Umayyad

UMAYYAD CALIPHATE

The Umayyad family had been important in Mecca at the coming of Islam and most of them were prominent opponents of the Prophet until he captured Mecca in 630, shortly before his death, at which point they converted. The exception was the Third Rashidun Caliph, an Umayyad who had been a close companion of the Prophet, and ensured that his family were rehabilitated as good Muslims. Many of them were involved in the Rashidun Caliphate's wars against Byzantium and Sassanid Persia, and one of them, Mu`awiyah, from the Sufyanid branch of the family, was eventually put in charge of all Syria. Following the Third Rashidun Caliph's murder he demanded justice be meted out to those responsible, and when that demand was ignored he was in a position to lead a revolt, this was the civil war known as the First Fitna. Ultimately Mu`awiyah was successful and had himself proclaimed Caliph in 661.

He then attempted to convert the nominally elective Caliphate into a hereditary monarchy by having the people pledge loyalty to his son, Yazid as his successor. Yazid did accede, but he was challenged by the the Shi`a under Husayn ibn `Ali in Iraq and by Ibn az-Zubayr in the Hejaz. He slaughtered the former, along with most of his family at Karbala in 680 and damaged the Holy Cities of Medina and Mecca in a notorious but unsuccessful attempt to defeat the latter.

He was succeeded, briefly, by his son and then his cousin, Marwan, who seized the Caliphate for his descendants, ocassionally known as the Marwanids. His son Abd ul-Malik, with the aid of the tyrannical al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, finally defeated Ibn az-Zubayr and restored unity to the Islamic world. His successors, four of his sons and his nephew `Umar presided over the largest Islamic state in history, but their reigns also saw its stagnation. Umayyad armies bogged down in Central Asia, failed to capture Constantinople and were defeated in the south of France. Revolts were common and the Caliphs exercised little control over the provinces beyond the appointment of governors, and the Governors of Iraq, who controlled the entire eastern half of the Caliphate were frequently as powerful, or more so, than the Caliphs in Damascus.

The final Umayyad Caliphs were all either too indolent or short-lived to deal with the significant problems that the Caliphate faced. The very last Caliph, Marwan II, who had served as a general in the Caucasus, seized control of the Caliphate and attempted to restore order in the face of a succession of revolts, but was defeated by that of the `Abbasids at the Battle of the Zab in 750. This led to the complete collapse of Umayyad power.

The `Abbasids murdered most of the Umayyad clan, but one prince escaped to al-Andalus (Spain), where he established an independant Emirate. In time, his descendants proclaimed themselves Caliphs. Their state was, briefly, the most powerful in Western Europe, and its capital, Qurtuba (Cordoba), one of the greatest cities in the Islamic world, under Caliph `Abd ur-Rahman III and the his extremely competent Vizier al-Mansur. But when al-Mansur's son attempted to take the Caliphate for himself he unleashed forces which splintered it into dozens of tiny taifa kingdoms. These were easy prey for the revived Christian kingdoms of Northern Spain, which absorbed them in the Reconquista.

Sources

The Annals of aṭ-Ṭabarī

Cheyne, Anwar G. Muslim Spain: Its History and Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974.

Dozy, Reinhart. A History of Muslim Spain. Leiden: 1861.

Fletcher, Richard. Moorish Spain. University of California Press, 1992.

Lane-Poole, Stanley. The Mohammadan Dynasties: Chronological and Genealogical Tables with Historical Introductions. London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1894.

Whishaw, Ellen W. & Bernard. Arabic Spain: Sidelights on her History and Art. London: Smith Elder & Co, 1912.