Muawiya and the hereditary caliphate
Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan had governed Syria for twenty years before he became caliph. He was a patient politician who kept the tribes in balance and built a navy that raided Cyprus, Rhodes and Constantinople. Near the end of his life he had his son Yazid accepted as heir. For the first time, the caliphate passed from father to son.
Karbala and the second civil war
Many refused to accept Yazid. Husayn ibn Ali set out for Kufa, whose people had invited him, but he was stopped at Karbala and killed with members of his family and his companions on 10 Muharram 61 AH, in October 680.
In Makkah, Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr declared himself caliph. Yazid's army crushed Madinah at Harra in 683 and besieged Makkah. The war only ended in 692, when al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf took Makkah for Abd al-Malik and Ibn al-Zubayr was killed.
Abd al-Malik and al-Walid
Abd al-Malik made Arabic the language of government and minted the first coins with only Islamic inscriptions. He built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, completed around 691 or 692. His son al-Walid built the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus and rebuilt the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah.
Under al-Walid the armies took Spain in 711, Sindh in 712 and the cities of Transoxiana. At about 11 million km², it was the largest state the world had yet seen.
Governors and the machinery of empire
Damascus ruled through powerful governors. The most famous, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, governed Iraq and the east for twenty years with an iron hand. He also had vowel and dot marks added to the written Quran to help new readers, and his commanders Muhammad bin Qasim and Qutayba ibn Muslim led the conquests of Sindh and Central Asia.
The caliphs kept a postal relay, the barid, to carry orders and news across the empire, and paid the army from the land tax of the provinces. Non-Arab converts, the mawali, often paid more and received less than Arabs, a grievance that would help bring the dynasty down.
The limits of expansion
A huge siege of Constantinople failed in 717 to 718, and in 732 the Franks under Charles Martel defeated an Andalusian army near Tours. The pious Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz (717 to 720) tried to treat non-Arab converts equally and cut back on war, and is often called the fifth rightly guided caliph. Hisham (724 to 743) was the last strong Umayyad.
Why the Umayyads fell
Non-Arab Muslims, especially in Khurasan, resented paying more and receiving less than Arabs. Feuds between Arab tribes split the army, and after Hisham three caliphs came and went within a year. The Abbasids, descendants of the Prophet's uncle al-Abbas, rode this anger. Their black banners rose at Merv in 747, Marwan II lost at the Zab in 750, and the family was hunted down. One prince, Abd al-Rahman, escaped to Spain and founded a new Umayyad state at Cordoba in 756.
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