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UMAYYADS (A.D. 661 to 750)

Umayyad Empire in AD 750

The Umayyads were a hereditary Muslim dynasty based in Damascus. From A.D. 661 to 750 they ruled an empire larger than the Roman empire, stretching from southern France to China. Under the Umayyads, Islamic art, science and literature prospered and masterpieces of Islamic architecture, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus, were built.

The Umayyads were a merchant family from Syria who converted to Islam in 627, five years before Muhammad, Islam’s founder, died. Muhammad died without leaving a clear system of succession, ushering in a period of upheaval. By 661 the Umayyads had taken over the caliphate, the Muslim state, after defeating their rivals in a series of battles. The first Umayyad caliph, Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan, moved the caliphate’s capital from Medina, in present-day Saudi Arabia, to Damascus, in what is now Syria, where the Umayyad family was firmly entrenched and had high status, boosting the power and legitimacy of the new leader. For 89 years the Umayyads ruled a Muslim empire that stretched from India to Spain. Their hold on power was tenuous at best. They constantly challenged threatened by various groups claiming rights to the caliphate. Ultimately they lost several key military battles to the Abbasids, who ended the Umayyad’s reign in 750. [Source: Sara Toth Stub, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2016]

The Umayyads moved the capital of the Muslim empire to Damascus in part because Damascus was more centrally located. Additionally, it was close to the sea and it was surrounded by good agricultural land. More people converted to Islam in Zoroastrian regions than the Christian regions and the empire was generally stronger in the east than the west, where the Byzantines were still strong.

Websites on Islamic History: History of Islam: An encyclopedia of Islamic history historyofislam.com ; Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World oxfordislamicstudies.com ; Sacred Footsetps sacredfootsteps.com ; Islamic History Resources uga.edu/islam/history ; Internet Islamic History Sourcebook fordham.edu/halsall/islam/islamsbook ; Islamic History friesian.com/islam ; Muslim Heritage muslimheritage.com ; Chronological history of Islam barkati.net

Umayyad Dynasty Rulers

Yazid II coin

Umayyad Dynasty Rulers (Islamic dates, Western dates): 41–132: 661–750
Ruler, Muslim dates A.H., Christian dates A.D.
Mucawiya I: 41–60: 661–80
Yazid I: 60–64: 680–83
Mucawiya II: 64: 683–84
Marwan I: 64–65: 684–85
cAbd al-Malik: 65–86: 685–705
al-Walid I: 86–96: 705–15
Sulayman: 96–99: 715–17
cUmar II: 99–101: 717–20
Yazid II: 101–5: 720–24
Hisham: 105–25: 724–43
al-Walid II: 125–26: 743–44
Yazid III: 126: 744
Ibrahim: 126: 744
Marwan II: 127–32: 744–50
[Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art]

Umayyad Take Power

In A.D. 632, the death of the prophet Muhammad set in motion a protracted contest for control of the nascent religion of Islam, which he had founded just over 20 years before. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art : “Following the assassination of Ali ibn Abi Talib—Muhammad's cousin, son-in-law, and fourth caliph (r. 656–61)—in 661, Mucawiya, the governor of Syria under the Rightly Guided Caliphs, seized power and established the Umayyad caliphate, the first Islamic dynasty (661–750). During Mucawiya's reign (661–80), the seat of Islamic power was transferred from the Arabian Peninsula to Syria. Under Mucawiya's successors, the important historic city of Damascus was transformed into the capital of an empire that extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus River. [Source: Suzan Yalman, Department of Education, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Based on original work by Linda Komaroff \^/]

According to Archaeology magazine: The Umayyads were a family of merchants from Mecca who had converted to Islam just a few years prior to the prophet’s death. In A.D. 661, the Umayyads declared themselves rulers of the Islamic Caliphate, claiming religious and political authority over the expanding realm of Muslim-controlled lands. Their empire eventually stretched from the western Mediterranean to India, making it the largest empire since Rome. [Source: Archaeology magazine, March 2023]

According to the “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious After the death of Muhammad, his four immediate successors, remembered in Sunni Islam as the Rightly Guided Caliphs (reigned 632–61), oversaw the consolidation of Muslim rule in Arabia and the broader Middle East (Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, and Syria), overrunning the Byzantine and Sasanid empires. A period of great central empires was followed with the establishment of the Umayyad (661–750) and then the Abbasid (750–1258) empires. Within a hundred years of the death of Muhammad, Muslim rule extended from North Africa to South Asia, an empire greater than Rome at its zenith. [Source: John L. Esposito “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices”, 2000s, Encyclopedia.com]

