The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate ad 661-750

Mu‘awiya’s Acquisition of the Caliphate
Mu‘awiya became caliph and founder of the Umayyad dynasty as a
result of the events of a period of about five years, between 656 and
661, during which the Arabs were divided into several camps each
hostile to the others. These internal hostilities led on a number of
occasions to the outbreak of fighting among the recent conquerors
of the heartlands of the Middle East. Muslim tradition knows this
period as the 
Fitna
 (‘time of trial’), or Great 
Fitna
 to distinguish it
from other, later periods of internecine conflict between Muslims.
Modern writers usually refer to it as the first civil war of Islam. The
Fitna
 came to be seen as a period of crucial importance and as the
end of something like a Golden Age in the history of Islam: not only
did it give rise to the Umayyad caliphate, it is traditionally regarded
as the time when the three major Muslim sects—Sunnis, Shi‘ites and
Kharijites—emerged from what had previously been a united
community.
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In Muslim historical tradition the disputes of the 
Fitna
 appear
largely as rivalries between different personalities, centring on the

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The Umayyad Rise to the Caliphate 
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question of who was the legitimate caliph and what were to be his
powers. Modern scholars have sought to get behind this surface
explanation and to uncover the social, political and religious
tensions which came to breaking point at this time. In a general way,
it seems clear that the 
Fitna
 was the result of tensions which
developed among the Arabs as they were faced with the tremendous
changes to their way of life associated with their rapid conquest of
large areas of the Middle East, but individual scholars have
emphasised different tensions. Some, like Wellhausen, stressed the
rivalries which developed among the leading circle of Muslims in
Medina, between the Meccans and Medinese among the Muslim
elite, and between the more pious early Muslims and the later,
opportunist converts like most of the Umayyads.
Another approach, followed notably by H.A.R.Gibb, has been to
stress the developing opposition between the tribesmen who made
up the conquering armies, with their customary strong independence
and primitive democracy, and the demands of the emerging central
governmental institution headed by the caliph. The conflict between
the two is seen to focus on the problem of what should be done with
the land which was conquered. Should it, as the conquering
tribesmen wanted, be shared out among those who had conquered it,
or should it be treated as communal property for the benefit of all the
Muslims, left to be cultivated by those who had done so before its
conquest, and taxed by the state which would then share out or keep
the proceeds as the caliph and his advisors saw fit? The latter
solution, we are told, was adopted by the caliph ‘Umar (634–44).
Gibb argued that in ‘Umar’s time the conquests were in full spate
and the conquering tribesmen failed to understand the significance
of his decision since they were still taking vast amounts of movable
booty (slaves, wealth, livestock, and so on) and did not need the land
itself. After ‘Umar’s death, however, the pace of conquest began to
slow down, the acquisition of movable booty decreased, and the
tribesmen began to resent the fact that the land which they had
conquered had been taken away from them. Discontent among the
tribesmen against the caliph, then, was the most important element
in the outbreak of the 
Fitna,
 and the tension between the tribesmen
and the government was its main theme.
More recently Hinds and Shaban have argued that we should
concentrate on divisions among the tribesmen themselves. They
have focused on the situation in the garrison towns and have
discerned rivalries between those who took part in the original

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