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

Appendix 2 
127
culture heroes in view of its role in the creation of the first great
Arab empire, but Muslim tradition, as we have seen, presents a
generally hostile picture of the Umayyads and this could lead to
problems if one stresses the Muslim, rather than Arab, character of
one’s own identity. This general and perhaps only latent tension
might then become sharper and more real if, on the one hand, one
holds a specifically Shi‘ite interpretation of Muslim history, since
the Shi‘ite tradition is more hostile than the Sunni towards the
Umayyads, or, on the other hand, one holds to a Syrian rather than
general Arab form of nationalism.
It was in the years before the Second World War that debate about
the role of the Umayyads and their place in Arab and Islamic history
became particularly intense. Interestingly, support for the dynasty
came from a reform movement within Sunni Islam known as the
Salafiyya, and not merely from the partisans of Arab or Syrian
nationalism. Probably the Salafiyya was influenced by the same
concern for continuity within Sunni Islam and the same awareness
of the position of Mu‘awiya and the other Umayyads in the polemic
between Sunnis and Shi‘ites as had moderated the anti-Umayyad
trend in earlier Muslim tradition.
The proponents of the Umayyads used some of the same
arguments as the European scholars: insistence on a proper
understanding of the religious outlook inherent in the source
material, awareness of the need to understand the difficult historical
circumstances in which the Umayyads found themselves, and
selection and emphasis of the material favourable to them in Muslim
tradition.
Potential for hostility between Sunnis and Shi‘ites on the issue
was particularly strong in Iraq where a large Shi‘ite community has
from time to time felt itself oppressed by the Sunnis in whose hands
political power has tended to remain. Already in the 1920s there
were public disturbances when it was felt that the Sunnis, anxious to
promote the ideals of Arab nationalism, fostered too favourable an
attitude to the Umayyads in the material used in schools.
Since the Second World War the issue has, perhaps, not been so
prominent, but it is easy to see a number of ways in which Umayyad
history can be made to relate to contemporary issues. The problem
of Israel and Palestine, for example, has fostered an interest in
Umayyad policies in the region and especially in the importance of
Jerusalem for the Umayyads. Again, hostility between Iraq and
Syria may be behind some of the more negative judgments on the

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128
Appendix 2
Umayyads made by some Iraqis, aware that the sources tend to
portray Umayyad rule as Syrian domination over the Muslim centres
of Iraq.
The question of modern Arab and Muslim attitudes to the
Umayyads has been studied in detail by Werner Ende in his
Arabische Nation und islamische Geschichte
.
 

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129
Bibliographical Postscript to the
Second Edition
 
Since the text of the first edition of this work was completed in 1985
many books and articles on various topics relevant to the history of the
Umayyad dynasty of caliphs have appeared. Some of them have
modified or deepened our knowledge of particular aspects of Umayyad
history, and the republication of 
The First Dynasty of Islam
 offers a
welcome opportunity to bring them to the attention of readers. As in the
original bibliography, emphasis will be given to works in English.
As they will be referred to frequently, it is best to begin with details
of two continuing series of conferences which have produced
significant publications relevant to the period of the Umayyads.
First, the 
Late Antiquity and Early Islam (LAEI)
 research project
initiated by Averil Cameron and Lawrence I.Conrad, joined at an early
stage by Geoffrey King, has organized a number of workshops
concerned with aspects of the transition from the pre-Islamic to the
Islamic world. The proceedings of these workshops are being published
by the Darwin Press of Princeton, New Jersey, and there is an associated
series of monographs and volumes of collected articles, 
Studies in Late
Antiquity and Early Islam,
 also published by Darwin.
Secondly, the University of Jordan in Amman has organized a series
of conferences devoted to the history of Syria in various periods. The
Umayyad period was the topic of the symposium held in 1987 and some
of the papers presented there were subsequently published by M.Adnan
Bakhit and Robert Schick (eds.), 
The Fourth International Conference
on the History of Bilad al-Sham during the Umayyad Period,
 2 vols.,
Amman 1989. Volume I contains papers in Arabic, volume II those in
English.