Umayyad Caliphate

During the pre-Islamic period, the Banu Umayya were a leading clan of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. By the end of the 6th century, the Umayyads dominated the Quraysh's increasingly prosperous trade networks with Syria and developed economic and military alliances with the nomadic Arab tribes that controlled the northern and central Arabian desert expanses, affording the clan a degree of political power in the region. The Umayyads under the leadership of Abu Sufyan ibn Harb were the principal leaders of Meccan opposition to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, but after the latter captured Mecca in 630, Abu Sufyan and the Quraysh embraced Islam. To reconcile his influential Qurayshi tribesmen, Muhammad gave his former opponents, including Abu Sufyan, a stake in the new order. Abu Sufyan and the Umayyads relocated to Medina, the political centre of Islam, to maintain their new-found political influence in the nascent Muslim community.

Muhammad's death in 632 left open the succession of leadership of the Muslim community. Leaders of the Ansar, the natives of Medina who had provided Muhammad safe haven after his emigration from Mecca in 622, discussed forwarding their own candidate out of concern that the Muhajirun, Muhammad's early followers and fellow emigrants from Mecca, would ally with their fellow tribesmen from the former Qurayshi elite and take control of the Muslim state. The Muhajirun gave allegiance to one of their own, the early, elderly companion of Muhammad, Abu Bakr (r. 632–634), and put an end to Ansarite deliberations. Abu Bakr was viewed as acceptable by the Ansar and the Qurayshi elite and was acknowledged as caliph (leader of the Muslim community). He showed favor to the Umayyads by awarding them command roles in the Muslim conquest of Syria. The appointees included Yazid and Mu'awiya, the sons of Abu Sufyan, who owned property and maintained trade networks in Syria.

Abu Bakr's successor Umar (r. 634–644) curtailed the influence of the Qurayshi elite in favor of Muhammad's earlier supporters in the administration and military, but nonetheless allowed the growing foothold of Abu Sufyan's sons in Syria, which was all but conquered by 638. When Umar's overall steward of the province, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, died in 639, he appointed Yazid as governor of the districts of Damascus, Palestine and Jordan. Yazid died shortly after and Umar appointed Yazid's brother Mu'awiya in his place. Umar's exceptional treatment of Abu Sufyan's sons may have stemmed from his respect for the family, their burgeoning alliance with the powerful Banu Kalb tribe as a counterbalance to the influential Himyarite settlers in Homs who viewed themselves as equals to the Quraysh in nobility, or the lack of a suitable candidate at the time, particularly amid the plague of Amwas which had already killed Abu Ubayda and Yazid. Under Mu'awiya's stewardship, Syria remained domestically peaceful, well-organized and securely defended from its former Byzantine rulers.

Umar's successor, Uthman ibn Affan, was a wealthy Umayyad and early Muslim convert with marital ties to Muhammad. He was elected by the shura council, composed of Muhammad's cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, Talha ibn Ubayd Allah, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas and Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf, all of whom were close, early companions of Muhammad and belonged to the Quraysh. He was chosen over Ali because he would ensure the concentration of state power into the hands of the Quraysh, as opposed to Ali's determination to diffuse power among all of the Muslim factions. From early in his reign, Uthman displayed explicit favoritism to his kinsmen, in stark contrast to his predecessors. He appointed his relatives as governors over the conquered regions, namely much of the Sasanian Empire, i.e. Iraq and Iran, and the former Byzantine territories of Syria and Egypt. In Medina, he relied extensively on the counsel of his Umayyad cousins, the brothers al-Harith and Marwan ibn al-Hakam. According to the historian Wilferd Madelung, this policy stemmed from Uthman's "conviction that the house of Umayya, as the core clan of Quraysh, was uniquely qualified to rule in the name of Islam".

Uthman's nepotism provoked the ire of the Ansar and the members of the shura. In 645/46, he added the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) to Mu'awiya's Syrian governorship and granted the latter's request to take possession of all Byzantine crown lands in Syria to help pay his troops. He had the surplus taxes from the wealthy provinces of Kufa and Egypt forwarded to the treasury in Medina, which he used at his personal disposal, frequently disbursing its funds and war booty to his family members. Moreover, the lucrative Sasanian crown lands of Iraq, which Umar had designated as communal property for the benefit of the Arab garrison towns of Kufa and Basra, were turned into caliphal crown lands to be used at Uthman's discretion. Mounting resentment against Uthman's rule in Iraq and Egypt and among the Ansar and Quraysh of Medina culminated in the killing of the caliph in 656. In the assessment of the historian Hugh N. Kennedy, Uthman was killed because of his determination to centralize control over the caliphate's government by the traditional elite of the Quraysh, particularly his Umayyad clan, which he believed possessed the "experience and ability" to govern, at the expense of the interests, rights and privileges of many early Muslims.

