Mu‘awiya was the first of three caliphs from the Sufyanid branch of the Umayyad family, so called after Abu Sufyan. The Umayyad family was, indeed, very extensive and was made up of several branches often hostile to each other and competing for wealth and prestige. With the death of the Mu‘awiya’s grandson, the caliph Mu‘awiya II, in 684, the Sufyanids were to provide no further caliphs and, as a result of the civil war which erupted even before the death of Mu‘awiya II, they were supplanted in the caliphate by the Marwanid line of Umayyads descended from Marwan b. al-Hakam.1
After the Umayyad dynasty had been overthrown and the ‘Abbasids took over the caliphate in 750, the Sufyanid branch again achieved some prominence for a time. During the first century or so of ‘Abbasid rule a number of political and religious movements developed in Syria which had a strong messianic character and looked for the coming of a figure who would overthrow the ‘Abbasids and reestablish Syrian glory. This figure was known as the Sufyani and was expected to be descended from the line which had produced the great Mu‘awiya. It is as if the Sufyanid period of Umayyad history had come to be regarded as of special significance and something like a Golden Age for Syria.2
From the point of view of its rulers, the major division among the peoples of the territory over which Mu‘awiya had established his rule was that between the Arabs and the conquered peoples. The rapid conquest of the Middle East by the Arabs had imposed the domination of a minority elite, distinct in language, religion and way of life, over a mass of people which was itself divided by such things as language, religion, occupation and status. The Fitna had involved the Arabs and had only incidentally affected the conquered peoples. At the beginning of the Umayyad period it seems likely that these conquered peoples were still relatively isolated from their conquerors in everyday life and as yet largely unaffected by the processes of arabisation and islamisation which were soon to be so powerful.
The lands conquered by the Arabs and now ruled by the Umayyads were divided into provinces, each under a governor, usually at this period called the amir. Apart from Syria and Mesopotamia (Jazira), which came directly under the authority of the caliph, there were three other main territorial divisions within the Umayyad caliphate: Egypt and the North African territories dependent upon it; Kufa and its eastern territories; and Basra and its eastern territories. Each of these usually had an amir appointed directly by the caliph and this amir was then in turn responsible for appointing sub-governors to the towns and provinces which came under his authority. The system was not inflexible, however, and sometimes we find one amir acting as virtual viceroy for the whole of the east, having authority over both Kufa and Basra and all of their dependent territories, or we might find on occasion the caliph directly appointing the amir of a sub-province which was usually under the authority of one of the major amirs.
The amir was responsible for such things as the collection of taxes and their remission to Syria (on occasion the collection of taxes was removed from the sphere of the amir), the distribution of the soldiers’ pay, the preservation of order, the defence of the borders and the furtherance of conquest, and the organisation and leadership of the public prayer, which had a political and communal significance and was not merely an act of worship. In effect he represented the caliph, who was at the same time religious and political leader of the Muslims, in his province.
Because of his importance, the appointment of an amir was one of the caliph’s main concerns. In the Sufyanid period the amir had no independent military force at his disposal other than the tribesmen over whom he had authority, apart from a small police force (the shurta) which would not have been strong enough to check any major disturbance among the tribesmen. His authority over the tribesmen of his province, therefore, depended on the respect he could command and his ability to manipulate them by exploiting divisions among them. There was a tendency for the Sufyanid caliphs to appoint amirs from tribes like Quraysh and Thaqif which had a certain prestige among the Arabs.4
Below the governors, the key figures in each province were the tribal leaders, the ashraf, who provided the link between the governor and the tribesmen. This meant that they had to be acceptable to both parties, to the government and to the tribesmen. They owed their position among the tribesmen usually to their descent from an hereditary leading family, but as agents of the government they were appointed from above rather than below, by the governor or even the caliph, not by the tribesmen. Their position was not always a comfortable one and from time to time the ashraf had to come down off the fence and side either with the government or with the tribesmen. At different times they chose to descend on different sides.5
As can easily be imagined, the process of conquest had disrupted the tribal situation which had existed in pre-Islamic Arabia. Tribes had been removed from their homelands, fragmented, and resettled sometimes in a number of areas remote from one another, and in contact with other tribes, which had gone through the same process. Tribes which before had been strong and important might now be poorly represented in a given area in the conquered lands and forced into alliance with other tribes with which they had previously had little contact. The result was both a reconstruction and intensification of the tribal system of pre-Islamic Arabia, and a reformulation of the genealogical links which were its mythological justification. Probably the most notable example of this reformulation of genealogy was the case of the tribe of Quda‘a which dominated central Syria. As a result of the second civil war at the end of the Sufyanid period, Quda‘a, who had previously been regarded as ‘northerners’ (descendants of Isma‘il), became ‘southerners’ (descendants of Qahtan) for the simple reason that most of their opponents in Syria were ‘northerners’ and Quda‘a found it necessary to obtain the support of the ‘southerners’ there.