Divine Justification for Umayyad Rule

Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus

Oleg Graber wrote in his PhD Dissertation: “In a text of al-Bayhaqi, Umar ibn-al-Khattab, the second caliph, is compared to Ardeshir, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty. But, while Ardeshir is called "king of the Persians," the arab ruler is named "king of the Arabs and of Islam." This characterization of Umar reveals the ambiguity of the concept of authority in Islam. In modern terms, we have here a religious and a secular view of power. But to a large extent these modern terms are meaningless in the seventh century, or, for that matter, throughout the Middle Ages. All authority is of divine origin. On the other hand, on a practical level, it was also necessary to define more specifically who was the recipient of divine power. We owe to the very nature of the Prophet's mission, which was at the same time religious and secular, the development at an early stage of a legitimist movement. It maintained that authority belonged to the family of the Prophet and that, therefore, the caliphate should be given to its descendants. But with the widening of the Islamic empire to include all Arabs and many other linguistic and religious groups, a new trend appeared, that of giving allegiance to the most worthy leader, while searching -- like all such trends -- for justification and rationalization of power in terms of the supernatural authority of God. It is to the latter movement that Mu'awiyah owed his accession to the caliphate. The interesting question posed by this development is: how did he, and, after him, the Umayyads, justify their power? [Source: Oleg Graber, PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 1955, Chapter I. The Umayyad Royal Idea and its Expression under Mu'awiyah I. Beginning with pg. 18. Oleg Grabar (1929-2011) was a French-born art historian and archeologist and professor at Harvard]

“As far as Mu'awiyah himself is concerned, we have a few traditions. For instance, when one day Hasan, the son of Ali, was emphasizing the rights of his family to the caliphate because of its relationship to the Prophet, Mu'awiyah became angry and said: "The [true] khalifah ... is the one who follows the way of the Prophet and who obeys him. The one, however, who rules unjustly, who sets aside the sunnah, and who attaches himself to the world by all possible means, is not a khalifah, but essentially a king, who shares in earthly sovereignty and enjoys it only for a short time." This is merely a formal statement of the opportunistic attitude of the founder of the dynasty, shaped so as to agree with the theological and omralistic view of supreme power in Islam. But, when al-Mas'udi attempts to explain how Mu'awiyah reached the caliphate, he points out that Mu'awiyah had been a secretary to the Prophet at the end of the latter's life. Therefore, he says, "the people extolled his [Mu'awiyah's] fame and raised him from his position to the point of making him the secretary of the voice [of God]." Al-Tabari reports another story which illustrates the importance of the caliph's relationship to the prophetic office. One day a delegation from Egypt arrived at the court of Damascus. Amr ibn-al-'As, the powerful governor at al-Fustat, had asked the members of his delegation to belittle Mu'awiyah by refraining from saluting him by his title of Commander of the Faithful. But the leader of the group somehow lost his poise and addressed Mu'awiyah as "Prophet of God," apparently the highest title by which a man could address his ruler. We see, therefore, that the first attempt at rationalizing the caliph's power consisted in emphasizing — and at times inventing supports in evidence of — the closeness of the relationship of Mu'awiyah to the Prophet or to the prophetic office. It was, in other words, an attempt to legitimize Mu'awiyah.

Umayyads Not the Abbasids Began the Tradition of Prophetic Titles

Inside the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus

Oleg Graber wrote in his PhD Dissertation: “And a text of the Kitab al-Aghani shows that the Abbasids also favored prophetic titles. The text says that "Harun al-Rashid allowed himself to be addressed in laudatory terms reserved for prophets only. He did not disapprove it nor did he reject it." In discussing this passage, Goldziher [Ignaz Goldziher, a Hungarian scholar of Islam] considers that this use of prophetic titles as laudatory terms is a new phenomenon, an attempt by the Abbasid dynasty to assert the theocratic character of its power as opposed to the secular character of Umayyad power. However, this usage of prophetic titles might be more easily explained as an attempt to reconcile shi'ite minorities, in view of the fact that an idea of authority based on the prophetic office is not a new phenomenon but one that had developed in Umayyad times among the various religious minorities, those same minorities which helped to bring the Abbasids into power. The Abbasids' acceptance of this tradition existing from Umayyad times was therefore a political move rather than a religious move. The Abbasid caliphs began the tradition of accumulating all existing titles in an effort to make their authority universal. [Source: Oleg Graber, PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 1955, Chapter I. The Umayyad Royal Idea and its Expression under Mu'awiyah I. Beginning with pg. 18.

