The Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, 661-750

From 661 to 750, the Umayyad dynasty ruled the caliphate, a state led by a caliph who claimed leadership of the Muslim community. Its political base lay in Syria, and Damascus became the principal seat of government. Governors, army commanders and officials connected the Syrian court to provinces from North Africa to Central Asia. The dynasty’s authority was repeatedly tested by rival successions, local revolts and disputes over taxes and military pay.

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A Syrian ruler and a disputed succession

Muʿawiya had governed Syria for about fifteen years before the first civil war (656–661) between him and ʿAli, the caliph who preceded him. After ʿAli died in 661, his son Ḥasan withdrew his claim, and Muʿawiya entered Kufa, the Iraqi garrison city, where his rule was recognized. His long Syrian governorship had built relationships with the region’s military leaders and Arab tribal elites, giving the new caliph a dependable base from which to govern a much larger territory.

The first Umayyad rulers relied on provincial governors to command troops, collect revenue and manage local affairs. Ziyad ibn Abihi, for example, governed Iraq from Basra in southern Iraq until his death around 673. His son ʿUbayd Allah succeeded him in the office and remained there under Muʿawiya and Yazid.

Muʿawiya sought pledges of allegiance for his son Yazid before he died. The plan made succession within the ruling family more explicit, but it did not secure acceptance across the provinces. When Yazid became caliph in 680, al-Ḥusayn, a grandson of the Prophet Muḥammad, travelled toward Kufa after its supporters urged him to lead opposition. The Iraqi governor sent troops to stop him. Al-Ḥusayn and his followers were killed at Karbala in present-day Iraq in 680. In 685–687, al-Mukhtar’s revolt in Kufa invoked vengeance for al-Ḥusayn’s death. The killing became a focus of Shiʿi memory, among Muslims who regarded ʿAli and his descendants as rightful leaders of the community.

Yazid died in 683, and his son Muʿawiya II held the caliphate only briefly. ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, who had refused Yazid’s rule, established a rival claim from Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia. His authority spread across most Arab lands and reached Iraq; Umayyad power contracted to central and southern Syria. With Muʿawiya’s line failing, Umayyad supporters turned to Marwan, a member of another branch, in 684. He recaptured Egypt before dying in 685.

Rebuilding the caliphate after 683

Marwan’s short rule began the Marwanid branch, but his son ʿAbd al-Malik had to recover the provinces by force and negotiation. The struggle sharpened divisions between Syrian Arab tribal confederations: Qays supported Ibn al-Zubayr, while Qudaʿa, led by Kalb, remained closely associated with the Umayyads. Marwan’s victory at Marj Rahit in 684 secured his position in Syria and left a rivalry that continued to shape military alliances.

The caliph ʿAbd al-Malik took power in 685 and restored Umayyad rule across the empire. His campaigns regained Iraq in 691. In 692, the army of his governor al-Ḥajjāj defeated Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca, ending the rival caliphate. The war had shown how much a caliph depended on provincial commanders and the loyalties of armed groups. During the Marwanid period, the court increasingly replaced intermediaries with officials answerable directly to the caliph and provincial governors. The government also sent Syrian units into the provinces to keep order and campaign. In Iraq, a new garrison town, Wasit, was built between Kufa and Basra in the early eighth century to house these troops and strengthen the governor’s authority.

Offices, language and public authority

A dīwān was a government bureau or register. In Damascus, the dīwān al-kharāj assessed and recorded kharāj, or land-tax revenue; the dīwān al-jund kept military records and pay lists; the dīwān al-rasāʾil prepared official correspondence; and the dīwān al-khātam sealed documents and helped detect forgery. Other offices handled state lands, charity, official textiles and the courier service. Governors and their staff carried out provincial administration, linking local collection and military decisions to orders from the court.

The offices drew on practices inherited from the Byzantine, or eastern Roman, and Sasanian Persian governments. Greek and Persian persisted in provincial administration as Arabic gradually became the official language. In Iraq, the governor al-Ḥajjāj carried the change through in 697 with technical help from the Persian official Ṣāliḥ ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. In distant Khorasan, Persian remained in use until almost the end of Umayyad rule.