After Uthman's assassination, Ali was recognized as caliph in Medina, though his support stemmed from the Ansar and the Iraqis, while the bulk of the Quraysh was wary of his rule. The first challenge to his authority came from the Qurayshi leaders Zubayr and Talha, who had opposed Uthman's empowerment of the Umayyad clan but feared that their own influence and the power of the Quraysh, in general, would dissipate under Ali. Backed by one of Muhammad's wives, Aisha, they attempted to rally support against Ali among the troops of Basra, prompting the caliph to leave for Iraq's other garrison town, Kufa, where he could better confront his challengers. Ali defeated them at the Battle of the Camel, in which Zubayr and Talha were slain, and Aisha consequently entered self-imposed seclusion. Ali's sovereignty was thereafter recognized in Basra and Egypt, and he established Kufa as his capital.

Although Ali was able to replace Uthman's governors in Egypt and Iraq with relative ease, Mu'awiya had developed a strong power base and an effective military against the Byzantines from the Arab tribes of Syria. Mu'awiya did not yet explicitly claim the caliphate but was determined to retain control of Syria and opposed Ali in the name of avenging his kinsman Uthman, accusing the caliph of complicity in his death. Ali's Iraqi army and Mu'awiya's Syrian forces fought to a stalemate at the Battle of Siffin in early 657. Ali agreed to settle the matter with Mu'awiya by arbitration, though the talks failed to achieve a resolution. The decision to arbitrate fundamentally weakened Ali's political position as he was compelled to negotiate with Mu'awiya on equal terms, while it drove a faction of Ali's forces, who later became known as the Kharijites, to revolt. Ali's coalition steadily disintegrated and many Iraqi tribal nobles secretly defected to Mu'awiya, while Mu'awiya's ally Amr ibn al-As conquered Egypt from Ali's governor in July 658. In July 660 Mu'awiya was formally recognized as caliph in Jerusalem by his Syrian tribal allies. Ali was assassinated by a Kharijite dissident in January 661. His son Hasan succeeded him but abdicated in return for compensation upon Mu'awiya's invasion of Iraq with his Syrian army in the summer. Mu'awiya then entered Kufa and received the allegiance of the Iraqis.

The recognition of Mu'awiya in Kufa, referred to as the "year of unification of the community" in the Muslim traditional sources, is generally considered the start of his caliphate. With his accession, the political capital and the caliphal treasury were transferred to Damascus, the seat of Mu'awiya's power. Syria's emergence as the heartland of the Umayyad Caliphate was the result of Mu'awiya's twenty-year entrenchment in the province, the geographic distribution of its relatively large Arab population throughout the province in contrast to their seclusion in garrison cities in other provinces, and the domination of a single tribal confederation, the Quda'a who were led by the Banu Kalb with whom Mu'awiya had a marriage alliance, as opposed to the wide array of competing tribal groups in Iraq. The long-established, formerly Christian Arab tribes in Syria, having been integrated into the military of the Byzantine Empire and their Ghassanid client kings, were "more accustomed to order and obedience" than their Iraqi counterparts, according to historian Julius Wellhausen. Mu'awiya relied on the powerful Kalbite chief Ibn Bahdal and the Kindite nobleman Shurahbil ibn Simt alongside the Qurayshi commanders al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri and Abd al-Rahman, the son of the prominent general Khalid ibn al-Walid, to guarantee the loyalty of the key military components of Syria. Mu'awiya preoccupied his core Syrian troops in nearly annual or bi-annual land and sea raids against Byzantium, which provided them with battlefield experience and war spoils, but secured no permanent territorial gains. Toward the end of his reign the caliph entered a thirty-year truce with Byzantine emperor Constantine IV (r. 668–685), obliging the Umayyads to pay the Empire an annual tribute of gold, horses and slaves.

