Umayyad

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Image:Omayyad mosque.jpg The Umayyad Dynasty (Arabic بنو أمية banū umayya / الأمويون al-umawiyyūn); Persian امویان (Omaviyân), Turkish, Emevi) was the first dynasty of caliphs of Islamic empire after the reign of the four rightly guided Caliphs (Abu Bakr, Omar, Usman, Ali) ended. The dynasty begins with Muawiya I, and is named after Umayya ibn Abd-Shams the great-grandfather of Muwawiya. The Prophet Muhammad and Muwawiya both descended from a common ancestor Abd-Munaf. One son of Abd-Munaf was Hashim, whose son was Abdul Muttalib, whose son was Abdullah, whose son was Prophet Muhammad. Another son of Abd Munaf was Abd-Shams, whose son was Umayya, whose son was Harb, whose son was Abu Sufian, whose son was Muwawiya. The clans of Hashim and Umayya both belonged to the Quraish tribe named after an ancestor of Abd-Munaf.

The first dynasty reigned from CE 661 to CE 750.

It was succedded by the Abbasid Dynasty, which takes its name from Abbas, an uncle of the prophet and a grandson of Hashim. Ironically, the Umayyad clan had bitter rivalry with the Hashim clan (from which came the Abbasid clan), especially as Abu Sufian was the most determined and bitterest enemy of Muhammad, and sought to exterminate the adherents of the new religion, by waging a series of battles. But at last, Abu Sufian embraced Islam, and so did his son Muawiya, and they provided much needed political and diplomatic skills for the management and expansion of the fast growing Islamic empire.

1 Umayyad rulers
2 Umayyad sahaba
3 Umayyad taba'een
4 See also
5 External links

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Umayyad rulers

Muawiyah had been the governor of Syria under the 3rd caliph and his kinsman, Uthman ibn Affan. After the assassination of Uthman, he was replaced by the new caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib. Since the killers of Uthman had allied themselves with Ali, Muawiyah refused to accept his caliphate, and in 657 led an army against him. The two sides agreed to a conciliation procedure, resulting in an arbitration that many of Ali's partisans saw as unfair. The Muslim empire was partitioned. When Ali was assassinated in 661, Muawiyah was declared caliph of all Muslim lands. This established the Umayyad dynasty, and the capital of the caliphate was moved to Damascus.

Great waves of expansion occurred under the reign of the Umayyads. Muslim armies pushed across North Africa and Iran, through the late 600s, expanding the borders of the empire from the Iberian peninsula, in the west, to what is today Pakistan, in the east. Forces led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad crossed Gibraltar and established Muslim power in the Iberian peninsula, while other armies established power far away in Sind, in South Asia. The Muslim empire under the Umayyads was now a vast domain that ruled a diverse array of peoples.

The Umayyads were overthrown in the east by the Abbasid dynasty after their defeat in the Battle of the Zab in 750, following which most of the clan was massacred by the Abbasids. An Umayyad prince, Abd-ar-rahman I, took over the Muslim territory in Al-Andalus (Hispania) and founded a new Umayyad dynasty there.

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