- Who were the Umayyads?
- The Umayyads (banū Umayya) were the first Islamic dynasty, founded by Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan in 661 CE after the assassination of Ali ﵁. They ruled from Damascus and in less than a century built the largest contiguous empire history had seen up to that point. Their legacy is twofold: civilisation and statecraft on the one hand, the loss of the Rashidun ideal on the other.
- Why did they move the capital to Damascus?
- Mu'awiya had been governor of Syria since 639 and built his power base there. Damascus had existing infrastructure, an experienced administration inherited from the Byzantine period, and a strategic position between the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. Medina, the political heart under the Rashidun, lay too far from the frontiers. The move was more than logistics: it marked the end of the caliphate as an affair of Arab Medina and its beginning as a world empire.
- How far did the Umayyad empire reach?
- At its height (around 720, under Umar II) the empire stretched from the Indus River in the east to the Pyrenees in the west, a distance of more than 11,000 km. It encompassed Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and parts of Pakistan. No political entity had ever united so many different peoples under one authority, and all of this within 90 years of the Hijra.
- What happened at the Battle of Karbala (680)?
- On 10 Muharram 61 AH (10 October 680), Husayn ibn Ali ﵁, grandson of the Prophet ﷺ, was killed together with 72 companions by the army of Caliph Yazid I at Karbala (in modern Iraq). Husayn ﵁ had refused to pledge allegiance to Yazid. Karbala became the moral turning point of early Islam: a wound that never fully healed and that profoundly shaped the divide between Sunni and Shia.
- How did the Umayyad dynasty come to an end?
- The Abbasid Revolution of 749–750, led by Abu Muslim al-Khorasani, defeated the Umayyads at the Battle of the Great Zab (January 750). Caliph Marwan II was killed in Egypt. One Umayyad, Abd ar-Rahman I, escaped to Al-Andalus and founded the Emirate of Córdoba there. The dynasty fell within 90 years of seizing power, a reminder that no earthly power lasts forever.