Mu'awiya ibn abi Sufyan: From Arabia to Empire (Makers of the Muslim World)

158 Pages·2006·6.63 MB·English

by  R. Stephen Humphreys

Series editor: Patricia Crone,
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
SELECTlON OF TITLES IN THE MAKERS OF
THE MUSLIM WORLD SERIES
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Abd al-Rahman lll, Maribel Fierro
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lbn 'Arabi, William C. Chittick
lkhwan al-Sifa', Godefroid de Callatay
Karim Khan Zand, John R. Perry
Nasser, Joel Gordon .
Shaykh Mrifid, Tamima Bayhom-Daou
Usama ibn Munqidh, Paul M. Cobb
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series, please visit www.oneworld-publications.com/
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MAKERS
cfthe
MUSLIM
WORLD
Mu'awixa ibnAbi
Sufyan
From Arabia to Empire
R. STEPHEN HUMPHREYS
ONE WORLD
OXFORD
MU'AWIYA IBN ABI SUFYAN
Oneworld Publications
18 5 Banbury Road
Oxford OX2 7 AR
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www.oneworld-publications.com
© 2006 R. Step~en Humphreys
All rights reserved
Copyright under Beme Convention
A CIP record for this title is available
from the British Library
ISBN 1-85168-402--6
978-1-85168-402-1
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Cover and text design by Design Deluxe
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd
on acid-free paper
For Cymbre, Michael and Brian

CONTENTS
Priface and Acknowledements ix
1 THE PROBLEM OF MU'AWIYA
Mu'awiya in the eyes oflater Muslims 3
How do we know what we claim to know: the sources
for Mu'awiya's life 10
Mu'awiya's career: a chronological sketch 19
2 THE FIRST THREE DECADES (600-632) 23
The Meccan milieu 23
The politics of genealogy: why Mu'awiya's ancestry is
important 28
The lineage of Mu'awiya 30
The Banu Omayya 31
The descendants of' Abd Manaf: the clans of' Abd Shams
and Hashim 33
3 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF POWER:
MU'AWIYA AS MASTER OF SYRIA
(632-656) 43
Mu'awiya and the conquest of Syria 43
Mu'awiya becomes Governor 45
The war against Byzantium 50
The war at sea: creating the Muslim navy 53
The war inAnatolia and Armenia 58
Mu 'awiya and the Arab tribes in Syria 60
4 THE FIRST CIVIL WAR AND MU'AWIYA'S
RISE TO POWER (656-661) 65
The revolt against 'Uthman 65
The aftermath: who can claim the right to rule? 71
The confrontation between 'Ali and Mu'awiya 77
5 COMMANDER OF THE FAITHFUL
(661-680) 85
The war against Byzantium renewed 104
6 THE PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER: MU'AWIYA
AS A SYMBOL OF CULTURAL TENSION 115
Bibliooraphy 13 7
Index 143

PREFACE AND
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mu' awiya ibn Abi Sufyan is a figure of critical importance in the
formative period of the caliphate and the Arab-Muslim Empire
but even in the flood of scholarship dealing with the first
Islamic century he has received surprisingly little attention.
The last scholar to devote close attention to him and his era
was the learned but erratic Henri Lammens. That was nearly a
century ago and even Lammens, lover of the Umayyads as he
was, never devoted a full-length monograph to the dynasty's
founder. Mo~e recently, the admirable but necessarily concise
if
article by Martin Hinds in the Encyclopaedia Islam (published
in 1991) suggests that he would have been Mu'awiya's ideal
biographer, but his untimely death deprived us of that pos
sibility. The reasons for this neglect - perhaps a better word
would be skittishness - are many and some of them should
become clear in the pages that follow. However, Mu'awiya was
and is a hard man to pin down. It is hard to be .sure just what
we really know about him and hard to make sense of what we
do know (or think we know). In addition, many problems and
trends in early Islam, which seem shadowy or ill-formed during
Mu'awiya's lifetime, become much easier to talk about in the
context of the decades following his death.
I hope that this book will help to renew interest in this
remarkable man. This is not, however, a book for early Islamic
specialists. It is aimed at readers who are just beginning to get
involved with the study of Islamic history - whether mem
bers of the Muslim diaspora, who want to learn more about
ix