THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 661–750 · Middle East & South Asia

Umayyad Caliphate

After the murder of the fourth caliph Ali, Muawiya, governor of Syria and a member of the Meccan Umayyad clan, became caliph in 661 and made the office hereditary. Ruling from Damascus, the Umayyads continued the Arab conquests on an enormous scale: North Africa, Spain, Transoxiana and Sindh were all taken by the early 8th century, creating one of the largest empires in history.

Abd al-Malik made Arabic the language of government, introduced Islamic coinage and built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Arab Muslims formed a privileged ruling class, which angered non-Arab converts and supporters of Ali's family. A revolt that began in Khurasan in 747 led to the dynasty's overthrow by the Abbasids in 750, although one prince escaped to found an Umayyad emirate in Spain.

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Courtyard of the Great (Umayyad) Mosque of Damascus, built 706–715 CE
Courtyard of the Great (Umayyad) Mosque of Damascus, built 706–715 CE Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0
Years
661–750
Capital
Damascus
Greatest extent
720, about 11.10 million km²
Region
Middle East & South Asia

From Spain and Morocco to the Indus and Central Asia; c. 11.1M km² in 720 (Taagepera 1997)

Legacy

The Umayyads spread Islam and the Arabic language from the Atlantic to India, laying the foundations of the Islamic world.

Timeline of Umayyad Caliphate

  1. Ridda wars over; Arabia united under Abu Bakr

    When the Prophet Muhammad died in June 632, his companion Abu Bakr was chosen as the first caliph, or successor. Many Arabian tribes then refused to pay taxes to Medina, and several rival prophets, such as Musaylima, gathered followers. Abu Bakr sent armies, the most famous led by Khalid ibn al-Walid, which won every campaign, and Musaylima was killed at the Battle of Yamama. By June 633 the Ridda ('apostasy') wars were over and all of Arabia was united under Medina. The new state could now turn its forces outward, against the Byzantine and Persian empires.

  2. Victory at the Yarmuk delivers Syria to the Muslims

    Arab armies invaded Byzantine Syria in the 630s and took Damascus. In 636 Emperor Heraclius sent a huge army to drive them out. The Muslims pulled back and gathered on the plains by the Yarmuk river, near today's borders of Syria, Jordan and Israel. In six days of fighting in August 636, commanded by Khalid ibn al-Walid, they defeated the larger Byzantine force. Byzantine rule in Syria was effectively over, and the caliphate's map now pushes north from Arabia through Palestine and Syria to the Taurus Mountains.

  3. Jerusalem surrenders to Caliph Umar

    After the Yarmuk, the Muslim commander Abu Ubayda besieged Jerusalem in November 636. After about six months the city's leader, Patriarch Sophronius, agreed to surrender, but only to the caliph in person. Caliph Umar travelled from Medina to receive the city's submission, in 637 or 638 (sources differ). According to tradition he guaranteed the safety of its Christian inhabitants and their churches. Jerusalem, holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims, was now part of the caliphate, along with the rest of Palestine.

  4. Alexandria surrenders; Egypt conquered

    In December 639 the general Amr ibn al-As invaded Egypt, Byzantium's richest province, with about 4,000 men, later reinforced. He defeated a Byzantine army at Heliopolis in 640 and took the great Babylon Fortress, near modern Cairo, in 641. Alexandria agreed to surrender by a treaty in November 641, and Arab troops entered it in September 642. Amr founded a new capital, Fustat, near the old fortress. Egypt's grain and taxes now flowed to the caliphate, whose map stretched along the Nile and toward North Africa.

  5. Sasanian army crushed at Nahavand

    After losing Mesopotamia and his capital Ctesiphon to the Arabs, the Persian king Yazdegerd III raised a new army in the Iranian highlands. In 642 it met the Arab forces under al-Nu'man ibn Muqarrin at Nahavand, south of Hamadan. The Persians were crushed, although Nu'man was reportedly killed in the final melee. The Sasanian imperial army effectively dissolved, and cities such as Isfahan soon fell. Persia lay open, and Yazdegerd fled east toward Merv.

  6. Conquest of Persia completed; Yazdegerd III killed in Khurasan

    After Nahavand, Arab armies conquered the Iranian provinces one by one through the 640s. The last Sasanian king, Yazdegerd III, fled from city to city, alienating local governors with his demands, and appealed in vain to Tang China for help. In 651 he was killed by a miller near Merv, possibly on the orders of the local governor. With him the 400-year-old Sasanian Empire ended. The caliphate's map now reached across all of Iran to Khurasan, on the edge of Central Asia.

