Umayyad Caliphate Founded

In 661, Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan became the undisputed ruler of the Muslim community and made Damascus the seat of a new dynasty, the Umayyad Caliphate. His accession ended the first great civil war in Islamic history and turned the caliphate from a succession of leaders chosen by the community's elite into a hereditary monarchy. Under the Umayyads, Arab-Muslim rule grew into one of the largest empires the world had yet seen.

The background was a crisis of leadership. After the Prophet Muhammad died in 632, the first four caliphs, later remembered by many Sunni Muslims as the "rightly guided" ones, governed from Medina. The third, Uthman, belonged to the powerful Umayyad clan of Mecca and was assassinated in 656 amid grievances over his rule. His successor Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, faced rebellion almost at once. Muawiyah, a kinsman of Uthman and governor of Syria since the 630s, demanded that Uthman's killers be punished and refused to recognize Ali. The conflict, known as the First Fitna, included the inconclusive Battle of Siffin in 657 and an arbitration process that left Ali's camp divided.

Ali was assassinated in 661 by a member of the Kharijites, a faction that had broken away from him. His son Hasan, who briefly succeeded him, reached an agreement with Muawiyah and gave up his claim, though the exact terms are reported differently in the sources. Muawiyah was recognized as caliph, and the year is often called the "Year of the Community" because the split had been healed, at least on the surface. He ruled from Damascus, relying on Syrian troops and a network of capable governors, and he drew on Byzantine administrative habits that were already established in the region.

Expansion continued under Muawiyah and his successors. Arab armies pushed across North Africa, and by the early 700s they had crossed into Iberia and overthrown the Visigothic kingdom. In the east they reached the Indus valley and Central Asia. Arabic gradually became the language of administration, and under Abd al-Malik, around the 690s, coinage and records were reformed. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem dates from the same period.

The dynasty's legacy is contested. Muawiyah's decision to name his son Yazid as heir set a precedent for hereditary rule, and it provoked opposition that led to a Second Fitna and the death of Ali's son Husayn at Karbala in 680, an event central to Shia memory. Later Abbasid writers were often hostile to the Umayyads, so historians read the surviving accounts with care. The dynasty fell to the Abbasid revolution in 750, but a branch survived in Córdoba, in Spain.