The Umayyad dynasty (), or the Umayyads (), were the ruling family of the second Islamic caliphate from 661 to 750 and the Emirate of Córdoba from 756 to 1031. They were the first hereditary dynasty in the history of Islam.
In the pre-Islamic period, the Umayyads were a prominent Arab clan of the Meccan tribe of Quraysh, descended from Umayya ibn Abd Shams. Despite staunch opposition to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the Umayyads embraced Islam after the Conquest of Mecca in 630. Uthman ibn Affan, an early companion of Muhammad from the Umayyad clan, became the third Rashidun caliph, ruling from 644 to 656, while other members held various governorships. 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 metropolitan province of the Umayyad Caliphate 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 ruled until the fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba. His son and successor Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan would restore 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 Islamic empire reached its largest geographical extent under the Umayyads, who were also the only dynasty to rule over the entire Islamic world of their time. The Umayyads advanced the early Muslim conquests, conquering the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Central Asia, Sindh, and parts of Chinese Turkestan, but the constant warfare exhausted the state's military resources, while revolts and tribal rivalries weakened the state from within. Finally, in 750 the Abbasids overthrew Caliph Marwan II and most of the Umayyad family were slain.
One of the survivors, Abd al-Rahman, a grandson of Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, escaped to Muslim Spain, where he founded the Emirate of Córdoba, which his descendant, Abd al-Rahman III, transformed into a caliphate in 929. Under the Umayyads, al-Andalus became a centre of science, medicine, philosophy and invention during the Islamic Golden Age. The Caliphate of Córdoba disintegrated into several independent taifas in 1031, thus marking the political end of the Umayyad dynasty.
History Pre-Islamic origins The Umayyads were a prominent clan of the larger Quraysh tribe, which dominated Mecca in the pre-Islamic era. The Quraysh derived prestige among the Arab tribes through their protection and maintenance of the Kaaba, which at the time was regarded by the largely polytheistic Arabs across the Arabian Peninsula as their most sacred sanctuary. A Qurayshite leader, Abd Manaf ibn Qusayy, who based on his place in the genealogical tradition would have lived in the late 5th century, was charged with the maintenance and protection of the Ka'ba and its pilgrims. These roles passed to his sons Abd Shams, Hashim and others. Abd Shams was the father of Umayya, the eponymous progenitor of the Umayyads.
Umayya succeeded Abd Shams as the qa'id (wartime commander) of the Meccans. This position was likely an occasional political post whose holder oversaw the direction of Mecca's military affairs in times of war, instead of an actual field command. This early experience in military leadership proved instructive, as later Umayyads would be known and recognized for possessing considerable political and military organizational capabilities. The historian Giorgio Levi Della Vida suggests that information in the early Arabic sources about Umayya, as with all the ancient progenitors of the tribes of Arabia, "be accepted with caution", but "that too great skepticism with regard to tradition would be as ill-advised as absolute faith in its statements". Della Vida asserts that since the Umayyads who appear at the beginning of Islamic history in the early 7th century were no later than third-generation descendants of Umayya, the latter's existence is highly plausible.
By circa 600, the Quraysh had developed trans-Arabian trade networks, organizing caravans to Syria in the north and Yemen in the south. The Banu Umayya and the Banu Makhzum, another prominent Qurayshite clan, dominated these trade networks. To secure these routes, they developed economic and military alliances with the nomadic Arab tribes that controlled the expanses of the northern and central Arabian deserts, gaining them commercial influence and a degree of political power in Arabia.
Opposition and conversion to Islam The Islamic prophet Muhammad was a member of the Banu Hashim, a Qurayshite clan related to the Banu Umayya through their shared ancestor, Abd Manaf. When he began his religious teachings in Mecca, he was opposed by most of the Quraysh. He found support from the inhabitants of Medina and relocated there with his followers in 622. The Banu Abd Shams, which included the Umayyads, were among the principal leaders of Qurayshite opposition to Muhammad. They superseded the Banu Makhzum, led by Abu Jahl, as a result of the heavy losses that the Banu Makhzum's leadership incurred fighting the Muslims at the Battle of Badr in 624. The chief of the Umayyad clan, Abu Sufyan, thereafter became the leader of the Meccan Qurayshite army that fought against the Muslims under Muhammad at the Battle of Uhud and the Battle of the Trench.
Abu Sufyan and his sons, along with most of the Umayyads, embraced Islam towards the end of Muhammad's life, following the Muslim conquest of Mecca. To secure the loyalty of prominent Umayyad leaders, including Abu Sufyan, Muhammad offered them gifts and positions of importance in the nascent Islamic state. He installed the Umayyad Attab ibn Asid ibn Abi al-Is as the first Muslim governor of Mecca. Although Mecca retained its paramountcy as the center of the new religion, Medina continued to serve as the political center of Islam. Abu Sufyan and the Banu Umayya relocated to Medina to maintain their growing political influence.