The development of the large tribal confederations, culminating in the polarisation of all the Arabs between the two groups of ‘northerners’ and ‘southerners’, therefore, was the result of specific social, economic and political conditions and events in the period following the Arab conquest of the Middle East. It was not, as is often assumed, something which the Arabs brought with them out of pre-Islamic Arabia. In pre-Islamic Arabia, certainly, there were feuds and alliances involving more than one tribe, but they were relatively limited and localised, not involving all of the Arabs nor covering all of Arabia. The first indication that we have of the new, more intensified and widespread formation of supra-tribal groups among the Arabs is at the time of the second civil war, almost simultaneously in Syria and Iraq. It obviously has to be explained by such things as the disruption of the old way of life, the need to forge new social links in the post-conquest conditions, and the struggle for land and resources among the Arabs, intensified when new groups of Arab immigrants moved into an area and challenged the position of those already settled there. With the breakdown of Umayyad authority at the end of the Sufyanid period the lid was removed from a mixture which had been fermenting for some time.6
The other, larger population which the caliphs and their governors ruled was that of the conquered peoples, and, just as the Arabs were governed indirectly by means of their tribal notables, so the non-Arabs were generally administered through their own native authorities, priests, rabbis, nobles or others. At this early date it seems that little assimilation or even contact between conquerors and conquered was envisaged, and the latter were regarded by their rulers mainly as a source of revenue for the benefit of the Arabs. The nature of the taxes imposed on the conquered peoples is still, in spite of much scholarly debate, rather obscure and probably varied from place to place according to, first, the way in which the locality was conquered by the Arabs—by force or by agreement—and, secondly, the nature of the taxation system which had existed in the locality before its conquest. Nevertheless, at the taxpayer’s level it seems likely that there was generally a dual system of poll tax (i.e., a tax levied at a fixed rate on individual persons) and land tax and that the poll tax was a sign of social or religious inferiority. There was as yet probably no fixed and universally used terminology for the various taxes, and, as far as the Arabs are concerned, they probably only interested themselves to the extent of making sure that the non-Arab notables handed over the required sums. How these notables raised the sums from the non-Arab communities did not concern the Arabs.
Even in the short term the effects of the Arab conquest on the non-Arab people of the Middle East must have been considerable, but our Arabic sources only supply incidental information on this issue and it is only quite recently that detailed study of this question, involving the use of a range of sources produced in various languages, has begun. Some of the effects of the conquest on the non-Arab peoples are fairly obvious, such things as the virtual disappearance of the former Byzantine and Sasanid ruling classes, and the demographic redistribution brought about by war and captivity and the foundation of new major settlements like Basra and Kufa. Other suggested consequences—regarding, for instance, the strengthening or weakening of Monophysite and Nestorian Christianity, or the transformation of the Jews from an agricultural to a predominantly urban and mercantile people—are more debatable.7
Of the lands ruled by the Umayyads, Syria, the centre of Umayyad power, was neither the richest nor most populous, but owed its importance to a number of other factors. The long and continuous association with Mu‘awiya before he became caliph, and the fact that he was able to call on the support of one strong tribal group in Syria, Quda‘a, in contrast to the multiplicity of tribal fragments elsewhere, have already been mentioned. In Syria too the fact that the Arabs settled among the local population, in already existing towns such as Damascus and Hims, seems to indicate a certain security in comparison with Iraq and Egypt where new garrison towns were founded and the Arabs kept apart from the local population. Furthermore, Syria, although it was the centre of the Umayyad territories, had a border with Byzantium and this meant that the Syrian Arabs could be kept active in warfare against the infidel without having to send them to far distant borders. Finally, the religious significance of Syria, and particularly of Jerusalem, may have been greater for nascent Islam than it was at a later period.