Mu'awiya's main challenge was reestablishing the unity of the Muslim community and asserting his authority and that of the caliphate in the provinces amid the political and social disintegration of the First Fitna. There remained significant opposition to his assumption of the caliphate and to a strong central government. The garrison towns of Kufa and Basra, populated by the Arab immigrants and troops who arrived during the conquest of Iraq in the 630s–640s, resented the transition of power to Syria. They remained divided, nonetheless, as both cities competed for power and influence in Iraq and its eastern dependencies and remained divided between the Arab tribal nobility and the early Muslim converts, the latter of whom were divided between the pro-Alids (loyalists of Ali) and the Kharijites, who followed their own strict interpretation of Islam. The caliph applied a decentralized approach to governing Iraq by forging alliances with its tribal nobility, such as the Kufan leader al-Ash'ath ibn Qays, and entrusting the administration of Kufa and Basra to highly experienced members of the Thaqif tribe, al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba and the latter's protege Ziyad ibn Abihi (whom Mu'awiya adopted as his half-brother), respectively. In return for recognizing his suzerainty, maintaining order, and forwarding a token portion of the provincial tax revenues to Damascus, the caliph let his governors rule with practical independence. After al-Mughira's death in 670, Mu'awiya attached Kufa and its dependencies to the governorship of Basra, making Ziyad the practical viceroy over the eastern half of the caliphate. Ziyad launched a concerted campaign to firmly establish Arab rule in the vast Khurasan region east of Iran and restart the Muslim conquests in the surrounding areas. Not long after Ziyad's death, he was succeeded by his son Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad. Meanwhile, Amr ibn al-As ruled Egypt from the provincial capital of Fustat as a virtual partner of Mu'awiya until his death in 663, after which loyalist governors were appointed and the province became a practical appendage of Syria.

The early Umayyad caliphs created a stable administration for the empire, following the administrative practices and political institutions of the Byzantine Empire which had ruled the same region previously. The Umayyad administration consisted of four main governmental branches: political affairs, military affairs, tax collection, and religious administration. Each of these was further subdivided into more branches, offices, and departments.

Geographically, the empire was divided into several provinces, the borders of which changed numerous times during Umayyad rule. Each province had a governor appointed by the caliph. The governor was in charge of the religious officials, army leaders, police, and civil administrators in his province. Local expenses were paid for by taxes coming from that province, with the remainder each year being sent to the central government in Damascus. As the central power of the Umayyad rulers waned in the later years of the dynasty, some governors neglected to send the extra tax revenue to Damascus and created great personal fortunes.

As the empire grew, the number of qualified Arab workers was too small to keep up with the rapid expansion of the empire. Therefore, Mu'awiya I allowed many of the local government workers in conquered provinces to keep their jobs under the new Umayyad government. Thus, much of the local government's work was recorded in Greek, Coptic, and Persian. It was only during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik that government work began to be regularly recorded in Arabic.

The Umayyad army was mainly Arab, with its core consisting of those who had settled in urban Syria and the Arab tribes who originally served in the army of the Byzantine Empire. These were supported by tribes in the Syrian desert and in the frontier with the Byzantines, as well as Christian tribes. Soldiers were registered with the Army Ministry and were salaried. The army was divided into junds based on regional fortified cities. The Syrian army specialized in close order infantry warfare and favored using a kneeling spear wall formation in battle, likely as a result of their encounters with Roman armies. This was radically different from the original Bedouin style of mobile and individualistic fighting.

There were likely around 300,000 troops enrolled in the registers in 700, though Blankinship gives the larger figure of 400,000 for the reign of Caliph Hisham. Syria - 175,000 (with Damascus alone providing 45,000 troops under al-Walid); Jazira - 75,000; Khurasan - 54,000; Egypt - 40,000; North Africa, Spain and Sind at least 30,000 each, the remaining provinces also garrisoned some troops, though lesser. Before Iraq was demilitarised in wake of the 701 revolt of Ibn al-Ash'ath, it had over 100,000 troops on its Diwan (Basra - 80,000; Kufa - 60,000). Adjusting for the potential unreliability of these reports, a total force of 250,000-300,000 is a reasonable estimate, consistent with the army sizes of the Late Roman and Sasanian empires. Around 40% of this army was based upon the troops of Syria, the Umayyad metropole, which explains how they were able to dominate and maintain control over the other regions, and later establish garrisons of Syrian troops all over the Caliphate.