Muhammad's death in 632 created a succession crisis, while nomadic tribes throughout Arabia that had embraced Islam discarded Medina's authority. Abu Bakr, one of Muhammad's oldest friends and an early convert to Islam, was elected as caliph (paramount political and religious leader of the Muslim community) and crushed the rebel Arabian tribes. Abu Bakr then showed favor to the Umayyads by awarding them a prominent role in the Muslim conquest of Syria. He appointed an Umayyad, Khalid ibn Sa'id ibn al-As, as commander of the expedition, but replaced him with other commanders, among whom were Abu Sufyan's sons, Yazid and Mu'awiya. Abu Sufyan had already owned property and maintained trade networks in Syria.
Abu Bakr's successor, Caliph Umar (), while actively curtailing the influence of the Qurayshite elite in favor of Muhammad's earlier supporters in the administration and military, did not disturb the growing foothold of Abu Sufyan's sons in Syria, which was all but conquered by 638. When Umar's overall steward over the province, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, died in 639, he appointed Yazid governor of the districts of Damascus, Palestine and Jordan. Yazid died shortly after and Umar installed Yazid's brother Mu'awiya in his place. Umar's exceptional treatment of Abu Sufyan's sons may have stemmed from his personal respect for the family, their burgeoning alliance with the powerful Banu Kalb tribe as a counterweight to the aristocratic Himyarite tribes who dominated the Homs district, or due to the lack of a suitable candidate amidst the plague of Amwas, which had already killed Abu Ubayda and Yazid.
Empowerment by Caliph Uthman Caliph Umar died in 644 and was succeeded by Uthman ibn Affan, a wealthy Umayyad merchant, early convert to Islam, and son-in-law and close companion of Muhammad. Uthman initially kept his predecessors' appointees in their provincial posts but gradually replaced many of them with Umayyads or his maternal kinsmen from their parent clan, the Banu Abd Shams. Mu'awiya retained his post under Uthman, who expanded his governorship to include the entirety of Syria. Two Umayyads, al-Walid ibn Uqba and Sa'id ibn al-As, were successively appointed to Kufa, one of the two main Arab garrison and administrative centers in Iraq. Uthman's cousin, Marwan ibn al-Hakam, became his chief secretary. Although a prominent member of the clan, Uthman is not considered part of the Umayyad dynasty because he was chosen by consensus () among the inner circle of Muslim leadership and never attempted to nominate an Umayyad kinsman as his successor. Nonetheless, as a result of Uthman's policies, the Umayyads regained a measure of the power and influence they had lost after the Muslim conquest of Mecca.
The assassination of Uthman in 656 became a rallying cry for the Qurayshite opposition to his successor Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law. Following their defeat at the Battle of the Camel near Basra, during which their leaders Talha ibn Ubayd Allah and Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, both potential contenders for the caliphate, were killed, the mantle of opposition to Ali was taken up chiefly by Mu'awiya. Initially, he refrained from openly claiming the caliphate, upholding the cause of avenging Uthman's death while focusing on undermining Ali's authority and consolidating his position in Syria. Ali's Iraqi army fought Mu'awiya's Syrian forces to a stalemate at the Battle of Siffin in 657. It was followed by an inconclusive arbitration, which weakened Ali's command over his forces, while raising the stature of Mu'awiya as Ali's equal. While Ali was encumbered with combating a faction of his former partisans, who became known as the Kharijites, Mu'awiya was formally recognized as caliph by his core supporters, the Syrian Arab tribes, at a ceremony in Jerusalem. When Ali was assassinated by the Kharijite dissident Ibn Muljam in 661, Mu'awiya invaded Iraq with his Syrian army and compelled Ali's eldest son and successor Hasan, who had been chosen as caliph in Kufa, to abdicate the caliphate to him. Mu'awiya then entered Kufa and received the pledge of allegiance from the Iraqis, with his suzerainty being acknowledged throughout the Caliphate.
Dynastic rule over the Caliphate
Sufyanid period The reunification of the Muslim community under Mu'awiya's authority marked the establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate. This marked the beginning of the Umayyad dynasty. Based on the accounts of the traditional Muslim sources, Hawting writes that: The Umayyads, leading representatives of those who had opposed the Prophet [Muhammad] until the latest possible moment, had within thirty years of his death reestablished their position to the extent that they were now at the head of the community which he had founded.