  7. Uthman murdered in Medina; Ali's accession starts the First Fitna

    Uthman, the third caliph, ruled from 644 and oversaw new conquests, but he was accused of favouring his own Umayyad clan with governorships and wealth. Rebels from Egypt and Iraq came to Medina, besieged his house and murdered him on 17 June 656. Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, was then chosen caliph. But Muhammad's widow Aisha and other leaders refused to accept him, and Mu'awiya, the Umayyad governor of Syria, demanded revenge for Uthman. The First Fitna (civil war) split the caliphate.

  8. Ali killed; Mu'awiya founds the Umayyad dynasty at Damascus

    During the civil war Ali defeated Aisha's supporters at the Battle of the Camel in 656, but his clash with Mu'awiya at Siffin in 657 ended in stalemate and arbitration. Some of his own followers, the Kharijites, broke away in protest. In 661 a Kharijite, Ibn Muljam, assassinated Ali at Kufa, and his son Hasan soon abdicated. Mu'awiya was accepted as caliph and ruled from Damascus. He founded the Umayyad dynasty and, by naming his son as heir, made the caliphate hereditary.

  9. Husayn killed at Karbala; Second Fitna follows

    When Mu'awiya died in 680, many refused to accept his son Yazid as caliph. Ali's son Husayn, grandson of the Prophet, set out for Kufa, whose people had invited him to lead a revolt. Umayyad troops intercepted his small band of about 72 men at Karbala, in Iraq. On 10 October 680 (10 Muharram) Husayn and most of his followers were killed. His death, mourned every year at Ashura, became central to Shia Islam and fed the Second Fitna, in which Ibn al-Zubayr declared himself caliph at Mecca and most provinces recognised him.

  10. Abd al-Malik wins the civil war; Dome of the Rock completed

    After Yazid's death in 683, Umayyad power collapsed outside Syria, and most of the empire recognised Ibn al-Zubayr. The caliph Abd al-Malik, who came to power in 685, fought back. His forces retook Iraq in 691, and in 692 his general al-Hajjaj besieged Mecca and killed Ibn al-Zubayr. The Umayyads now ruled the whole caliphate again. In the middle of this war Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, completed in 691–692, the oldest surviving great work of Islamic architecture.

  11. Tariq ibn Ziyad invades Visigothic Spain; Sindh conquered

    With the empire reunited, the Umayyads expanded at both ends at once. In 711 Tariq ibn Ziyad, probably a Berber client of the governor Musa ibn Nusayr, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and defeated the Visigothic king Roderic at Guadalete. Within a few years most of the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim rule. In the same years (711–712) the young general Muhammad ibn al-Qasim conquered Sindh, in today's Pakistan, killing its king Dahir. The caliphate's map now stretched from the Atlantic to the Indus.

  12. Siege of Constantinople (717–718) fails

    The Umayyads wanted to capture Constantinople, the Byzantine capital. In 716 a huge army and fleet under Maslama, the caliph's brother, invaded Anatolia, and in summer 717 they blockaded the city by land and sea. The Byzantines, led by the new emperor Leo III, destroyed much of the Arab fleet with Greek fire and kept the city supplied by sea. A harsh winter, famine, disease and Bulgar attacks wrecked the besiegers, who withdrew on 15 August 718. Byzantium survived, and the Taurus Mountains remained the frontier.

  13. Frankish victory at Tours halts expansion in the west

    From Spain, Umayyad forces raided north into Gaul (France). In 732 the governor of al-Andalus, Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, defeated Duke Odo of Aquitaine and pushed toward Tours. On 10 October 732, somewhere between Poitiers and Tours, he met the Frankish army of Charles Martel and was killed, and his army withdrew. The battle is often said to have saved Western Europe, though historians debate how serious the threat was. Raids continued for some years, but the Pyrenees became the long-term northern limit of Muslim Spain.

  14. Great Berber Revolt breaks out in North Africa

    Berbers in North Africa had converted to Islam and fought in the Arab armies, but Umayyad governors taxed them heavily and treated them as second-class Muslims. Inspired by egalitarian Kharijite preachers, they rose in revolt in Tangier, led at first by Maysara (the Umayyad Caliphate article dates the outbreak to 739, the Berber Revolt article to 740). The rebels crushed Arab armies, ending Umayyad rule in the western Maghreb, though the Umayyads held on to Ifriqiya (Tunisia) and Spain. Morocco and western Algeria broke away and never returned.

  15. Abbasids defeat Marwan II at the Zab; Umayyad caliphate falls

    In the 740s the Umayyads were weakened by another civil war, while in Khurasan the Abbasid family, descendants of the Prophet's uncle al-Abbas, led a revolt under black banners. In January 750 the Abbasid army defeated the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II, at the Great Zab river in northern Iraq. Damascus fell in April, Marwan was killed in Egypt in August, and most of the Umayyad family were massacred. The Umayyad caliphate was over. Only in Spain did an Umayyad prince later found a separate state.

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