Umayyad dynasty

The Umayyad dynasty (Arabic: بَنُو أُمَيَّةَ, romanized: Banū Umayya, lit. 'Sons of Umayya'), or the Umayyads (Arabic: الأمويون, romanized: al-Umawiyyūn), were an Arab clan within the Quraysh tribe who were the ruling family of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750 and the Emirate and later Caliphate of Córdoba from 756 to 1031. They were the first hereditary dynasty in the history of Islam.

In the pre-Islamic period, the Umayyads were a prominent clan of the Meccan tribe of Quraysh, descended from Umayya ibn Abd Shams. Despite staunch opposition to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the Umayyads embraced Islam after the Conquest of Mecca in 630. Uthman ibn Affan, an early companion of Muhammad from the Umayyad clan, became the third Rashidun caliph, ruling from 644 to 656, while other members held various governorships. This included Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, the long-time governor of the Levant, who opposed the fourth Rashidun caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib in the First Fitna (656–661) and subsequently founded the Umayyad Caliphate with its capital in Damascus. Umayyad authority was later challenged in the Second Fitna, during which the Sufyanid line of Mu'awiya (which includes only the three first Umayyad caliphs) was replaced in 684 by Marwan ibn al-Hakam, who founded the Marwanid line of Umayyad caliphs, which restored the dynasty's rule over the Caliphate and remained so until the fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba. His son and successor Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan would reassert Umayyad control over the Caliphate after defeating the Zubayrids in 692. Abd al-Malik made key reforms to the administrative structure of the caliphate, including the centralization of caliphal power, the restructuring of the military, and the implementation of Arabization and Islamization policies on the bureaucracy.

The Islamic empire reached its largest geographical extent under the Umayyads, who were also the only dynasty to rule over the entire Islamic world of their time. The Umayyads advanced the early Muslim conquests, conquering the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Central Asia, Sindh, and parts of Chinese Turkestan, but the constant warfare exhausted the state's military resources, while Alid and Kharijite revolts and tribal rivalries weakened the state from within. Finally, in 750 the Abbasids overthrew Caliph Marwan II and massacred most of the family. One of the survivors, Abd al-Rahman, a grandson of Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, escaped to Muslim Spain, where he founded the Emirate of Córdoba, which his descendant, Abd al-Rahman III, transformed into a caliphate in 929. Under the Umayyads, al-Andalus became a centre of science, medicine, philosophy and invention during the Islamic Golden Age. The Caliphate of Córdoba disintegrated into several independent taifa kingdoms in 1031, thus marking the political end of the Umayyad dynasty.