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

Introduction
7
for, therefore, involves a certain amount of ‘reading between the
lines’ of Muslim tradition and using whatever evidence is available
outside the Muslim literary sources. A recent discussion using such
methods has questioned whether the name ‘Islam’, as the
designation for the religion of the Arabs, existed much before the
end of the seventh century.
10
 Muslim tradition itself, though, has
proved remarkably impervious to analysis with such questions in
mind, and one’s attitude to the question of the extent of the religious
development of Islam in the Umayyad period must depend greatly
on one’s attitude to the value of Muslim sources for the history of
the period, and especially the earlier part.
The spread of Islam during this period, as already indicated, has
to be viewed on two levels, that of its territorial expansion and that
of its acceptance by the conquered non-Arab peoples from a variety
of religious backgrounds.
Muslim tradition is generally more concerned with the former
process. When an area is under Muslim rule and subject to Muslim
law, that area is regarded as a part of the Muslim world 
(dar al-
Islam),
 even though the majority of its population may remain non-
Muslim. Strictly speaking, only Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians
(these last known as 
majus
) were to be allowed to refuse to accept
Islam and maintain their existence as separate religious communities
under Muslim rule, but in practice toleration was frequently
extended more widely.
From this point of view, then, the extensive conquests made under
the Umayyads were an extension of Islam. At the beginning of the
Umayyad period Arab Muslim rule did not extend much further west
than modern Libya or further east than the eastern regions of Iran,
and even within these areas many regions must have been held only
precariously or merely nominally. By the end of the dynasty all of
North Africa and southern and central Spain were included in the
boundaries of the Muslim world, and in the east the extension of
control into central Asia and northern India prepared the way for
later advances in those areas.
In the west the garrison town of Qayrawan was founded about 670 in
Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia), and this served as the base for further
westward expansion. ‘Uqba b. Nafi‘ is subsequently said to have
marched as far as the Atlantic before being killed by the still unsubdued
Berbers, but it was not until the end of the century that regions of
modern Algeria and Morocco were substantially pacified and the
Berbers brought into Islam, but keeping their own language and tribal

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8
Introduction
system. This development is associated with the governorship of
Hassan b. Nu‘man in Ifriqiya (683–707). It was Hassan’s successor,
Musa b. Nusayr, who initiated the invasion of Spain in 711, sending his
Berber client 
(mawla)
 Tariq to lead the expedition. It is from this Tariq
that Gibraltar takes its name (Jabal Tariq, ‘the hill of Tariq’).
In the east too the years around 700 saw major advances. Al-Hajjaj,
governor of the eastern part of the Umayyad territories from 694 to 714,
sent his generals Ibn al-Ash‘ath against the ruler of Kabul, Qutayba b.
Muslim into the territories lying beyond the river Oxus (Jayhun or Amu
Darya in Muslim works), and Muhammad b. al-Qasim into northern
India. Qutayba is said to have reached the borders of China and sent an
embassy demanding submission from the ‘king of China’. The extent
and effectiveness of these expeditions may sometimes be open to
question, but it is clear that Arab Muslim control was extended and
consolidated in the east under the Umayyads.
11
The spread of Islam among the non-Arab peoples of the conquered
regions is much less explicitly described in our sources. At the outset of
the Umayyad period it is clear that very few of the conquered peoples
had accepted Islam, however we understand this last phrase (
islam
literally means ‘submission’). But by the end of the period, in spite of
the initial attempt by the Arabs to keep themselves apart religiously and
socially from their subjects, and in spite of the refusal by caliphs and
governors to allow the non-Arabs to enjoy the advantages of acceptance
of Islam, large numbers of the subject peoples had come to identify
themselves as Muslims.
The spread of Islam vertically in this way is clearly a complex
process, depending on a variety of factors which were not the same in
every area or among every group of the non-Arab population, and
resulting in divergent rates of progress. Because of the silence or
ambiguity of the sources we are often reduced to speculation about
causes and the spread of the process. For example, we know very little
about the islamisation of Syria and there are only one or two references
in non-Muslim sources which seem to indicate substantial islamisation
of the local peoples during the Umayyad period. On the other hand, the
Muslim sources have many references to the difficulties caused to
Umayyad governors of Iraq and Khurasan when large numbers of non-
Arab non-Muslims attempted to accept Islam by becoming 
mawali
 in
the early decades of the eighth century, but they still leave many
questions unanswered or answered at best ambiguously.
So far as the evidence enables us to judge, and leaving aside the
Berbers whose society and way of life made them likely allies for

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Introduction
9
the Arabs in the wars of conquest, it seems to have been in lower
Iraq, Khurasan and Syria that Islam made the most significant
advances among the subjects peoples in the Umayyad period. In
western Persia and Egypt, on the other hand, it seems that
islamisation in this sense was relatively slow and that it was not until
after the dynasty had been overthrown that Islam became the
religion of the majority in these areas.
12
In spite of our uncertainties, it seems clear that the Umayyad
period was crucial for the process of Islamisation in all its forms.