The Umayyad Caliphate, or the Umayyad Empire (; Arabic: ٱلْخِلَافَة ٱلْأُمَوِيَّة, romanized: al-Khilāfa al-Umawiyya), was the second Islamic caliphate, ruled by the Umayyad dynasty from 661 to 750. It succeeded the Rashidun Caliphate, whose third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan (r. 644–656), was also a member of the Umayyad clan. The Umayyad family established hereditary rule under Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, the long-time governor of Syria, who became caliph in 661 after emerging victorious in the First Fitna. Syria served as the caliphate's metropolitan province thereafter, with Damascus as its capital.
Umayyad authority was later challenged in the Second Fitna, during which the Sufyanid line of Mu'awiya (which includes only the first three Umayyad caliphs) was replaced in 684 by Marwan ibn al-Hakam, who founded the Marwanid line that became the ruling Umayyad house henceforth. His eldest son and successor Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan restored Umayyad control over the Caliphate after defeating the Zubayrids in 692. Abd al-Malik made key reforms to the administrative structure of the caliphate, including the centralization of caliphal power, the restructuring of the military, and policies of Arabization and Islamization within the bureaucracy.
The Umayyads advanced the early Muslim conquests, conquering the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Central Asia and Sindh. At its greatest extent, the Umayyad Caliphate covered an area of 11,000,000–15,000,000 km2 (4,300,000–5,790,000 sq mi), making it one of the largest empires in history. However, the constant warfare exhausted the caliphate's resources, while revolts and tribal rivalries weakened it from within. In 750, the Abbasids overthrew Caliph Marwan II, and most of the Umayyad family were slain. But in 756, Abd al-Rahman I, a grandson of Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, established an independent state in al-Andalus with its capital at Córdoba, which became a major center of science, medicine, philosophy and invention during the Islamic Golden Age.
The Umayyads ruled over a vast multiethnic and multicultural population. Christians, who still constituted a majority of the caliphate's population, and Jews were allowed to practice their own religion in exchange for the payment of jizya, from which Muslims were exempt. Muslims were required to pay the zakat, which was explicitly collected for the purposes of charity and for the benefit of Muslims or Muslim converts. Under the early Umayyad caliphs, prominent administrative positions were held by Christians, some of whom belonged to families that had served under the Byzantines. The employment of Christians was part of a broader policy of religious toleration that was necessitated by the presence of large Christian populations in the conquered provinces, including in their heartland of Syria. This policy also helped to increase Mu'awiya's popularity and solidified Syria as his power base. The Umayyad era is often considered the formative period of Islamic art and architecture.
History
Origins
Early influence
During the pre-Islamic period, the Banu Umayya were a leading 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 leadership 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 Qurayshi tribesmen, Muhammad gave his former opponents, including Abu Sufyan, a stake in the new order. Abu Sufyan and the Umayyads relocated to Medina, the political centre of Islam, to maintain their new-found political influence in the nascent Muslim community.
Muhammad's death in 632 left open the succession of leadership 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 Qurayshi elite and take control of the Muslim state. The Muhajirun gave allegiance to one of their own, the early, elderly companion of Muhammad, Abu Bakr (r. 632–634), and put an end to Ansarite deliberations. Abu Bakr was viewed as acceptable by the Ansar and the Qurayshi 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. The appointees included Yazid and Mu'awiya, the sons of Abu Sufyan, who owned property and maintained trade networks in Syria.
Abu Bakr's successor Umar (r. 634–644) curtailed the influence of the Qurayshi elite in favor of Muhammad's earlier supporters in the administration and military, but nonetheless allowed the growing foothold of Abu Sufyan's sons in Syria, which was all but conquered by 638. When Umar's overall steward of the province, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, died in 639, he appointed Yazid as governor of the districts of Damascus, Palestine and Jordan. Yazid died shortly after and Umar appointed Yazid's brother 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, well-organized and securely defended from its former Byzantine rulers.
