Editing Yazid (section)

==Caliphate== 
In broad terms, Yazid seems to have continued the form of rule developed by his father which depended on the relationship between the caliph, his governors and the tribal notables (ashraf) in the provinces. His governor of ʿIraq, ʿUbayd Allah, was the son of Muʿawiya’s governor there, Ziyad. A Christian, Sarjun, who had been prominent in the administration of Muʿawiya, continued to be influential under Yazid. (Robert Hoyland has questioned whether this Sarjun, sometimes called “the mawla of Muʿawiya”, sometimes “of Yazid”, and variously described as Yazid’s drinking companion or as sahib amrihi, was the father of John of Damascus, as Lammens and others have assumed.) The custom of receiving delegations (wufud [q.v.]) from the provinces at the court to win them over with gifts and flattery, institutionalized by his father, was less successful when Yazid attempted to use it to head off the opposition of the Medinans.

The breakdown, beginning under Yazid, of the system of government used more successfully by Muʿawiya, may be ascribed partly to difficulties associated with the succession to the caliphate but more fundamentally to the changes taking place in the structure of the conquest society, analyzed by [[Patricia Crone]] in her Slaves on horses.

Yazid is often credited with the creation of the new Jund of Ḳinnasrin [q.v.]. For an extensive discussion of that and other incidental information about him and his caliphate (his reduction of the tribute to be paid by the Christians from Najran [q.v.], his suppression of privileges enjoyed by the Samaritans, his involvement in irrigation work, etc.), see Henri Lammens, Le Califat de Yazîd I.