The Byzantine and Sassanid Empires relied on monetary economies before the Muslim conquest and that system remained in effect during the Umayyad period. Byzantine coinage was used until 658; Byzantine gold coins were still in use until the monetary reforms c. 700. In addition to this, the Umayyad government began to mint its own coins in Damascus, which were initially similar to pre-existing coins but evolved in an independent direction. These were the first coins minted by a Muslim government in history.

Early Islamic coins re-used Byzantine and Sasanian iconography directly but added new Islamic elements. So-called "Arab-Byzantine" coins replicated Byzantine coins and were minted in Levantine cities before and after the Umayyads rose to power. Some examples of these coins, likely minted in Damascus, copied the coins of Byzantine emperor Heraclius, including a depiction of the emperor and his son Heraclius Constantine. On the reverse side, the traditional Byzantine cross-on-steps image was modified to avoid any explicitly non-Islamic connotation.

In the 690s, under Abd al-Malik's reign, a new period of experimentations began. Some Arab-Sasanian coins dated between 692 and 696, associated with the mints in Iraq under governor Bishr ibn Marwan, stopped using the Sasanian image of the fire altar and replaced it with three male figures standing in Arab dress. This was possibly an attempt to depict the act of Muslim prayer or the delivery of the khutba (Friday sermon). Another coin minted probably between 695 and 698 features the image of a spear under an arch. This has been variously interpreted as representing a mihrab or a "sacral arch", the latter being a late antique motif. The spear is believed to be the spear ('anaza) that Muhammad carried before him when entering the mosque.

Between 696 and 699, the caliph introduced a new system of coinage of gold, silver, and bronze. The coins generally featured Arabic inscriptions without any images, ending the earlier iconographic traditions. The main gold unit was the dinar (from Roman denarius), which was worth 20 silver coins. It was most likely modeled on the Byzantine solidus. The silver coin was called a dirham (from Greek drachma). Its size and shape was based on Sasanian coins and they were minted in much larger quantities than in the earlier Byzantine era. The bronze coin was called a fals or fulus (from Byzantine follis).

One group of bronze coins from Palestine, dated after the coinage reform of the late 690s, features the image of a seven-branched menorah and then later of a five-branched menorah, topped by an Arabic inscription of the shahada. These images may have been based on Christian representations of the menorah or on earlier Hasmonean models. The switch to a five-branched version may have been intended to further differentiate this depiction from Jewish and Christian versions.

The Umayyad Caliphate had four main social classes:

Arab Muslims

Non-Arab Muslims (clients of the Muslim Arabs)

Dhimmis (non-Muslim free persons such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians)

Slaves

Arab Muslims were at the top of the society and saw it as their duty to rule over the conquered areas. They held themselves in higher esteem than non-Arab Muslims with whom they did not generally mix. As Islam spread, more and more of the Muslim population consisted of non-Arabs. This caused social unrest, as the new converts were not given the same rights as Muslim Arabs. As conversions increased, tax revenues from non-Muslims also decreased to dangerous lows. These issues continued to worsen until they helped cause the Abbasid revolution in the 740s.

Non-Muslim groups in the Umayyad Caliphate, which included Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, were called dhimmis. They were given a legally protected status as second-class citizens as long as they accepted and acknowledged the political supremacy of the ruling Muslims. More specifically, non-Muslims had to pay a tax, known as jizya, which the Muslims did not have to pay; Muslims would instead pay the zakat tax. If non-Muslims converted to Islam, they would cease paying jizya and would instead pay zakat.

Although the Umayyads were harsh when it came to defeating their Zoroastrian adversaries, they did offer protection and relative religious tolerance to the Zoroastrians who accepted their authority. Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz was reported to have said in one of his letters commanding not to "destroy a synagogue or a church or temple of fire worshippers (meaning the Zoroastrians) as long as they have reconciled with and agreed upon with the Muslims". Fred Donner says that Zoroastrians in the northern parts of Iran were hardly penetrated by the "believers", winning virtually complete autonomy in-return for tribute-tax or jizya. Donner adds that "Zoroastrians continued to exist in large numbers in northern and western Iran and elsewhere for centuries after the rise of Islam, and indeed, much of the canon of Zoroastrian religious texts was elaborated and written down during the Islamic period."