“At the same time the Alids continued to emphasize the fact that their rights originated in their family ties with Muhammad. In their case also the original idea was expanded. Wellhausen has shown that, during the Alid revolt of al-Mukhtar, the leader of the revolt continually proclaimed in speech and in act the prophetic basis of authority in Islam. According to him, the ruler was seen as a prophet who was "the living representation of divine authority." Prophetic titles can also be found, in a few instances, applied to the Umayyads. In those cases it can be explained by the political situation. It is probable that, when al-Hajjaj accepted the title "cupola of Islam, similar to a prophet," he was trying to reconcile the recalicitrant shi'ite population of Iraq to his rule. And from a passage in al-Beladhuri we see that Abd-al-Malik himself was not averse to being likened to a prophet. A Himyarite tells him that his rank before God is the same as that of David, who was considered as a prophet by the Muslims, but who, in the tradition, is a prophet appointed by God as khalifah. There is here an interesting blending of the two traditions.

“In other words there took place at the very beginning of Islamic history the formation of two criteria of authority. One is easily defined as prophetic. It was the one adopted by the Alids and the numerous leaders of shi'ite heterodoxies, and also one that appeared sometimes in eulogies dedicated to caliphs or governors. The other one is more complex. It could be called secular, if secularism had a real meaning in Islam. It could be called "khalifal," because of the semantic importance of the Arabic root khalafa in its exposition.

Muawiyyah and the Beginning of Umayyad Dynasty

Muawiyyah (Caliph from 661-80) became the recognized caliph after Hasan's retirement. The governor of Syria during the early Arab conquests, a kinsman of Uthman, and a member of the Quraysh lineage of the Prophet, he ruled from Damascus, Syria and established the Umayyad dynasty. The name Umayyad is derived from Bani Umayyah, My'awiyah's clan within Muhammad's Quraysh tribe. Muawiyyah was the son of Abu Sufyan, an old enemy of Muhammad, and was the Governor of Syria.

Umayyad Dynasty

After Ali's death,Muawiyyah managed to restore unity to the Muslim empire. He was a good Muslim and able leader and kept order with an effective administration system and a strong government. The civil war that broke out after Ali became caliph triggered a face off between Ali's Iraq-based supporters and the Meccan- and Syrian-based supporters of Muawiyyah ibn Abi Sufyan, an Othman relative and the Muslim military governor of Syria. Muawiyyah had promised to avenge Othman's death and was supported by the wealthy Meccan clans and was regarded in Syria as an able leader. In 657, an effort was made to arbitrate the dispute between Ali and Muawiyyah. Muawiyyah used the doctrine of pre-destination to legitimize his rule. The decision went against Ali. Muawiyyah deposed him and was proclaimed the Caliph in Jerusalem.

The modern Syrian image of Muawiyah is that of a man with enormous amounts of hilm, a combination of magnanimity, tolerance, and self-discipline, and of duha, political expertise — qualities Syrians continue to expect of their leaders. By 732 the dynasty he founded had conquered Spain and Tours in France and stretched east to Samarkand and Kabul, far exceeding the greatest boundaries of the Roman Empire. Thus, Damascus achieved a glory unrivaled among cities of the eighth century. [Source: Library of Congress]

Lively Intellectual Life in the Early Centuries of Islam

According to the “Encyclopaedia Judaica”: During the first three centuries of that history, Muslim writers produced a rich historiography, extensive literature in linguistics and lexicography, literary criticism, poetry, and jurisprudence. They stood for a long period at the cutting edge of scientific development. In its formative period, Muslim religious thought was characterized by a wide variety of views on numerous subjects. The variety of views and the nature of the arguments marshaled by their protagonists testify to the vibrant intellectual life of Islam in the early period of its history. [Source: Haïm Z’ew Hirschberg, “Encyclopaedia Judaica”, 2000, Encyclopedia.com]

Muslims have differed on questions such as determinism versus free will; the existence of the Koran since all eternity versus its being created at a certain point in time, with the rest of creation; the equality of all prophets versus the unquestioned superiority of Muhammad; the validity of personal reasoning versus the irrefutable authority of the prophetic tradition in jurisprudential matters; the identity of unbelievers who may be offered the status of protected communities (dhimmis) rather than being forced to embrace Islam; the extent of tolerance to non-Muslims living under Muslim rule

Umayyad Sultans

The first Umayyad caliphs were not absolute monarchs. They ruled as Arab military leaders over groups of tribes. But as the empire became bigger and various threats presented themselves, ruling through a monarchy became more practical. They problems of succession that occurred after Ali’ death showed that a hereditary dynasty also made sense.

