Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (April 680), commonly known as Mu'awiya I, was the founder of the Umayyad Caliphate, ruling as the first caliph of the Umayyad dynasty from 661 until his death in 680. He became caliph less than thirty years after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and immediately after the four Rashidun ('rightly-guided') caliphs. Unlike his predecessors, who had been close, early companions of Muhammad, Mu'awiya was a relatively late follower of Muhammad.
Mu'awiya and his father Abu Sufyan had opposed Muhammad, their distant Qurayshite kinsman and later Mu'awiya's brother-in-law, until Muhammad captured Mecca in 630. Afterwards, Mu'awiya became one of Muhammad's scribes. He was appointed by Caliph Abu Bakr () as a deputy commander in the conquest of Syria. He moved up the ranks through Umar's caliphate () until becoming governor of Syria during the reign of his Umayyad kinsman, Caliph Uthman (). He allied with the province's powerful Banu Kalb tribe, developed the defenses of its coastal cities, and directed the war effort against the Byzantine Empire, including the first Muslim naval campaigns.
In response to Uthman's assassination in 656, Mu'awiya took up the cause of avenging the murdered caliph and opposed the election of Ali. During the First Fitna, the two led their armies to a stalemate at the Battle of Siffin in 657, prompting an abortive series of arbitration talks to settle the dispute. Afterward, Mu'awiya gained recognition as caliph by his Syrian supporters and his ally Amr ibn al-As, who conquered Egypt from Ali's governor in 658. Following the assassination of Ali in 661, Mu'awiya compelled Ali's son and successor Hasan to abdicate and Mu'awiya's suzerainty was acknowledged throughout the Caliphate.
Domestically, Mu'awiya relied on Syria's loyalist Arab tribes and largely Christian bureaucracy. He is credited with establishing government departments responsible for the postal route, correspondence, and chancellery. He was the first caliph whose name appeared on coins or documents of the nascent Islamic empire. Externally, he engaged his troops in almost yearly land and sea raids against the Byzantines, culminating in a siege of Constantinople. In Iraq and the eastern provinces, he delegated authority to the powerful governors al-Mughira and Ziyad ibn Abihi, the latter of whom he controversially claimed as his brother. Under Mu'awiya's direction, the Muslim conquest of Ifriqiya (central North Africa) was launched by the commander Uqba ibn Nafi in 670, while the conquests in Khurasan and Sijistan on the eastern frontier were resumed.
Although Mu'awiya confined the influence of his Umayyad clan to the governorship of Medina, he nominated his own son Yazid I as his successor, making the caliphate hereditary. It was an unprecedented move in Islamic politics and opposition to it by prominent Muslim leaders, including Ali's son Husayn, and Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, persisted after Mu'awiya's death, culminating with the outbreak of the Second Fitna. While there is considerable admiration for Mu'awiya in the contemporary sources, he has been criticized for lacking the justice and piety of the Rashidun and transforming the office of the caliphate into a kingship. Nevertheless, Sunni Muslims honor him as a companion of Muhammad and a scribe of Quranic revelation. In Shia Islam, Mu'awiya is reviled for opposing Ali, accused of poisoning his son Hasan, and held to have accepted Islam without conviction.
Origins and early life
Mu'awiya's year of birth is uncertain, with 597, 603 or 605 cited by early Islamic sources. His father Abu Sufyan ibn Harb was a prominent Meccan merchant who led trade caravans to Byzantine Syria. He emerged as the leader of the Banu Abd Shams clan of the polytheistic Quraysh, the dominant tribe of Mecca, during the early stages of the Quraysh's conflict with the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The latter also hailed from the Quraysh and was distantly related to Mu'awiya via their common paternal ancestor, Abd Manaf ibn Qusayy. Mu'awiya's mother, Hind bint Utba, was also a member of the Banu Abd Shams.
In 624, Muhammad and his followers attempted to intercept a Meccan caravan led by Mu'awiya's father on its return from Syria, prompting Abu Sufyan to call for reinforcements. The Qurayshite relief army was routed in the ensuing Battle of Badr, in which Mu'awiya's elder brother Hanzala and their maternal grandfather, Utba ibn Rabi'a, were killed. Abu Sufyan replaced the slain leader of the Meccan army, Amr ibn Hisham, and led the Meccans to victory against the Muslims at the Battle of Uhud in 625, a battle in which Mu'awiya also participated. After his abortive siege of Muhammad in Medina at the Battle of the Trench in 627, Abu Sufyan lost his leadership position among the Quraysh.
Mu'awiya's father was not a participant in the truce negotiations at Hudaybiyya between the Quraysh and Muhammad in 628. The following year, Muhammad married Mu'awiya's widowed sister Umm Habiba, who had embraced Islam fifteen years earlier. The marriage may have reduced Abu Sufyan's hostility toward Muhammad and Abu Sufyan negotiated with him in Medina in 630 after confederates of the Quraysh violated the Hudaybiyya truce. When Muhammad captured Mecca in 630, Mu'awiya, his father, and his elder brother Yazid embraced Islam. According to accounts cited by the early Muslim historians al-Baladhuri and Ibn Hajar, Mu'awiya had secretly become a Muslim from the time of the Hudaybiyya negotiations. By 632 Muslim authority extended across Arabia with Medina as the seat of the Muslim government. As part of Muhammad's efforts to reconcile with the Quraysh, Mu'awiya was made one of his (scribes), being one of seventeen literate members of the Quraysh at that time. Abu Sufyan moved to Medina to maintain his newfound influence in the nascent Muslim community.