Christians and Jews still continued to produce great theological thinkers within their communities, but as time wore on, many of the intellectuals converted to Islam, leading to a lack of great thinkers in the non-Muslim communities. Important Christian writers from the Umayyad period include the theologian John of Damascus, bishop Cosmas of Maiuma, Pope Benjamin I of Alexandria and Isaac of Nineveh. Christians were also employed in many bureaucratic positions within the Umayyad government, with Sarjun ibn Mansur being an important example. The son of a prominent Byzantine Melkite Christian official of Damascus, he was favoured by the early Umayyad caliphs, Mu'awiya I and Yazid I, and served as the head of Syria's fiscal administration from the mid-7th century until the year 700, when Caliph Abd al-Malik dismissed him as part of his efforts to Arabicize the bureaucracy of the caliphate. According to the Muslim historians al-Baladhuri and al-Tabari, Sarjun was a mawla of the first Umayyad caliph, Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), serving as his "secretary and the person in charge of his business". The hagiographies, although less reliable, also assign to him a role in the administration, even as "ruler" (archon or even amir), of Damascus and its environs, where he was responsible for collecting the revenue. In this capacity, he is attested in later collections of source material such as that of al-Mas'udi. Sarjun ibn Mansur was replaced by Sulayman ibn Sa'd al-Khushani, another Christian.

Mu'awiya's marriage to Maysun bint Bahdal (Yazid's mother) was politically motivated, as she was the daughter of the chief of the Banu Kalb, which was a large Arab tribe in Syria. The Kalb tribe had remained largely neutral when the Muslims first went into Syria. After the plague that killed much of the Muslim armies in Syria, by marrying Maysun, Mu'awiya used the Syriac Christians against the Byzantines. Tom Holland writes that Christians, Jews, Samaritans and Manichaeans were all treated well by Mu'awiya. Mu'awiya even restored Edessa's cathedral after it had been toppled by an earthquake. Holland also writes that, "Savagely though Mu'awiya prosecuted his wars against the Romans, yet his subjects, no longer trampled by rival armies, no longer divided by hostile watchtowers, knew only peace at last. Justice flourished in his time, and there was great peace in the regions under his control. He allowed everyone to live as they wanted."

The Umayyads constructed grand congregational mosques and palaces within their empire. Most of their surviving monuments are located in their metropolitan province of Syria. They also continued the existing Muslim policy of building new garrison cities (amsar) in their provinces that served as bases for further expansion. Their most famous constructions include the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque of Damascus, while other prominent constructions include the desert palaces, such as Khirbat al-Mafjar and Qusayr 'Amra. Among these projects, the construction of the Great Mosque in Damascus reflected the diversity of the empire, as Greek, Persian, Coptic (Egyptian), Indian and Maghrebi craftsmen were recruited to build it.

Under Umayyad patronage, Islamic architecture was derived from established Byzantine and Sasanian architectural traditions, but it also innovated by combining elements of these styles together, experimenting with new building types, and implementing lavish decorative programs. Byzantine-style mosaics are prominently featured in both the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus, but the lack of human figures in their imagery was a new trait that demonstrates an Islamic taboo on figural representation in religious art. Palaces were decorated with floor mosaics, frescoes, and relief carving, and some of these included representations of human figures and animals. Umayyad architecture was thus an important transitional period during which early Islamic architecture and visual culture began to develop its own distinct identity.

The later offshoot of the Umayyad dynasty in al-Andalus, which ruled the Emirate and subsequent Caliphate of Córdoba, also undertook major architectural projects in the Iberian Peninsula such as the Great Mosque of Córdoba and Madinat al-Zahra, which influenced later architecture in the western Islamic world.

The Umayyad Caliphate was marked both by territorial expansion and by the administrative and cultural problems that such expansion created. Despite some notable exceptions, the Umayyads tended to favor the rights of the old Arab elite families, and in particular their own, over those of newly converted Muslims (mawali). Therefore, they held to a less universalist conception of Islam than did many of their rivals. As G.R. Hawting has written, "Islam was in fact regarded as the property of the conquering aristocracy."