The early Umayyad sultans were fairly pious but some of the later one were notorious for their tyranny, corruption, nepotism, decadence and particular cruelty towards non-Arabs in Mesopotamia, Persia and Khorasan (northeastern Iran and western Afghanistan. When they met audiences, the Umayyad sultans hide themselves behind a curtain Some of the Umayyad caliphs ignored the precepts of the Qur’an and partied their brains out. Yazid II used bath in a swimming pool filled with wine and try his best to empty it.

Muslim Conquest of Spain

During the Umayyad period, Muslim extended their reach into Spain. In A.D. 711, 12,000 Moorish (Arab-Berber) troops led by a Berber a slave named Tariq ibn Ziyad arrived in Spain from Northern Africa and conquered the divided Christian Visagoths that occupied Spain and defeated the last Visagoth King. Roderick (Rodrigo in modern Spanish). The Rock of Gibraltar (Jabal al-Tariq) was named after Tariq. The Moors were joined by Arab soldiers from the Syria-based Umayyad dynasty. They advanced northward and conquered the entire peninsula until they were finally turned back in southern France 21 years later.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art : “On July 19, 711, an army of Arabs and Berbers unified under the aegis of the Islamic Umayyad caliphate landed on the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next seven years, through diplomacy and warfare, they brought the entire peninsula except for Galicia and Asturias in the far north under Islamic control; however, frontiers with the Christian north were constantly in flux. The new Islamic territories, referred to as al-Andalus by Muslims, were administered by a provincial government established in the name of the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus and centered in Córdoba. Of works of art and other material culture only coins and scant ceramic fragments remain from this early period of the Umayyad governors (711–56). [Source: Department of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org \^/]

Umayyad Rule

Abdul al Rahman, a Muslim ruler in Spain

After Ali's murder in 661, Muawiyah proclaimed himself caliph and established his capital in Damascus. From there he conquered Muslim enemies to the east, south, and west and fought the Byzantines to the north. Muawiyah is considered the architect of the Islamic empire and a political genius. Under his governorship Syria became the most prosperous province of the caliphate. Muawiyah created a professional army and, although rigorous in training them, won the undying loyalty of his troops for his generous and regularly paid salaries. Heir to Syrian shipyards built by the Byzantines, he established the caliphate's first navy. He also conceived and established an efficient government, including a comptroller of finance and a postal system. [Source: Library of Congress *]

Muawiyah cultivated the goodwill of Christian Syrians by recruiting them for the army at double pay, by appointing Christians to many high offices, and by appointing his son by his Christian wife as his successor. His sensitivity to human behavior accounted in great part for his political success. The Umayyad Muslims established a military government in Syria and used the country primarily as a base of operations. They lived aloof from the people and at first made little effort to convert Christians to Islam. The Umayyads administered the lands in the manner of the Byzantines, giving complete authority to provincial governors. *

In the administration of law, the Umayyads followed the traditions set by the Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman Empire. The conqueror's law — in this case Muslim law (sharia) — applied only to those of the same faith or nationality as the conquerors. For non-Muslims, civil law was the law of their particular millet (separate religious community, also called milla); religious leaders administered the law of the millet. This system prevailed throughout Islam and has survived in Syria's legal codes. *

During the 89 years of Umayyad rule, most Syrians became Muslims, and the Arabic language replaced Aramaic. The Umayyads minted coins, built hospitals, and constructed underground canals to bring water to the towns. The country prospered both economically and intellectually. Foreign trade expanded, and educated Jews and Christians, many of them Greek, found employment in the caliphal courts, where they studied and practiced medicine, alchemy, and philosophy.