For military and administrative purposes, Syria was at first divided into four districts or ajnad: Damascus, Hims, Jordan with its centre at Tiberias, and Palestine with its centre at Ramla. Later, about 680, a fifth district was added, Qinnasrin in the north, probably in connection with the warfare against Byzantium. From one point of view, the Umayyad period can be characterised as a brief and fairly unusual time of Syrian domination of the Middle East.
Of the other provinces, Iraq was the richest and most valuable. Benefiting from the climate and fertility of the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys, the agricultural land was given a name indicative of its richness: it was the sawad, the black land. Iraq was also the military centre from which the lands to the east were conquered and administered, and its garrison towns of Kufa and Basra provided the Arab settlers for the eastern provinces. Like Syria, Kufa and Basra were subdivided for military and administrative purposes. Kufa had originally been divided into sevenths, but around 670 was reorganised into quarters. Basra was divided into fifths. Each of these subdivisions consisted of a number of tribal groups, and it has been argued that the less volatile character of Basra, as compared to Kufa, may be partly explained by the less heterogeneous nature of the tribal groupings in the Basran divisions compared with those in Kufa. The reorganisation of Kufa into quarters may have been intended to decrease the fragmentation of the sevenths. The importance of Iraq for the development of Islam during the Umayyad period meant that its influence was decisive too for the formation of the historical tradition for the period. Our sources tend to reflect the viewpoint of Iraq, with its anti-Umayyad point of view, and provide us with more information about events in Iraq and the east than in the other provinces.
Khurasan, the north-east border province of the Umayyads, was the most important eastern dependency of Iraq so far as the history of the Umayyad period is concerned. The early Umayyad period saw its conquest and settlement by the Arabs, and it then served as a base for expansion and raids further east. Its two chief towns were both garrison centres, Nishapur in the west of the province and Merv in the east. To some extent the tensions among the Arabs of Iraq were carried over into Khurasan, where they were able to intensify away from the close control of the Umayyad government. They were made more dangerous for the government because the Arabs of Khurasan, unlike those of Iraq, continued to be involved in constant military activity, and they were altered by the different society which existed in the province. It was there that the movement which eventually overthrew the Umayyads became strong.
Finally, although we do not hear nearly so much about Egypt under the Umayyads, it too was extremely important militarily and economically. Its fertility depending on the annual rise and fall of the Nile, Egypt was the granary of the Mediterranean, and from it the infertile but religiously important region of the Hijaz was supplied with food. It was from Egypt that North Africa was conquered and settled. It is also important to remember that, although our Muslim literary sources are relatively uninformative about Egypt during this period, it is virtually the only region for which we have a substantial body of contemporary administrative material, preserved on papyrus, enabling us to put together a more certain picture of the Umayyad administration than is possible for the other provinces.8
Mu‘awiya (caliph 661–80) was succeeded by his son Yazid (680–3) and his grandson, Mu‘awiya II, son of Yazid, whose caliphate of brief duration and limited authority lasted at most a few months at the end of 683 and the beginning of 684. However, reflecting the predominance of Iraq in the formation of Muslim tradition, we hear rather more about the governors of Iraq throughout the Umayyad period than we do about the caliphs in Syria. Three Iraqi governors under the Sufyanids are prominent: Mughira b. Shu‘ba, governor of Kufa, died in about 670; after him Ziyad governed the whole of Iraq from Basra until his death in about 673; and finally Ziyad’s son, ‘Ubayd Allah, succeeded to his father’s office in 675 and remained there under the remainder of Mu‘awiya’s caliphate and that of Yazid until he was finally driven out in the second civil war. All three of these Iraqi governors were Thaqafis, members of the tribe of Thaqif from the town of Ta’if in the Hijaz south-east of Mecca. In the pre- Islamic period Thaqif were allies of Quraysh and in the Umayyad period they provided a number of provincial governors.
