History of The Umayyad Caliphate Casual Historian Islamic History

The Umayyad period of Islamic history suffers from similar problem that most of the early period of Islamic history has, and that is lack of primary sources. Not only is there lack of written materials, but there's also lack of artistic materials as well. Aside from architecture, there's really not much from the time period that talks about the time period itself. Most of the sources we have about the Umayyad Caliphate come from the Abbasid period, which is important to note because the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads. And historians of the time period would have seen it fit, either for their own political biases or those of their patrons, to portray the Abbasids as righteous and just, and the Umayyads as deserving their inglorious fate. And this interpretation of the Umayyads is seen in both Sunni and Shia sources. Despite that, however, the Umayyads were very important in the development of Islamic politics. Muhammad died in 632 and quick succession crisis occurred, in which his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, would become the successor to the prophet, called caliph. He would then be succeeded first by Omar and then by Uthman, member of the Umayyad clan. During his time as caliph, he appointed sizable number of Umayyads in positions of power around the caliphate. Some of these appointees in Egypt were corrupt, which resulted in group of Egyptian Muslims coming to the capital in Medina and killing Uthman. In the chaos of this assassination, the prophet's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, was made caliph. This was controversial because the people who had made him caliph were the ones that killed Uthman, and Ali refused to punish them for it. In response, the Umayyad governor of Syria, Muawiyah, took up the task of achieving justice for his fallen clan member. This conflict between Ali and Muawiyah was eventually settled by arbitration, in which the caliphate was split between them. This arbitration upset portion of Ali's supporters, who ended up rejecting the claim of Ali or anyone else claiming to rule based on the right of their familial ties to Muhammad or the Quraysh, after which becoming the Kharijites. In 661, one of these Kharijites would assassinate Ali in his capital at Kufa, putting an end to the Rashidun Caliphate. When news of Ali's death reached Muawiyah in Damascus, he called up his army and marched down to Kufa, where he gained the support of most of Ali's followers through combination of bribery and violent ultimatums. The most die-hard of Ali's supporters wanted his eldest son, Hassan, to take up the mantle of caliph and challenge Muawiyah. However, Hassan and Muawiyah came to some sort of agreement in which Hassan promised to not challenge Muawiyah for control of the caliphate in exchange for being left alone. There may have been other stipulations in their agreement, but the sources disagree on what those may have been. Regardless of the exact details, Hassan retired from public life and settled in Medina, where he died in 670, 10 years before Muawiyah. Most historians suspect foul play in the death of Hassan because Muawiyah was 20 years older than him, and yet Hassan died 10 years earlier. And it's suspected that Muawiyah had him killed, probably by poison, because he wanted his son Yazid to succeed him as caliph. However, the exact means by which he would have had him poisoned is uncertain. Under his rule, the caliphate relocated its capital from Kufa to Damascus, where his base of power was strongest. It was also closer to the frontier with the Byzantines, so he could continue to lead territorial expansion. He made one major attempt at taking Constantinople in the 670s, when he had the first Islamic navy constructed. He might have succeeded in taking the city were it not for the Byzantine's strategic use of Greek fire, which set the navy ablaze. Despite this failure to conquer Constantinople, Muawiyah was still able to gain control of the islands of Rhodes and Crete for time. The longest-lasting contributions of Muawiyah to the caliphate were administrative reforms. He continued Uthman's policies of bureaucratizing the caliphate, which he divided into four major administrative divisions: Egypt and North Africa, Iraq and Persia, Arabia, and Syria, which would be governed by the caliph directly. In order to avoid challenges from his own governors, he did not allow any of them to have their own standing armies. If they needed troops to engage in wars of expansion, they would have to recruit tribal mercenaries. Shortly before his death in 680, he called council in order to pick successor for him. Well, one of the men at these councils is believed to have been under the pay of Muawiyah because he ended up threatening violence against anyone who did not vote for Yazid to succeed the caliph. Unsurprisingly, Yazid won. But unfortunately for him, his reign would be short and full of turmoil. Not everyone accepted Yazid's ascension. Ali's second eldest son, Hussein, the younger brother of Hassan, refused to accept Yazid as caliph. And unlike his brother and father, was not willing to accept peace with the Umayyads. So, he set out from his home in Medina with 70 followers, mostly relatives of his, and planned to march north to Kufa, hoping that he would find supporters in his father's former