Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and figures
- Acknowledgements
- Map 1
- Map 2
- Map 3
- INTRODUCTION
- PART I LATE ANTIQUE ARABIA AND EARLY ISLAM (c. 550–c. 660)
- PART II THE UMAYYAD CALIPHATE (c. 660–750)
- INTRODUCTION
- 4 SUFYANID ACCESSION AND SUCCESSION, c. 660–683
- 5 THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE IN THE EARLY TRADITION AND POETRY, c. 680–c. 710
- 6 THE MARWANID PATRIMONY AND DYNASTIC SUCCESSION
- 7 MARWANID RITUALS OF ACCESSION AND SUCCESSION
- 8 WRITING AND THE BAYcA IN THE MARWANID PERIOD
- 9 THE QURANIC CONTENT OF THE MARWANID DOCUMENTS
- PART III THE EARLY ABBASID CALIPHATE (c. 750–809)
- PART IV THE MIDDLE ABBASID CALIPHATE (809–865)
- CONCLUSION
- Genealogical table of Quraysh
- Genealogical table of the Abbasid caliphs
- Bibliography
- Index
INTRODUCTION
from PART II - THE UMAYYAD CALIPHATE (c. 660–750)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and figures
- Acknowledgements
- Map 1
- Map 2
- Map 3
- INTRODUCTION
- PART I LATE ANTIQUE ARABIA AND EARLY ISLAM (c. 550–c. 660)
- PART II THE UMAYYAD CALIPHATE (c. 660–750)
- INTRODUCTION
- 4 SUFYANID ACCESSION AND SUCCESSION, c. 660–683
- 5 THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE IN THE EARLY TRADITION AND POETRY, c. 680–c. 710
- 6 THE MARWANID PATRIMONY AND DYNASTIC SUCCESSION
- 7 MARWANID RITUALS OF ACCESSION AND SUCCESSION
- 8 WRITING AND THE BAYcA IN THE MARWANID PERIOD
- 9 THE QURANIC CONTENT OF THE MARWANID DOCUMENTS
- PART III THE EARLY ABBASID CALIPHATE (c. 750–809)
- PART IV THE MIDDLE ABBASID CALIPHATE (809–865)
- CONCLUSION
- Genealogical table of Quraysh
- Genealogical table of the Abbasid caliphs
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
By the 650s an Arabian–Muslim empire stretched across the East Mediterranean and the Middle East, from Tripoli, in North Africa, to Balkh, in northern Afghanistan. The establishment of garrison camps (amṣar) in many of the conquered provinces in the 630s and 640s began the sedentarisation of the Arabian armies and contributed to the consolidation of their cultural and religious unity, but did not prevent conflict over the leadership of the empire and the division of its resources. Two especially widespread outbreaks of such conflict dominated the second half of the seventh century (656–61 and 683–92). However, the idea that the Muslims should be led by one leader seems to have been sufficient to give internal conflict a centripetal character: competitors fought for control of the Muslim empire, not for independence from it. The victory of the Sufyanid branch of the Umayyad dynasty in the first civil war and the Marwanid branch of the same dynasty in the second meant that it fell to these scions of the Meccan, Qurashī clan of cAbd Shams to establish the institutions that would perpetuate the success of the Muslim ‘conquest society’.
The Umayyad family, led by Abū Sufyān b. Ḥarb b. Umayya, had been very influential in pre-Islamic Mecca. One of Abū Sufyān's sons, Yazīd (d. 639), had been among the leading conquerors of the Roman diocese of Oriens (‘Syria’) in the 630s.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rituals of Islamic MonarchyAccession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire, pp. 81 - 85Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2009