Mughira is portrayed as a disreputable individual, guilty of murder and adultery, who nevertheless was able to push himself forward by ingratiating himself with movements (like Islam) or men (like Mu‘awiya) in the ascendant. In the Fitna he had thrown in his lot with Mu‘awiya and been appointed governor of Kufa after Mu‘awiya’s victory over ‘Ali. As governor, he acquired the reputation of someone who was more concerned to avoid than to deal with trouble, taking little positive action himself and leaving his successors to face the consequences.10
According to tradition, Ziyad’s father was unknown, his mother having been a prostitute in Ta’if. Hence he is often known as Ziyad b. Abihi, Ziyad the son of his father. Settling in Basra at an early date, Ziyad had supported ‘Ali in the Fitna and the latter had made him his governor of Fars, the province of south-west Persia. After Mu‘awiya’s victory, Ziyad had been persuaded by his Thaqafi relative Mughira to come over to the victor, and material incentives were, of course, important. The importance attached by Mu‘awiya to the support of Ziyad is shown by the fact that the caliph went so far as to acknowledge the Thaqafi as his own half-brother by publicly stating that Abu Sufyan was in fact Ziyad’s father too. Hence the latter is sometimes referred to as Ziyad b. Abi Sufyan. In effect Ziyad was thus made a member of the Umayyad family. The whole affair (known as al-istilhaq) is rather obscure and has an aura of scandal around it, and Ziyad does not seem to have been exactly welcomed by the other Sufyanids.
About 665 Mu‘awiya appointed Ziyad over Basra under the control of Mughira in Kufa. His arrival in the garrison town was the occasion of a famous introductory speech (khutba) in the mosque in which he warned the Basrans of his determination to impose order: ‘We have brought a punishment to fit every crime. Whoever drowns another will himself be drowned; whoever burns another will be burned; whoever breaks into a house, I will break into his heart; and whoever breaks open a grave, I will bury him alive in it.’ On the death of Mughira, about five years later, Ziyad succeeded him as viceroy of the east.
Apart from his reorganisation of Kufa into quarters and his decision to undertake the settlement of Iraqis in Khurasan, which may also be explained as a measure to defuse possibly dangerous developments in Iraq, Ziyad’s governorship is associated with the suppression of the revolt of Hujr b. ‘Adi in Kufa in 671. This was significant since Hujr’s revolt was the first movement openly in support of the claims of the descendants of ‘Ali since the end of the Fitna and was a harbinger of things to come. In itself it did not prove difficult to suppress. Ziyad was able to isolate Hujr and certain other ringleaders from the Kufan soldiers who had initially supported him, and Hujr and some others were sent to Damascus where Mu‘awiya had them executed. Kufa was to become the centre of Shi‘ite opposition to the Umayyads and the scene of a number of anti-Umayyad movements but, as in the case of Hujr b. ‘Adi, there was a tendency for the Kufans to back down after initially encouraging the outbreak of revolt, leaving the leaders and those members of the house of ‘Ali on whose behalf the revolt had been planned high and dry. Kufa’s pro-Shi‘ite reputation, therefore, is to some extent double-edged and tinged with guilt.11
The third of the important governors of Iraq for the Sufyanids, ‘Ubayd Allah b. Ziyad, became especially prominent after the death of Mu‘awiya, and his role in events will be discussed in connection with the second civil war.
Regarding the caliph Mu‘awiya in Syria, the period of his rule is portrayed as one of internal security and external expansion and aggression. In Syria he had close ties with the Quda‘a, led by the tribe of Kalb, members of whom were prominent in his retinue and from whom he took a wife, the mother of his son Yazid. Certain details indicate too that he was respectful of the traditions of his Christian subjects who still must have been the majority in the Syrian towns. One of his officials and advisors was Sarjun (Sergius), a member of a Greek Orthodox family which had served the Byzantine administration of Damascus, and father of the important Orthodox theologian, St John of Damascus (d. about 748). Respect for the Christians of Syria, though, does not appear to have inhibited Mu‘awiya’s military activity against the Byzantines. In the Aegean, Rhodes and Crete were occupied, and between 674 and 680 a series of attacks were made on Constantinople from a base in the sea of Marmara. In North Africa Qayrawan was founded in 670 as a base for further penetration, and in the east, where Ziyad was instrumental in organising the occupation of Khurasan, major cities like Kabul, Bukhara and Samarqand are said to have submitted to the Arabs for the first time.