Coinage also changed under ʿAbd al-Malik. Damascus began minting coins in 692, after earlier issues had adapted Byzantine gold and copper pieces and Sasanian silver coins. In 697 the caliph introduced reformed gold dinars and silver dirhams bearing Arabic religious inscriptions instead of imperial portraits, alongside a new copper coin type. By 698, reformed dirhams had replaced Sasanian types at nearly all mints. In Jerusalem, the inscription on ʿAbd al-Malik’s Dome of the Rock dates its completion to 692. It contains passages from the Qurʾan, Islam’s scripture, and calls Islam the religion of truth.

Campaigns and negotiated provincial rule

In the east, Iraq’s governors directed campaigns into Khorasan, a historical region spanning northeastern Iran and parts of Afghanistan and Central Asia, including lands beyond the Oxus (Amu Darya). Early Umayyad armies did not maintain a large presence in every eastern district. Treaties often left local rulers in place to collect tribute and send it to the caliphate, sometimes in cash and sometimes in goods. Arab armies could return to their Iraqi bases after campaigning, leaving local authorities responsible for day-to-day collection.

That arrangement shifted during the Marwanid period. In 705, Qutayba ibn Muslim became governor of Khorasan and Sistan. Sistan lay around the modern Iran–Afghanistan border; Qutayba led campaigns across the Oxus into Sogdia, in present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. He captured Samarqand and used both military force and agreements with local rulers; in some places, he enrolled local militias into the caliphate’s service. Some local rulers kept office and collected tribute, while Qutayba’s forces subdued other principalities. Farther southeast, al-Ḥajjāj sent Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim on a campaign into Sind, in present-day Pakistan, in the early eighth century.

In North Africa, ʿUqba ibn Nāfiʿ founded Kairouan in present-day Tunisia in 670 as a garrison and base for operations westward. The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, now Spain and Portugal, began in 711, when an army led by Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād crossed from North Africa. The expedition was sent by Mūsā ibn Nuṣayr, governor of Ifriqiya, the region centered on modern Tunisia.

To the north, Umayyad forces besieged Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and present-day Istanbul, by land and sea in 717–718; preparations for the campaign had begun in 716. The siege failed. Sulayman died during the campaign, and ʿUmar II succeeded him as caliph in 717.

In 739, Berber communities rose in revolt across North Africa. Umayyad authorities had continued to demand tribute from some Berbers after their conversion to Islam, and the revolt also drew on Kharijite teaching that called for equality among Muslims. Caliph Hisham (r. 724–743) sent Syrian forces to restore control. They were defeated on the Sebu River in Morocco in 741; the following year, Egypt’s governor re-established Umayyad authority at Kairouan, but conflict between Arab and Berber forces continued.

Tax, military pay and late Umayyad revolt

Tax policy also affected non-Arab converts in Khorasan. The term mawālī often referred to non-Arab Muslims attached as clients to Arab patrons. Under ʿUmar II, who ruled from 717 to 720, a delegation from Khorasan reported that converts still paid the jizya, a poll tax levied on non-Muslims, and that mawālī serving in campaigns received neither a soldier’s stipend nor maintenance pay. ʿUmar ordered the tax removed for new converts, and conversions increased. Later officials reinstated the tax for many converts, and some renounced Islam.

After Hisham’s death in 743, a succession crisis brought several short-lived rulers to power. Marwan II, a veteran frontier commander, became caliph in 744 and moved his court from Damascus to Harran in northern Mesopotamia, near modern Şanlıurfa in Turkey. In Khorasan, the governor Naṣr ibn Sayyār faced a dispute over the allocation of military pay. Azd tribal opponents under Judayʿ al-Kirmānī revolted, adding to divisions among the Arab groups on which the army depended.

The Abbasids, descendants of the Prophet’s uncle al-ʿAbbās, had built a political network in Khorasan for years. In summer 747, their leader Abū Muslim raised the black banners at Sikadanj, a village near Marv in present-day Turkmenistan, and recruited men as he moved among the villages around the city. His movement grew amid the conflict between governor Naṣr ibn Sayyār and Azd leaders, who appealed to Abū Muslim for support. He entered Marv in early 748, and rebel armies advanced west through Iran and Iraq. Army leaders gave allegiance to Abū al-ʿAbbās in Kufa in November 749. In January 750, Marwan’s army was defeated at the Great Zab River in northern Iraq. The Abbasids took Damascus in April, and Marwan was killed in Egypt that August, ending Umayyad rule from Syria.