Caliphate of Uthman
Umar's successor, Uthman ibn Affan, was a wealthy Umayyad and early Muslim convert with marital ties to Muhammad. He was elected by the shura council, composed of Muhammad's cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, Talha ibn Ubayd Allah, 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 favoritism to his kinsmen, in stark contrast to his predecessors. He appointed his relatives as governors over the conquered regions, 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 house 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 help pay his troops. He had the surplus taxes from the wealthy provinces of Kufa and Egypt forwarded to the treasury in Medina, which he used at his personal disposal, frequently disbursing its funds and war booty to his family members. 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 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, particularly 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.
First Fitna
After Uthman's assassination, Ali was recognized as caliph in Medina, though his support 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 Qurayshi leaders 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, Aisha, 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 Zubayr and Talha were slain, and Aisha consequently entered self-imposed seclusion. Ali's sovereignty was thereafter recognized in Basra and Egypt, and he established Kufa as his capital.
Although Ali was able to replace Uthman's governors in Egypt and Iraq with relative ease, Mu'awiya had developed a strong power base and an effective military against the Byzantines from the Arab tribes of Syria. Mu'awiya did not yet explicitly 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 complicity in his death. Ali's Iraqi army and Mu'awiya's Syrian forces fought to a stalemate at the Battle of Siffin in early 657. Ali agreed to settle the matter with Mu'awiya by arbitration, though the talks failed to achieve a resolution. The decision to arbitrate fundamentally weakened Ali's political position as he was compelled to negotiate with Mu'awiya on equal terms, while it drove a faction of Ali's forces, who later became known as the Kharijites, to revolt. Ali's coalition steadily disintegrated and many Iraqi tribal nobles secretly defected to Mu'awiya, while Mu'awiya's ally Amr ibn al-As conquered Egypt from Ali's governor 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 dissident in January 661. His son Hasan succeeded him but abdicated in return for compensation upon Mu'awiya's invasion of Iraq with his Syrian army in the summer. Mu'awiya then entered Kufa and received the allegiance of the Iraqis.
Sufyanid period
Caliphate of Mu'awiya
The recognition of Mu'awiya in Kufa, referred 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 Damascus, the seat of Mu'awiya's power. Syria's emergence as the heartland of the Umayyad Caliphate was the result of Mu'awiya's twenty-year entrenchment in the province, the geographic distribution of its relatively large Arab population throughout the province in contrast to their seclusion in garrison cities in other provinces, and the domination of a single tribal confederation, the Quda'a who were led by the Banu Kalb with whom Mu'awiya had a marriage alliance, as opposed to the wide array 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 order and obedience" than their Iraqi counterparts, according to historian Julius Wellhausen. Mu'awiya relied on the powerful Kalbite chief Ibn Bahdal and the Kindite nobleman Shurahbil ibn Simt alongside the Qurayshi commanders al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri and Abd al-Rahman, the son of the prominent general Khalid ibn al-Walid, to guarantee the loyalty of the key military components of Syria. Mu'awiya preoccupied his core Syrian troops in nearly 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 (r. 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 assumption 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 conquest of Iraq in the 630s–640s, resented the transition of power to Syria. They remained divided, nonetheless, as both cities competed for power and influence in Iraq and its eastern dependencies and remained divided between the Arab tribal nobility and the early Muslim converts, the latter of whom were divided between the pro-Alids (loyalists of Ali) and the Kharijites, who followed their own strict interpretation of Islam. The caliph applied a decentralized approach to governing Iraq by forging alliances with its tribal nobility, such as the Kufan leader al-Ash'ath ibn Qays, and entrusting the administration of Kufa and Basra to highly experienced members of the Thaqif tribe, 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 portion of the provincial tax revenues to Damascus, the caliph let 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, making Ziyad the practical viceroy over the eastern half of the caliphate. 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. In 670, the Muslim conquest of Ifriqiya (central North Africa) was launched by the commander Uqba ibn Nafi, which extended Umayyad control as far as Byzacena (modern southern Tunisia), where Uqba founded the permanent Arab garrison city of Kairouan.