In tradition Mu‘awiya’s image is somewhat two-sided. On the one hand he is regarded as a clever and successful ruler who got what he wanted by persuasion rather than force. The key concept here is that of hilm. This is a traditional Arab virtue signifying subtlety and cunning in the management of men and affairs and it is seen as a desideratum for the traditional Arab leader. Mu‘awiya is traditionally portrayed as one of the supreme exemplars of the virtue of hilm, using flattery and material inducements rather than force, ruling in the style of a tribal shaykh who has no coercive power at his disposal and depends upon his own reputation and persuasive skills. Muslim tradition credits him with a succinct summary of his political philosophy: ‘I never use my voice if I can use my money, never my whip if I can use my voice, never my sword if I can use my whip; but, if I have to use my sword, I will.’ To some extent this image of Mu‘awiya is reflected in non-Muslim historical tradition, for the Greek chronicler Theophanes (d. 818) refers to Mu‘awiya as protosymboulos, that is, first among equals, and thus implicitly makes a contrast with the more usual type of state ruler of the time. It seems likely that Mu‘awiya encouraged this image. One of the Syriac writers of the time notes that he did not wear a crown like other rulers of the world, and one of the recurrent institutions about which we hear in connection with Mu‘awiya’s rule is that of the wafd or delegation. This is a reference to his practice of inviting the leaders of the Arabs in the provinces to come to his court in Syria where he flattered them and treated them well before sending them back to their province with suitable presents, having persuaded them of the merits of a plan which he had in mind and which they in turn were to recommend to the Arabs in their province. Of course, it is not surprising that Mu‘awiya should attempt to portray himself, particularly to his Arab subjects, as fundamentally a tribal shaykh, but we should not be misled into forgetting that his power and resources were far greater than those available to a pre-Islamic Arab tribal leader and, in addition, that the caliphate was not merely a political office but a religious one at the same time.
The other image of Mu‘awiya in tradition is to some extent at variance with this portrait of him as a successor to the authority of a tribal shaykh. He is the man who perverted the caliphate into a kingship, the first to make the khilafa a mulk. The significance of this contrast between caliphate and kingship and of the charge that the Umayyads were not caliphs but merely kings has already been discussed. In connection with Mu‘awiya the charge centres on his decision to appoint his son Yazid as his successor (wali ’l-‘ahd) while he himself was still alive and in possession of the caliphate. The reports about how Mu‘awiya went about this—his careful planning, his secrecy while preparing the ground, his reception of the delegations from the provinces and his winning their support for his plan, the pressure put on Yazid to change his way of life in order to make him acceptable as a successor—are perhaps the best illustration of the hilm of Mu‘awiya, and it seems that he was successful in that the move does not appear to have called forth any opposition from the tribesmen in the provinces. What opposition there was came from a relatively small group of people who may have considered that they had claims to the caliphate, and in tradition these individuals tend to appear as spokesmen of Islam against Mu‘awiya’s attempt to introduce dynastic rule into the Muslim community. How important this consideration was at the time is not easy to say, but it is clear that the opposition of tradition to Mu‘awiya is based on religious as much as political principles. It is not a protest of primitive tribal democracy at the growth of Umayyad power but rather a protest of Islam at what was seen as Umayyad disregard of Muslim norms (which cannot have existed in any developed sense in the time of Mu‘awiya). At any rate, the second civil war is seen as a direct consequence of Mu‘awiya’s action.