During the period of the Umayyads, Arabic became the administrative language and the process of Arabization was initiated in the Levant, Mesopotamia, North Africa, and Hispania. State documents and currency were issued in Arabic. Conversions to Islam also created a growing population of Muslims in the territory of the caliphate.

According to one common view, the Umayyads transformed the caliphate from a religious institution (during the Rashidun Caliphate) to a dynastic one. However, the Umayyad caliphs do seem to have understood themselves as the representatives of God on earth, and to have been responsible for the "definition and elaboration of God's ordinances, or in other words the definition or elaboration of Islamic law."

The Umayyads have met with a largely negative reception from later Islamic historians, who have accused them of promoting a kingship (mulk, a term with connotations of tyranny) instead of a true caliphate (khilafa). In this respect it is notable that the Umayyad caliphs referred to themselves not as khalifat Rasul Allah ("successor of the Messenger of God", the title preferred by the tradition), but rather as khalifat Allah ("deputy of God"). The distinction seems to indicate that the Umayyads "regarded themselves as God's representatives at the head of the community and saw no need to share their religious power with, or delegate it to, the emergent class of religious scholars." In fact, it was precisely this class of scholars, based largely in Iraq, that was responsible for collecting and recording the traditions that form the primary source material for the history of the Umayyad period. In reconstructing this history, therefore, it is necessary to rely mainly on sources, such as the histories of al-Tabari and al-Baladhuri, that were written in the Abbasid court at Baghdad.

The book Al-Muwatta, by Imam Malik ibn Anas, was written in the early Abbasid period in Medina. It does not contain any anti-Umayyad content because it was more concerned with what the Quran and what Muhammad said and was not a history book on the Umayyads. Even the earliest pro-Shia accounts of al-Masudi are more balanced. Al-Masudi's Ibn Hisham is the earliest Shia account of Mu'awiya. He recounted that Mu'awiya spent a great deal of time in prayer, in spite of the burden of managing a large empire. After killing off most of the Umayyads and destroying their graves (apart from that of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz), the history books written during the later Abbasid period are more anti-Umayyad.

Modern Arab nationalism regards the Umayyad period as part of the Arab Golden Age. This is particularly true of Syrian nationalists, with the present-day state of Syria centred like that of the Umayyads in Damascus. The Umayyad banners were white, after the banner of Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan; it is now one of the four pan-Arab colors which appear in various combinations on the flags of most Arab countries.

The Umayyads were criticized for having too many non-Muslim, former Roman administrators in their government. As the Muslims took over Byzantine cities, they left the Roman tax collectors and administrators in office. The taxes to the central government were calculated by political representatives, and local governments were compensated for their services. Many Christian cities used some of the tax revenue to maintain their churches and run their own organizations. Later, the Umayyads were criticized by many Muslims for not reducing the taxes of the people who converted to Islam.

The only Umayyad ruler who is unanimously praised by Sunni sources for his devout piety and justice is Caliph Umar II. In his efforts to spread Islam, he abolished the jizya tax for non-Arab Muslim converts, although it reduced the government's revenues. Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz also stopped the personal allowances provided to his relatives, stating that he could only give them an allowance if he gave an allowance to everyone else in the empire. After his death in 720, his policies were largely reversed, resulting in rebellions.

The negative view of the Umayyads is briefly expressed in the Shi'a book "Sulh al-Hasan". According to Shia hadiths, Ali described them as the worst Fitna. Shia sources widely describe the Umayyad Caliphate as "tyrannical, anti-Islamic and godless", condemning Mu'awiya for clashing with Ali at the Battle of Siffin and for declaring his son Yazid, whose forces would kill Husayn ibn Ali at the Battle of Karbala, as his successor.

Asked for an explanation of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation (12:3), `Abdu'l-Bahá suggests in Some Answered Questions that the "great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads", refers to the Umayyad caliphs who "rose against the religion of Prophet Muhammad and against the reality of Ali".

The seven heads of the dragon are symbolic of the seven provinces of the lands dominated by the Umayyads: Damascus, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Africa, Andalusia, and Transoxiana. The ten horns represent the ten names of Umayyad leaders: Abu Sufyan, Mu'awiya, Yazid, Marwan, Abd al-Malik, al-Walid, Sulayman, Umar, Hisham, and Ibrahim. Some names were re-used, as in the case of Yazid II and Yazid III, which were not accounted for in this interpretation.