Editing Caliphate (section)

===The Umayyads===
Like their predecessors, the [[Umayyad]]<nowiki/>s too were members of the Quraysh tribe. Unlike their predecessors, all four of whom came, after much controversy, to be set apart from subsequent rulers and to be revered by Sunni Muslims as the Rashidun, the “rightly guided” caliphs, the rise of the Umayyads marked the establishment of a caliphal dynasty. [[Mu'awiya|Mu’awiya]] (r. 661–680), the founder of this dynasty, based his rule on careful cultivation and manipulation of ties with tribal notables (''ashraf''), and it was through such ties that he was able not just to govern but also to have his son, Yazid I (r. 680–683), recognized as his heir. This system of rule through tribal intermediaries was short-lived, however. On Mu’awiya’s death, several disparate revolts—often characterized as the second civil war—erupted in different parts of the empire. Among these was the revolt of [[Hussain ibn Ali|Hussain]], the son of ‘Ali and the grandson of the Prophet, who was killed in Iraq in 680 along with a small band of his followers. Though hardly momentous at the time it occurred, this event was to acquire profound importance in the history of [[Shiʿism|Shi’ite]] Islam as the symbolic focus of Shi’ite piety and religious identity. At the time, however, another threat to the Umayyads was represented by the revolt of [[Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr]] in the Hijaz, in Arabia, and by factional warfare between Arab tribes in Syria and Mesopotamia. In 684, with the civil war still in progress, [[Marwan ibn al-Hakam]] (r. 684–685) was elected caliph in Syria, marking the transfer of ruling authority from Mu’awiya’s descendants, the Sufyanid clan (of which ‘Uthman had been a member), to another clan of the Umayyad family. This clan, the Marwanids, was to rule as caliphs until the overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty in 750.

The Marwanids governed their empire through powerful generals appointed from the capital, Damascus, and through

increasingly elaborate administrative departments (''diwan''s). Late antique administrative structures and traditions continued under the Umayyads even as they underwent sometimes rapid changes that expressed the evolving Arab and Islamic identity of the new empire. Around the turn of the eighth century, the language of the administration was itself changed from ancient Persian and Greek to Arabic and a new system of coinage, clearly asserting the Islamic identity of the new rulers, was instituted. This identity was expressed even more strikingly in monumental architecture, of which the two most famous extant examples are the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built during the reign of the caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705), and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, built under his successor al-Walid I (r. 705–715).

Though the Umayyads are often portrayed as worldly “kings” in Arabic historiography (an unfavorable image that

owes much to the fact that early Islamic historiography is largely the work of those who were unfavorably disposed toward this dynasty), it was under their rule that Islamic religious, cultural, and political institutions began to take their distinctive shape. The caliphs, though far removed from the austere lifestyle of the Rashidun, were hardly the ungodly rulers that medieval Arab chroniclers and many modern scholars have often represented them to be. As Crone and

Hinds have shown, their coins, their official pronouncements, and their panegyrists often characterized them as the “deputies of God,” a formulation frowned on by the religious scholars but one that suggests something of the scope and seriousness of Umayyad religious claims. The caliphs are known to have given decisions on matters involving Islamic law and ritual, and some of them are featured as authorities in early collections of hadith. Above all, the existence of a powerful centralized political authority provided the crucial context in which the early development of Islam and of Muslim communal and cultural identity took place.

Yet the growing community of Muslims also posed serious challenges to the Umayyads. Since the conquest of the Middle East, the economic well-being of the state was based on the principle that the non-Muslims paid the bulk of the taxes on the land, while the Muslims were responsible for only the religiously obligated taxes on their wealth. In theory, anyone who joined the ranks of the Muslims was entitled to the same concessions; in practice, a large influx of previously taxed non-Arabs threatened the revenues of the empire, with the result that the new Muslims (the ''mawali'' or “clients”) often continued to be taxed as if they had not converted to Islam. The Umayyads never satisfactorily resolved the problem of how to integrate the new non-Arab Muslims into the Muslim community, and they thereby created considerable resentment against their dynasty. This was compounded by the grievances of those Arabs who had given up their military careers and settled down in the conquered lands, but felt discriminated against or unfairly treated by the military generals and their (sometimes non-Muslim) tax-collecting agents. There was, moreover, increasingly destructive tribal factionalism within the Umayyad army that severely weakened the caliphate both through faction-based military revolts and the systematic persecution of members of a faction each time a rival came to power.

Shi’ite groups led a number of revolts against the Umayyads, as did the Kharijites, erstwhile followers of ‘Ali who had

separated from him when he agreed to negotiate with what the Kharijites regarded as Mu’awiya’s iniquitous party. The revolt that brought the Umayyad dynasty to an end in 750 also began as a Shi’ite movement that called, as had many others before it, for returning the rule back to the rightful descendants of the Prophet and for rule according to the “book of God and the sunna of His Prophet.” It was not, however, the descendants of ‘Ali but those of al-‘Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet, that came to power with what is often characterized by modern scholars as the “Abbasid revolution.”