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60 The history of the great caliphates, the dynastic rule of the great empires, takes our journey outward from the emergence of Islam in the Arabian core region to its development under the influence of many cultures and civilizations. These chapters of Islamic history become increasingly complex as they span large geographic areas and long periods of time. The many developments cannot be treated adequately here, though they are of great interest for understanding Jewish history and Jewish-Muslim relations in the medieval period. Time will be taken, therefore , only to point out a few items of interest for the development of some key aspects of Islam and the continuing flow of Jewish-Muslim relations. A far more complex unfolding of Islamic history will be schematized by outlining the history of four caliphal empires: the Umayyad caliphate centered in Damascus, the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, the Fatimid caliphate in Fostat/Cairo, and the Spanish Umayyad caliphate centered in Cordoba. The Umayyad Dynasty (66–750) The Umayyad caliphate began officially with Mu`āwiya, the third caliph Uthman’s nephew, who was appointed to rule Damascus and who opposed the 4th caliph, Ali, when he finally came to power. Mu`āwiya was an extremely adept leader, warrior, and diplomat. He moved the capital to his power base in Damascus, which had only recently been part of the heartland CHAPTER 8 The Caliphal Dynasties 61 C H A P T E R E I G H T of the Byzantine Empire. The caliphate developed there with the assistance of conquered Christian locals, who were intimately and professionally familiar with the imperial politics, diplomacy, economy, and military arrangements of the Byzantines. Mu`āwiya and his dynasty succeeded, with the assistance of many non-Arabs and non-Muslims in the Umayyad bureaucracy , to project the image of an Arab leader, while ruling an expanding Mediterranean empire as large as that of Rome. The 90 years of Umayyad rule saw continued expansion of the Conquest . North Africa was taken all the way to today’s Morocco, as well as Spain, and with incursions that reached deeply into today’s France. On the eastern front, the armies took Kabul in today’s Afghanistan and the Central AsianareasofKhurasanandSamarkand.TheUmayyadarmiesevenlaunched several attacks against the Byzantine capital, Constantinople, though they did not succeed in capturing the city. The great monument in Jerusalem known as the Dome of the Rock was built during this early period (constructed between 685 and 69), and it represents the earliest surviving example of monumental architecture in the Muslim world. The Grand Umayyad Mosque standing to this day in Damascus was also built by the Umayyads (706–75), as was the al-Aqsa Mosque (completed in 75), though it was destroyed in an earthquake—the present mosque is a smaller, rebuilt structure. As the first expression of Muslim empire commencing only 30 years after the death of Muhammad, the Umayyad caliphate was confronted with the tasks of creating all the institutions of empire at the same time that it had to develop the institutions of a new and rapidly expanding religion. Even with, or perhaps because of, all the institutional stresses, the dhimmī communities tended to be treated well. The tremendous geographical expansion that it inherited and pushed onward created enormous administrative and cultural challenges. The Umayyads established a royal administration and tax system, developed a diplomatic bureaucracy, maintained massive armies and a military system, organized centers and boundaries of governance and administration, and developed the beginnings of a religious bureaucracy. Arabic became the administrative language (replacing Greek, which had been the administrative language of most of the lands taken by the Arabs), and state documents and currency were issued in Arabic. Mass conversions brought a large influx of Muslims into the system. The Umayyad rulers were criticized for not ruling according to the egalitarian principles associated with Muhammad and the Medinan umma. In some later histories, they are depicted much like the imperial rulers that ruled the Byzantine Roman Empire before them. As members of an Arab dynasty, the Umayyad rulers tended to favor the old Arab families and 62 A N I N T R O D U C T I O N T O I S L A M F O R J E W S especially those of the Quraysh, and even more, those Quraysh of the clan of the Umayyad caliphs, the Banū Umayya, and all of these over newly converted Muslims. Their cultural attachment to Arabian tribal traditions...

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