Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan

Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, the fifth caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate, took power in 685 when the dynasty's control had shrunk to Syria and Egypt, and by his death in 705 had rebuilt it into a centralised empire. He won a long civil war, introduced the first purely Islamic coinage, made Arabic the language of government and built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Later Muslim writers called him the "father of kings", since most later Umayyad rulers descended from him.

Abd al-Malik was born in Medina in 644 or 647, the son of Marwan ibn al-Hakam, of the powerful Umayya clan of Quraysh. He belonged to the first generation raised as Muslims, and the sources describe a pious youth devoted to religious study. As a boy he saw the murder of his kinsman, the caliph Uthman, in 656. Under Mu'awiya I, the first Umayyad caliph, he led a naval unit against the Byzantines.

In 683 a revolt in Medina against Mu'awiya's son Yazid expelled the Umayyads from the city, part of the wider upheaval known as the Second Fitna. After Yazid and his young son died in 683–684, most provinces recognised Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, based in Mecca, as caliph. Pro-Umayyad Syrian tribes chose his father Marwan instead, and Abd al-Malik succeeded Marwan in April 685.

His first invasion of Iraq, in 686, failed. To secure his home base he made a costly truce with the Byzantine Empire in 689, put down a coup in Damascus by a relative in 690 and brought rebellious tribes in upper Mesopotamia back into his army in 691. That year he marched into Iraq and defeated Ibn al-Zubayr's brother Mus'ab at Maskin. He then sent his general al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf against Mecca. In 692 al-Hajjaj besieged the city, bombarding even the Kaaba with catapults, and killed Ibn al-Zubayr, ending the war and reuniting the caliphate.

Iraq remained restless. In 694 Abd al-Malik made al-Hajjaj governor there, and later of all the eastern provinces. With Syrian troops he crushed the Kharijite rebels by 698 and a great revolt of the Iraqi tribal nobility led by Ibn al-Ash'ath, which grew out of a campaign launched in 699 and threatened Iraq in 701. Syrian troops, based at the new town of Wasit, thereafter dominated Iraq. Abroad, the war with Byzantium resumed in 692 with an Umayyad victory at Sebastopolis and constant raids into Anatolia and Armenia. In North Africa his general Hassan ibn al-Nu'man destroyed Carthage in 698, securing Kairouan as the base for the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb.

Abd al-Malik's lasting reforms gave the state a clearly Islamic identity. In 693 he replaced Byzantine gold coins with his own dinar; after early designs showing the caliph, coins from 696 or 697 carried no images, only Quranic phrases, and a similar silver dirham followed in the east. Around 700 Arabic replaced Greek as the language of the administration in Syria. Tax surpluses now flowed to Damascus, and stipends for descendants of the early conquerors gave way to pay for serving soldiers, creating a professional, largely Syrian army. At one point his sons and brothers held nearly all the provincial governorships.

In Jerusalem Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock, whose inscription gives a date of 691–92. It is the earliest surviving religious building of a Muslim ruler, and its inscriptions contain the earliest dated public statements of Islam and of Muhammad's prophethood. One medieval claim, that he meant it to rival Mecca while Ibn al-Zubayr held the city, is rejected by most modern historians as hostile propaganda.

Abd al-Malik died in Damascus on 9 October 705, possibly of plague, and was succeeded by his son al-Walid I, under whom Umayyad power and prosperity probably peaked. The raids of his reign also prepared the way for the great Arab siege of Constantinople in 717–718. His centralised state became a model for later Muslim rulers.

Our 700 map shows the Umayyad Caliphate near the end of his reign, reunited and stretching from North Africa to Central Asia.