Development of Islamic Law Under the Umayyads

inside the Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain

Joseph Schacht wrote in the “Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Islam”: “The rule of the caliphs of Medina was supplanted by that of the Umayyads in 4I/66I. The Umayyads and their governors were responsible for developing a number of the essential features of Islamic worship and ritual. Their main concern, it is true, was not with religion and religious law, but with political administration, and here they represented the centralizing and increasingly bureaucratic tendency of an orderly adrninistration as against bedouin individualism and the anarchy of the Arab way of life. Both Islamic religious ideals and Umayyad administration co-operated in creating a new framework for Arab Muslim society. In many respects Umayyad rule represents the consummation, after the turbulent interval of the caliphate of Medina, of tendencies which were inherent in the nature of the community of Muslims under Muhammad. It was the period of incubation of Islamic civilization and, within it, of the religious law of Islam. [Source: Joseph Schacht, “Law and Justice”, from the “Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Islam”, vol. II, pt. VIII/Chapter 4, beginning with pg. 539, Internet Islamic History Sourcebook, sourcebooks.fordham.edu =^=]

“The administration of the Umayyads concentrated on waging war against the Byzantines and other external enemies, on assuring the internal security of the state, and on collecting revenue from the subject populations and paying subventions in money or in kind to the Arab beneficiaries. We therefore find evidence of Umayyad regulations or administrative law mainly in the helds of the law of war and of fiscal law. All this covered essentially the same ground as the administrative legislation of the caliphs of Medina, but the social background was sensibly different. The Umayyads did not interfere with the working of retaliation as it had been regulated by the Qur'an, but they tried to prevent the recurrence of Arab tribal feuds and assumed the accountancy for payments of blood-money, which were effected in connexion with the payment of subventions. On the other hand, they supervised the application of the purely Islamic penalties, not always in strict conformity with the rules laid down in the Qur'an. =^=

“The Umayyads, or rather their governors, also took the important step of appointing Islamic judges or qadis. The offlce of qadi was created in and for the new Islamic society which came into being, under the new conditions resulting from the Arab conquest, in the urban centres of the Arab kingdom. For this new society, the arbitration of pre-Islamic Arabia and of the earliest period of Islam was no longer adequate, and the Arab arbitrator was superseded by the Islamic qadi. It was only natural for the qadi to take over the seat and wand of the arbitrator, but, in contrast with the latter, the qadi was a delegate of the governor. The governor, within the limits set for him by the caliph, had full authority over his province, administrative, legislative, and judicial, without any conscious distinction of functions; and he could, and in fact regularly did, delegate his judicial authority to his 'legal secretary', the qadi. The governor retained, however, the power of reserving for his own decision any lawsuit he wished, and, of course, of dismissing his qadi at will.

Pact of Umar: 7th Century Muslim Document Granting Rights to “People of the Book”

Umayyad weight

This is a report of the agreement made by the Caliph Umar with conquered Christians. Similar toleration was permitted to other "people of the book". After the rapid expansion of the Muslim dominion in the 7th century, Muslims leaders were required to work out a way of dealing with Non-Muslims, who remained in the majority in many areas for centuries. The solution was to develop the notion of the "dhimma", or "protected person". The Dhimmi were required to pay an extra tax, but usually they were unmolested. This compares well with the treatment meted out to non-Christians in Christian Europe. The Pact of Umar is supposed to have been the peace accord offered by the Caliph Umar to the Christians of Syria, a "pact" which formed the patter of later interaction. [Source: Al-Turtushi, Siraj al-Muluk, pp. 229-230, hand out at an Islamic History Class at the University of Edinburgh in 1979, source of translation not given, sourcebooks.fordham.edu]

The The Pact of Umar reads: “We heard from 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Ghanam [died 78/697] as follows: When Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, accorded a peace to the Christians of Syria, we wrote to him as follows: In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate. This is a letter to the servant of God Umar [ibn al-Khattab], Commander of the Faithful, from the Christians of such-and-such a city. When you came against us, we asked you for safe-conduct (aman) for ourselves, our descendants, our property, and the people of our community, and we undertook the following obligations toward you:

“We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, Churches, convents, or monks' cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.
We shall keep our gates wide open for passersby and travelers. We shall give board and lodging to all Muslims who pass our way for three days.
We shall not give shelter in our churches or in our dwellings to any spy, nor bide him from the Muslims.

Qasr, an Umayyad desert palace near Amman, Jordan

We shall not teach the Qur'an to our children.
We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it.
We shall show respect toward the Muslims, and we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit.