It is indicative of the somewhat contradictory image of Mu‘awiya that it is reported that when he died in 680 he was buried with hair and nail clippings from the Prophet himself, thus emphasising that Mu‘awiya had been a companion of Muhammad, having acquired these relics when he acted as the Prophet’s secretary. On the whole it is notable that the Umayyads do not seem to have emphasised their succession from the Prophet, unlike the ‘Abbasids who used alleged relics of the Prophet—notably his cloak—as part of their regalia. Mu‘awiya was succeeded, as he had planned, by his son Yazid, but Yazid was faced with a series of movements of opposition and when he himself died towards the end of 683 Sufyanid rule in effect collapsed.12
1. See genealogical tables 1, 3 and 4.
2. H.Lammens, ‘Le “Sofiani”, héros national des arabes syriens’ in his Etudes sur le siècle des omayyades; P.K.Hitti, History of Syria, 540–1; F.Omar, The ‘Abbasid caliphate, 268 ff.; K.Salibi, Syria under Islam, 38– 42.
3. There is no general work devoted to the administration and organisation of the Umayyad state. See, however, the articles “Amil’, ‘Amir’, “Arif’, ‘Diwan’, etc, in EI1 and EI2. For a concise analysis of the way in which the state was run in the Sufyanid period see P.Crone, Slaves on Horses, 29–33.
4. Articles ‘Amir’ and “Amil’ in EI2; J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, passim.
5. Article ‘Sharif’ in EI1; P.Crone, Slaves on Horses, 31–2.
6. I.Goldziher, Muslim Studies, i, 87 ff.; L.Massignon, ‘Explication du plan de Kufa’, Melanges Maspero, Cairo 1934–40; idem, ‘Explication du plan de Basra’, Westöstliche Abhandlungen R.Tschudi, ed. F.Meier, Wiesbaden 1954; C.Pellat, Le milieu basrien et la formation de Gahiz; F.McGraw Donner, The early Islamic conquests, 226–50; M.Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest, 236–53.
7. M.Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest, 167–235, 265–74; D.C.Dennett, Conversion and the poll tax in early Islam, passim, for the agreements made from region to region at the time of the conquests; M.A.Cook and P.Crone, Hagarism, 83–106.
8. On Egypt under the Umayyads: H.I.Bell, ‘The administration of Egypt under the Umayyad Khalifs’, BZ, 28 (1928); H.Lammens, ‘Un gouverneur omayyade d’Egypte, Qorra ibn Sarik’, Etudes sur le siècle des Omayyades. On Syria: P.K.Hitti, History of Syria; K.Salibi, Syria under Islam. On Iraq: M.Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest. On Khurasan: J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 397 ff.;’ M. A.Shaban, ‘Khurasan at the time of the Arab conquest’ in Iran and Islam, ed. C.E. Bosworth, 479–90. For an attempt to rank the provinces in order of economic importance, Gernot Rotter, Die Umayyaden und der zweite Bürgerkrieg, 60 ff.
9. In addition to the specific references given below, reference should be made to the indices and bibliographies of more general books on the
Umayyad period and Islam, in particular: M.A.Shaban, New interpretation, M.G.Hodgson, The venture of Islam, P.Crone, Slaves on horses, M.Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest, and vol iv of The Cambridge history of Iran.
10. Article ‘al-Mughira b. Shu‘ba’ in EI1; J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 114–18; H.Lammens, Mu‘âwia 1er, passim, and Le siècle des Omayyades, 28–41.
11. Article ‘Ziyad b. Abihi’ in EI1; J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 119– 30; H. Lammens, ‘Ziad b. Abihi, vice-roi de l’Iraq, lieutenant de Mo‘âwia I’, Le siècle des Omayyades; K.Fariq, ‘A remarkable early Muslim governor, Ziyad ibn Abih’, IC, 26 (1952); idem, Ziyad b. Abih, London 1966; article ‘Hudjr b. ‘Adi’ in EI2; J. Wellhausen, The religio-political factions, 95–103; W.M.Watt, ‘Shi‘ism under the Umayyads’, JRAS (1960); S.M.Jafri, Origins and early development of Shi‘a Islam, 159–66; M.Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest, 486–7.
12. J.Wellhausen, Arab kingdom, 131–45; H.Lammens, Mo‘âwia 1er; I. Goldziher, ‘Mu‘awija I, der Begründer des Islamstaates’, in his Gesammelte Schriften, v, 164–7; M.A.J.Beg, ‘Mu‘awiya: a critical survey’, IC, 51 (1977).