capital. However, no help came, and when Hussein and his party arrived at Karbala, he was confronted by Yazid, and they were all slaughtered. The party of Ali, or the Shiites, reject the institutions of caliph and caliphate, and substitute it with their own Imam and Imamate. I'll go into further detail about this in later video. But the short version is, after the death of Muhammad, the semi-divine leadership of the Islamic world passed from Ali to his son Hassan, and then to his younger son Hussein, who became the first, second, and third Imams respectively. Another revolt against Yazid had to be put down in Medina, and shortly after another one broke out in Mecca in 683. This revolt was led by Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr. He had refused to recognize the authority of Yazid, but didn't proclaim himself to be caliph until after Yazid's death in 683, when Yazid's young and sickly son, Muawiyah the second, was made caliph. The same army that had crushed the revolt in Medina was sent south to put down al-Zubayr. But during the siege, Muawiyah the second died. and when this news reached the general of the besieging army, he offered Al-Zubayr the position of caliph if he would march with him up to Damascus to restore order. However, Al-Zubayr refused, suspecting that this was trap. Not unreasonable considering similar things had been done under Muawiyah and Yazid the first. Regardless, the army left Mecca in the control of Al-Zubayr and thus returned north, where another Umayyad, Marwan, had taken control. Marwan had been Uthman's secretary and was there in Medina the day he was assassinated. Similar to his two immediate predecessors, he didn't have long reign, but in his short time as caliph, he was able to reassert Umayyad control over Syria and Egypt. Since the death of Yazid, Al-Zubayr had managed to take control over much of Arabia and Mesopotamia while the Umayyads were distracted in Damascus. In 685, Marwan would be succeeded by his son, Abd al-Malik, who spent much of his reign putting down rebellions and reasserting Umayyad control. During his reign, he began and completed the construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It was built on top of the former Temple Mount, where the holiest site in Judaism had once stood. The reasons for building it were numerous. Some scholars believe that it was built to serve as rival pilgrimage site for Muslims because both Mecca and Medina were under the control of Al-Zubayr. It also served as handy tool for asserting Islamic dominance over the Jews and Christians of the region. During this time, Abd al-Malik built the first standing army in the history of the Islamic world. He also began minting the first Islamic coins, cuz up until that point, most of the coins being used in the caliphate had been from the Byzantine or old Sasanian empires. By minting their own coins, they're telling the world that they are true political power and not just band of barbarians coming out of the wilderness. Abd al-Malik would also have revolts to put down. There was continuing revolt from Al-Zubayr down in Mecca, but on top of that, there was Shia revolt in Kufa led by Al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi. Now, calling it Shia revolt isn't exactly appropriate, but it was definitely Shi'a aligned. Prior to his revolt, Al-Mukhtar was low-level government official serving in Kufa during the reign of Ali. He briefly sided with Al-Zubayr during the siege of Mecca, but then returned to Kufa, where in 685 he led revolt in which he proclaimed another son of Ali, Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyyah, to be both the caliph and imam. Al-Hanafiyyah, unlike his brothers Hasan and Husayn, were not born to the prophet's daughter Fatima, which is why he is not recognized by most Shi'a as legitimate imam. Al-Hanafiyyah had taken no part in this revolt and had sworn allegiance to Al-Malik. Al-Mukhtar gained control over much of Iraq and western Persia, and while governing the region, he granted equal rights to non-Arab converts to Islam and punished those involved in the massacre of Husayn. The revolt was put down 2 years later, in which its supporters were either killed or went into hiding. Al-Malik was able to reassert control of Iraq in 691 and finally put down Al-Zubayr in 692, when he died in battle during another siege of Mecca. After his death in 705, he was succeeded by his son Al-Walid who continued his father's attempts at expanding and stabilizing the caliphate. He made further conquests into Central Asia, where he made deals with the local rulers where they would be allowed to continue to rule and collect taxes so long as they paid him tribute. This decision, although prudent in the moment, would come to bite his successors later. As this became one of the parts of the caliphate where non-Muslims would govern Muslims, which would inspire later revolts. The only places where Muslims were initially given control were the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, where Arab army garrisons were stationed and Zoroastrian temples were torn down and replaced with mosques. He continued the ongoing conquest of the North African Berbers, and from there began the Islamic conquest of Iberia. So, in way, Al-Walid can be both blamed for the ultimate fall of the Umayyad Caliphate and credited for the creation of its safety valve, Al-Andalus. Al-Walid