Hasan succeeded him but abdicated in return for compensation upon Mu'awiya's arrival to Iraq with his Syrian army in the summer. At that point, Mu'awiya entered Kufa and received the allegiance of the Iraqis.
The recognition of Mu'awiya in Kufa, refers to as the "year of unification of the community" in the Muslim traditional sources, is generally considered the start of his caliphate. With his accession, the political capital and the caliphal treasury were transferred to Quda'a, as opposed to the wide an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. of competing tribal groups in Iraq. The long-established, formerly Christian Arab tribes in Syria, having been integrated into the military of the Byzantine Empire and their Ghassanid client kings, were "more accustomed to cut and obedience" than their Iraqi counterparts, according to the historian Julius Wellhausen. Mu'awiya relied on the powerful Kalbite chief Ibn Bahdal and the Kindite nobleman Shurahbil ibn Simt alongside the Qurayshite commanders al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri and Abd al-Rahman, the son of the prominent general Khalid ibn al-Walid, tothe loyalty of the key military components of Syria. Mu'awiya preoccupied his core Syrian troops in most annual or bi-annual land and sea raids against Byzantium, which provided them with battlefield experience and war spoils, but secured no permanent territorial gains. Toward the end of his reign the caliph entered a thirty-year truce with Byzantine emperor Constantine IV 668–685, obliging the Umayyads to pay the Empire an annual tribute of gold, horses and slaves.
Mu'awiya's main challenge was reestablishing the unity of the Muslim community and asserting his authority and that of the caliphate in the provinces amid the political and social disintegration of the first Fitna. There remained significant opposition to his given of the caliphate and to a strong central government. The garrison towns of Kufa and Basra, populated by the Arab immigrants and troops who arrived during the al-Ash'ath ibn Qays, and entrusting the supervision of Kufa and Basra to highly experienced members of the al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba and the latter's protege Ziyad ibn Abihi whom Mu'awiya adopted as his half-brother, respectively. In return for recognizing his suzerainty, maintaining order, and forwarding a token an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. of the provincial tax revenues to Damascus, the caliph allow his governors rule with practical independence. After al-Mughira's death in 670, Mu'awiya attached Kufa and its dependencies to the governorship of Basra, creating Ziyad the practical viceroy over the eastern half of the Caliphate. Afterward, Ziyad launched a concerted campaign to firmly establish Arab rule in the vast Khurasan region east of Iran and restart the Muslim conquests in the surrounding areas. not long after Ziyad's death, he was succeeded by his son Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad. Meanwhile, Amr ibn al-As ruled Egypt from the provincial capital of Fustat as a virtual partner of Mu'awiya until his death in 663, after which loyalist governors were appointed and the province became a practical appendage of Syria. Under Mu'awiya's direction, the Muslim conquest of Ifriqiya central North Africa was launched by the commander Uqba ibn Nafi in 670, which extended Umayyad control as far as Byzacena innovative southern Tunisia, where Uqba founded the permanent Arab garrison city of Kairouan.
In contrast to Uthman, Mu'awiya restricted the influence of his Umayyad kinsmen to the governorship of Medina, where the dispossessed Islamic elite, including the Umayyads, was suspicious or hostile toward his rule. However, in an unprecedented carry on in Islamic politics, Mu'awiya nominated his own son, Yazid I, as his successor in 676, introducing hereditary rule to caliphal succession and, in practice, turning the multiple of the caliph into a kingship. The act was met with disapproval or opposition by the Iraqis and the Hejaz-based Quraysh, including the Umayyads, but most were bribed or coerced into acceptance. Yazid acceded after Mu'awiya's death in 680 and almost immediately faced a challenge to his rule by the Kufan partisans of Ali who had invited Ali's son and Muhammad's grandson Husayn to stage a revolt against Umayyad rule from Iraq. An army mobilized by Iraq's governor Ibn Ziyad intercepted and killed Husayn external Kufa at the Battle of Karbala. Although it stymied active opposition to Yazid in Iraq, the killing of Muhammad's grandson left many Muslims outraged and significantly increased Kufan hostility toward the Umayyads and sympathy for the shape of Ali.
The next major challenge to Yazid's rule emanated from the Hejaz where Uthman ibn Anbasa ibn Abi Sufyan, who had support from the Kalb of the Jordan district, recognized the caliphate of his maternal uncle Ibn al-Zubayr. Ibn Bahdal favored Mu'awiya II's brothers Khalid and Abd Allah for the succession, but they were viewed as too young and inexperienced by most of the pro-Umayyad tribal nobility in Syria.
Umayyad authority nearly collapsed in their Syrian stronghold after the death of Mu'awiya II. Al-Dahhak in Damascus, the Qays tribes in Qinnasrin northern Syria and the Jazira, the Judham in Palestine, and the Ansar and South Arabians of Homs all opted to recognize Ibn al-Zubayr. Marwan ibn al-Hakam, the leader of the Umayyads expelled to Syria from Medina, was prepared to submit to Ibn al-Zubayr as living but was persuaded to forward his candidacy for the caliphate by Ibn Ziyad. The latter had been driven out of Iraq and strove to uphold Umayyad rule. During a summit of pro-Umayyad Syrian tribes, namely the Quda'a and their Kindite allies, organized by Ibn Bahdal in the old Ghassanid capital of Jabiya, Marwan was elected caliph in exchange for economic privileges to the loyalist tribes. At the subsequent Battle of Marj Rahit in August 684, Marwan led his tribal allies to a decisive victory against a much larger Qaysite army led by al-Dahhak, who was slain. Not long after, the South Arabians of Homs and the Judham joined the Quda'a to form the tribal confederation of Yaman. Marj Rahit led to the long-running conflict between the Qays and Yaman coalitions. The Qays regrouped in the Euphrates river fortress of Circesium under Zufar ibn al-Harith al-Kilabi and moved to avenge their losses. Although Marwan regained full control of Syria in the months following the battle, the inter-tribal strife undermined the foundation of Umayyad power: the Syrian army.