“We shall not seek to resemble the Muslims by imitating any of their garments, the qalansuwa, the turban, footwear, or the parting of the hair. We shall not speak as they do, nor shall we adopt their kunyas.
We shall not mount on saddles, nor shall we gird swords nor bear any kind of arms nor carry them on our- persons.
We shall not engrave Arabic inscriptions on our seals.
We shall not sell fermented drinks. Aw We shall clip the fronts of our heads.
We shall always dress in the same way wherever we may be, and we shall bind the zunar round our waists

“We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims. We shall use only clappers in our churches very softly. We shall not raise our voices when following our dead. We shall not show lights on any of the roads of the Muslims or in their markets. We shall not bury our dead near the Muslims.
We shall not take slaves who have beenallotted to Muslims.
We shall not build houses overtopping the houses of the Muslims. (When I brought the letter to Umar, may God be pleased with him, he added, "We shall not strike a Muslim.")

“We accept these conditions for ourselves and for the people of our community, and in return we receive safe-conduct.
If we in any way violate these undertakings for which we ourselves stand surety, we forfeit our covenant [dhimma], and we become liable to the penalties for contumacy and sedition.
Umar ibn al-Khittab replied: Sign what they ask, but add two clauses and impose them in addition to those which they have undertaken. They are: "They shall not buy anyone made prisoner by the Muslims," and "Whoever strikes a Muslim with deliberate intent shall forfeit the protection of this pact."”

Decline and Fall of the Umayyads

The Umayyad dynasty was greatly weakened by the expensive and ultimately unsuccessful effort to capture Constantinople from the Byzantines in 717 and a campaign to win new Muslim coverts that resulted in a dramatic loss of tax revenue. In the mid 8th century tribes from northern Oman swept across the Arabian peninsula and briefly held the holy city of Medina before they were driven out by Umayyads. The revolt highlighted weaknesses of the Umayyads and contributed to their overthrow by the Abbasids.

The Umayyad dynasty collapsed suddenly when their rivals and successors, the Abbasids, took advantage of their decadence and united a number of movements with different goals to oust them. The Abbasids were considered more devout and conservative that the Umayyads.

As many new converts were attracted to Islamic and the number of Muslims grew, many new Muslims began to resent Umayyad control and their unfair taxes. The Abbasids, named after Muhammad's uncle, Abbas, began as a rebel group that opposed the Umayyads. In 750 the Abbasids launched a civil war, capturing the Muslim capital of Damascus and massacring the Umayyad caliph and most of his family. One Umayyad, abd-er-Rahman, escaped to Spain, where he kept the Umayyad dynasty alive and established a rival caliphate at Córdoba. The Abbasids desecrated Umayyad tombs and moved the capital to Baghdad in Iraq, where they ruled until 1258. [Source: Encyclopedia.com]

Umayyads in Spain

Minaret of Jesu at Umayyad Mosque

After ruling for nearly a century, the Umayyad Caliphate was overthrown in A.D. 750 by the rival Abbasid family from Baghdad, who claimed descent from one of Muhammad’s uncles. Those members of the Umayyad clan who were not executed by the Abbasids fled to Córdoba, the capital city of al-Andalus. [Source: Archaeology magazine, March 2023]

In the decades after the Muslim conquest, al-Andalus had experienced a continuous state of conflict under its governors. By mustering support from political allies loyal to his family, the only Umayyad prince who had survived their ouster from Damascus, ‘Abd al-Rahman I (reigned A.D. 756–788), gained control of the entire territory of al-Andalus, which ranged from Barcelona to Cadiz. He proclaimed himself the emir, or political leader, of this westernmost corner of the Islamic world, a region whose population was overwhelmingly Christian.

The Abbasid conquest of the central Umayyad empire did not affect the existence of the Spanish Umayyad empire in Andalusia (modern-day Spain and Portugal). There, where Muslims were called Moors, Muslim rule ushered in a period of coexistence and culture developed by Muslims, Christians, and Jews in major urban centers. The Spanish Umayyad empire was less a threat to the Abbasids than was the Fatimid (Shiite) empire in the tenth century, carved out in North Africa and with its capital in Cairo. [Source: John L. Esposito “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices”, 2000s, Encyclopedia.com].

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Islamic History Sourcebook: sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Arab News, Jeddah; “Islam, a Short History” by Karen Armstrong; “A History of the Arab Peoples” by Albert Hourani (Faber and Faber, 1991); Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The New Yorker, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Library of Congress and various books and other publications.

Last updated April 2024