died in 715, and over the next decade he would be succeeded by three short-reigned caliphs. Sulayman would redirect resources towards fighting the Byzantines and attempted another siege of Constantinople. His successor Umar would allow non-Arabs to officially convert to Islam, which subsequently resulted in less tax revenue coming into the treasury. However, this was mitigated by Umar's ending of the ongoing campaign against the Byzantines. He also encouraged the conversion of Jews and Christians to Islam. First by requiring Christians and Jews to wear specific kinds of clothing that marked them out as Christians or Jews. He also put on top of this forbidding them to ride horses or camels. And most egregiously, forbid them from building new churches or synagogues. He was succeeded by Yazid II, who spent the whole of his reign either putting down revolts from Kharijites and rebellious governors or post hoc accepting the overthrow of his appointed governors by locals in order to prevent further rebellions. Yazid's death in 724 resulted in Al-Hisham, the last son of Al-Malik to ascend to the caliphate. Reigning for 20 years, he was able to establish himself firmly all the while putting the final touches into place that would spark the end of the Umayyad dynasty. Hisham is portrayed as greedy by most sources. He is said to have demanded higher levels of tax revenue from provincial governors. These demands for more taxes would inevitably be passed on to the common people, both Muslim and non-Muslim. This resulted in more and more resources being drained from the provinces they were obtained from, which simultaneously angered the locals and weakened the local administration's ability to put down dissent. Hisham decided to renew the campaigns against the Byzantines that Umar had stopped. But this didn't result in better outcomes for the caliphate. Not much territory was won from the Byzantines, but worse than that is that the caliphate began to fray at the edges. The attempted invasion of France failed in 732. When Charles Martel defeated the Umayyad armies of al-Andalus at the Battle of Tours. An even bigger threat to the Umayyads was the Berber revolt in 739, that managed to defeat the Syrian army in Morocco. The remnants of this army had to retreat to al-Andalus, which isolated it from the rest of the caliphate. They also saw failed incursions into the Caucasus, being pushed back by the Khazars, as well as in Transoxiana against the Türgesh. He also faced small Shia revolt led by Zayd ibn Ali, the son of the fourth Imam, Ali ibn Hussein. He attempted revolt in Kufa, but no one in the city rose up with him. He died in battle with Umayyad forces, but his followers got his body out of the city. His death became the inspiration for the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam. Hisham would be succeeded by his nephew al-Walid II, the son of Yazid II. Al-Walid was so insecure in his position that he spent most of his reign paying his army to not rebel against him, as well as rounding up any prominent non-Umayyad Arab who might pose challenge to him. Yazid III, the son of al-Walid would revolt against al-Walid II and managed to capture Damascus with little bloodshed. Al-Walid would eventually be killed by Yazid III's men in 744, after his own men had abandoned him due to lack of pay. Yazid III promised to avoid the corruption of his predecessors, but he wouldn't have much time to do so because he died after 6 months. And his brother, Ibrahim, whom he appointed as his successor, would only reign for 2 months when he abdicated in favor of Marwan II, grandson of Marwan Marwan II had all the same problems of his predecessors. Kharijite revolts, Shia revolts, rebellious governors, rebellions by the sons of previous caliphs, and on top of all this, he also had to deal with invasions by the Byzantines, who decided to take advantage of their political instability. The end of his reign and the dynasty came with the Abbasid revolt in 747. All the enemies the Umayyads had made since the ascension of Muawiyah came together. Shia Muslims, non-Arab Sunni Muslims, Kharijites, and the remnants of the Mukhtar revolt all coalesced around the descendants of the prophet's uncle, Al-Abbas. The revolt, which began in northeastern Persia, quickly spread across the caliphate, killing Marwan II and most of the Umayyads. The sons of Marwan II escaped to Eritrea, where they would eventually die in battle. One Umayyad survivor, Prince Abdurrahman, grandson of Caliph Hisham, escaped and fled to Al-Andalus, where they were still loyal to the Umayyads, and set up his own caliphate. But, that's story for another video. Now, if you want to jump ahead in the narrative of where am now, then suggest you check out the channel Al Muqaddimah. He's channel that focuses on Islamic history. And if you like this video or any of my other Islamic history videos, you're certain to like his channel as well. So, go check that out. Link to it down in the description below. want to give big thanks to first my patron for help make this video, but also to this video's sponsor, World of Warships. This game is massive. World of Warships is strategy game where you collect and take control of the greatest warships of the 20th century. You can marvel at your own fleet or take pleasure in sinking the ships of your enemies. 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