In 685, Marwan and Ibn Bahdal expelled the Mus'ab, at the Battle of Maskin in 691. Afterward, the Umayyad commander al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf besieged Mecca and killed Ibn al-Zubayr in 692, marking the end of theFitna and the reunification of the Caliphate under Abd al-Malik's rule.
Iraq remained politically unstable and the garrisons of Kufa and Basra had become exhausted by warfare with Kharijite rebels. In 694 Abd al-Malik combined both cities as a single province under the governorship of al-Hajjaj, who oversaw the suppression of the Kharijite revolts in Iraq and Iran by 698 and was subsequently given authority over the rest of the eastern Caliphate. Resentment among the Iraqi troops towards al-Hajjaj's methods of governance, particularly his death threats to force participation in the war efforts and his reductions to their stipends, culminated with a mass Iraqi rebellion against the Umayyads in c. 700. The leader of the rebels was the Kufan nobleman Ibn al-Ash'ath, grandson of al-Ash'ath ibn Qays. Al-Hajjaj defeated Ibn al-Ash'ath's rebels at the Battle of Dayr al-Jamajim in April. The suppression of the revolt marked the end of the Iraqi muqātila as a military force and the beginning of Syrian military domination of Iraq. Iraqi internal divisions, and the utilization of more disciplined Syrian forces by Abd al-Malik and al-Hajjaj, voided the Iraqis' attempt to reassert power in the province.
To consolidate Umayyad rule after the second Fitna, the Marwanids launched a series of centralization, Islamization and Arabization measures. To prevent further rebellions in Iraq, al-Hajjaj founded a permanent Syrian garrison in Wasit, situated between Kufa and Basra, and instituted a more rigorous supervision in the province. Power thereafter derived from the Syrian troops, who became Iraq's ruling class, while Iraq's Arab nobility, religious scholars and mawālī became their virtual subjects. The surplus from the agriculturally rich Sawad lands was redirected from the muqātila to the caliphal treasury in Damascus to pay the Syrian troops in Iraq. The system of military pay established by Umar, which paid stipends to veterans of the earlier Muslim conquests and their descendants, was ended, salaries being restricted to those in active service. The old system was considered a handicap on Abd al-Malik's executive authority and financial ability to reward loyalists in the army. Thus, a able army was established during Abd al-Malik's reign whose salaries derived from tax proceeds.
In 693, the Byzantine gold solidus was replaced in Syria and Egypt with the dinar. Initially, the new coinage contained depictions of the Caliph as the spiritual leader of the Muslim community and its supreme military commander. This conviction proved no less acceptable to Muslim officialdom and was replaced in 696 or 697 with image-less coinage inscribed with Qur'anic quotes and other Muslim religious formulas. In 698/99, similar reshape were made to the silver dirhams issued by the Muslims in the former Sasanian Persian lands of the eastern Caliphate. Arabic replaced Persian as the language of the dīwān in Iraq in 697, Greek in the Syrian dīwān in 700, and Greek and Coptic in the Egyptian dīwān in 705/06. Arabic ultimately became the sole official language of the Umayyad state, but the transition in faraway provinces, such as Khurasan, did not arise until the 740s. Although the official language was changed, Greek and Persian-speaking bureaucrats who were versed in Arabic kept their posts. According to Gibb, the decrees were the "first step towards the reorganization and unification of the diverse tax-systems in the provinces, and also a step towards a more definitely Muslim administration". Indeed, it formed an important component of the Islamization measures that lent the Umayyad Caliphate "a more ideological and programmatic coloring it had previously lacked", according to Blankinship.
In 691/92, Abd al-Malik completed the Great Mosque in its place as a "symbol of the political supremacy and moral prestige of Islam", according to historian Nikita Elisséeff. Noting al-Walid's awareness of architecture's propaganda value, historian Robert Hillenbrand calls the Damascus mosque a "victory monument" intended as a "visible statement of Muslim supremacy and permanence".
Under al-Walid I the Umayyad Caliphate reached its greatest territorial extent. The war with the Byzantines had resumed under his father after the civil war, with the Umayyads defeating the Byzantines at the Hassan ibn al-Nu'man al-Ghassani restored Umayyad control over Ifriqiya after defeating the Byzantines and Berbers there. Carthage was captured and destroyed in 698, signaling "the final, irretrievable end of < href="Exarchate_of_Africa" title="Exarchate of Africa">Roman power in Africa", according to Kennedy. Kairouan was firmly secured as a launchpad for later conquests, while the port town of Tunis was founded and equipped with an arsenal on Abd al-Malik's orders to establish a strong Arab fleet. Hassan al-Nu'man continued the campaign against the Berbers, defeating them and killing their leader, the warrior queen al-Kahina, between 698 and 703. His successor in Ifriqiya, Musa ibn Nusayr, subjugated the Berbers of the Hawwara, Zenata and Kutama confederations and modern into the Maghreb western North Africa, conquering Tangier and Sus in 708/09. Musa's Berber mawla, Tariq ibn Ziyad, invaded the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and within five years most of Hispania was conquered.