Umayyad dynasty

Islamic history
Umayyad dynasty, also spelled Omayyad, the first great
Muslim dynasty to rule the empire of the caliphate (661–750 CE),
sometimes referred to as the Arab kingdom (reflecting traditional
Muslim disapproval of the secular nature of the Umayyad state). The
Umayyads, headed by Abū Sufyān, were a largely merchant family of
the Quraysh tribe centred at Mecca. They had initially resisted Islam,
not converting until 627, but subsequently became prominent
administrators under Muhammad and his immediate successors. In
the first Muslim civil war (fitnah; 656–661)—the struggle for the
caliphate following the murder of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, the third caliph
(reigned 644–656)—Abū Sufyān’s son Muʿāwiyah, then governor
of Syria, emerged victorious over ʿAlī, Muhammad’s son-in-law and
fourth caliph. Muʿāwiyah then established himself as the first
Umayyad caliph. Umayyad rule was divided between two branches of
the family: the Sufyānids (reigned 661–684), descendants of Abū
Sufyān; and the Marwanids (reigned 684–750), Marwān I ibn al-
Hakam and his successors. The Sufyānids, notably Muʿāwiyah
I (reigned 661–680), centralized caliphal authority in Damascus. The
Syrian army became the basis of Umayyad strength, enabling the
creation of a united empire through greater control of the conquered
provinces and of Arab tribal rivalries. Muslim rule expanded
to Khorāsān, garrison cities were founded at Merv and Sīstān as bases
for expeditions into Central Asia and northwestern India, and the
invasion of northwestern Africa was begun. A new fleet conducted a
series of campaigns against Constantinople (now Istanbul; 669–678),
which, while ultimately unsuccessful, offset the secular image of the
state because they were directed against the Christians. Though the
Sufyānids generally retained the Byzantine and Persian
administrative bureaucracies they inherited in the provinces, they
were politically organized along Arab tribal lines, in which
the caliph was chosen by his peers to become, theoretically, “first
among equals” and act on the advice of a shūrā (tribal council).
Muʿāwiyah, however, in securing during his lifetime an oath
of allegiance to his son Yazīd I, disregarded the traditional election
(bayʿah) and introduced the alien concept of hereditary succession.
Civil war and the deaths of Yazīd I in 683 and Muʿāwiyah II in 684
brought Sufyānid rule to an end. Marwān I was proclaimed caliph in
Syria in 684 amid tribal wars.

Under ʿAbd al-Malik (reigned 685–705) the Umayyad caliphate

continued to expand. Muslim armies invaded Mukrān and Sindh in
India, while in Central Asia the Khorāsānian garrisons
conquered Bukhara, Samarkand, Khwārezm, Fergana, and Tashkent.
In an extensive program of Arabization, Arabic became the official
state language; the financial administration of the empire was
reorganized, with Arabs replacing Persian and Greek officials; and a
new Arabic coinage replaced the former imitations of Byzantine and
Sasanian coins. Communications improved with the introduction of a
regular post service from Damascus to the provincial capitals, and
architecture flourished (see, for example, khan; desert
palace; mihrab).

Decline began with the disastrous defeat of the Syrian army by the
Byzantine emperor Leo III (the Isaurian; 717). Then the fiscal reforms
of the pious ʿUmar II (reigned 717–720), intended to mollify the
increasingly discontented mawālī (non-Arab Muslims) by placing all
Muslims on the same footing regardless of ethnicity, led to financial
crisis, while the recrudescence of feuds between southern (Kalb) and
northern (Qays) Arab tribes seriously reduced military power.

Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (reigned 724–743) was able to stem the tide
temporarily. As the empire was reaching the limits of expansion—the
Muslim advance into France was decisively halted at Poitiers (732),
and Arab forces in Anatolia were destroyed (740)—frontier defenses,
manned by Syrian troops, were organized to meet the challenge
of Turks in Central Asia and Berbers (Imazighen) in North Africa. But
in the years following Hishām’s death, feuds between the Qays and the
Kalb erupted into major revolts in Syria, Iraq, and Khorāsān (745–
746), while the mawālī became involved with the Hāshimiyyah, a
religio-political faction that denied the legitimacy of Umayyad rule. In
749 the Hāshimiyyah, aided by the western provinces, proclaimed as
caliph Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Saffāḥ , who thereby became first of
the ʿAbbāsid dynasty.
The last Umayyad, Marwān II (reigned 744–750), was defeated at the Battle of the Great
Zab River (750). Members of the Umayyad house were hunted down and killed, but one
of the survivors, ʿAbd al-Raḥ mān, escaped and established himself as a Muslim ruler
in Spain (756), founding the dynasty of the Umayyads in Córdoba.