Governorship of Syria Early military career and administrative promotions
After Muhammad died in 632, Abu Bakr became caliph (leader of the Muslim community). He and his successors Umar, Uthman, and Ali are often known as the ('rightly-guided') caliphs to distinguish them from Mu'awiya and his Umayyad dynastic successors. Having to contend with challenges to his leadership from the Ansar, the natives of Medina who had provided Muhammad safe haven from his erstwhile Meccan opponents, and the mass defections of several Arab tribes, Abu Bakr reached out to the Quraysh, particularly its two strongest clans, the Banu Makhzum and Banu Abd Shams, to shore up support for the Caliphate. Among those Qurayshites whom he appointed to suppress the rebel Arab tribes during the Ridda Wars (632–633) was Mu'awiya's brother Yazid. After that war, Yazid was dispatched as one of four commanders in charge of the Muslim conquest of Byzantine Syria in . The caliph appointed Mu'awiya commander of Yazid's vanguard. Through these appointments Abu Bakr gave the family of Abu Sufyan a stake in the conquest of Syria, where Abu Sufyan already owned property in the vicinity of Damascus.
Abu Bakr's successor Umar () appointed a leading companion of Muhammad, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, as the general commander of the Muslim army in Syria in 636 after the rout of the Byzantines at the Battle of the Yarmuk, which paved the way for the conquest of the rest of Syria. Mu'awiya was among the Arab troops who entered Jerusalem with Caliph Umar in 637. Afterward, Mu'awiya and Yazid were dispatched by Abu Ubayda to conquer the coastal towns of Sidon, Beirut and Byblos. Following the death of Abu Ubayda in the plague of Amwas in 639, Umar split the command of Syria, appointing Yazid as governor of the military districts of Damascus, Jordan and Palestine, and the veteran commander Iyad ibn Ghanm governor of Homs and the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia). When Yazid succumbed to the plague later that year, Umar appointed Mu'awiya the military and fiscal governor of Damascus, and possibly Jordan as well. In 640 or 641, Mu'awiya captured Caesarea, the district capital of Byzantine Palestine, and then captured Ascalon, completing the Muslim conquest of Palestine. As early as 640 or 641, Mu'awiya may have led a campaign against Cilicia and proceeded to Euchaita, deep in Byzantine Anatolia. In 644, he led a foray against the Anatolian city of Amorium.
The successive promotions of Abu Sufyan's sons contradicted Umar's efforts to otherwise curtail the influence of the Qurayshite aristocracy in the Muslim state in favor of the earliest Muslim converts (i.e. the Muhajirun and Ansar groups). According to the historian Leone Caetani, this exceptional treatment stemmed from Umar's personal respect for the Umayyads, the branch of the Banu Abd Shams to which Mu'awiya belonged. This is doubted by the historian Wilferd Madelung, who surmises that Umar had little choice, due to the lack of a suitable alternative to Mu'awiya in Syria and the ongoing plague in the region, which precluded the deployment of commanders more preferable to Umar from Medina.
Upon the accession of Caliph Uthman (), Mu'awiya's governorship was enlarged to include Palestine, while a companion of Muhammad, Umayr ibn Sa'd al-Ansari, was confirmed as governor of the Homs-Jazira district. In late 646 or early 647, Uthman attached the Homs-Jazira district to Mu'awiya's Syrian governorship, greatly increasing the military manpower at his disposal.
Consolidation of local power During the reign of Uthman, Mu'awiya allied with the Banu Kalb, the predominant tribe in the Syrian steppe extending from the oasis of Dumat al-Jandal in the south to the approaches of Palmyra. The Kalb was also the chief component of the Quda'a confederation, which was present throughout Syria. Medina consistently courted the Kalb, which had remained mostly neutral during the Arab–Byzantine wars, particularly after the central government's entreaties to the Byzantines' principal Arab allies, the Christian Ghassanids, were rebuffed. Before the advent of Islam in Syria, the Kalb and the Quda'a, long under the influence of Greco-Aramaic culture and the Monophysite church, had served Byzantium as subordinates of its Ghassanid client kings to guard the Syrian frontier against invasions by the Sasanian Persians and the latter's Arab clients, the Lakhmids. By the time the Muslims entered Syria, the Kalb and the Quda'a had accumulated significant military experience and were accustomed to hierarchical order and military obedience. To harness their strength and thereby secure his foothold in Syria, Mu'awiya consolidated ties to the Kalb's ruling house, the clan of Bahdal ibn Unayf, by marrying the latter's daughter Maysun in . He also married Maysun's paternal cousin, Na'ila bint Umara, for a short period.
Mu'awiya's reliance on the native Syrian Arab tribes was compounded by the heavy toll inflicted on the Muslim troops in Syria by the plague of Amwas, which caused troop numbers to dwindle from 24,000 in 637 to 4,000 in 639. Moreover, the focus of Arabian tribal migration was toward the Sasanian front in Iraq. Mu'awiya oversaw a liberal recruitment policy that resulted in considerable numbers of Christian tribesmen and frontier peasants filling the ranks of his regular and auxiliary forces. Indeed, the Christian Tanukhids and the mixed Muslim–Christian Banu Tayy formed part of Mu'awiya's army in northern Syria. To help pay for his troops, Mu'awiya requested and was granted ownership by Uthman of the abundant, income-producing, Byzantine crown lands in Syria, which were previously designated by Umar as communal property for the Muslim army.