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

Walid II
Although the deeper causes of the civil war are undoubtedly to be
sought in the political, social and military developments of the
Marwanid period as a whole, the immediate cause is portrayed in the
sources in personal terms reminiscent of the earlier hostility
between Sulayman and al-Hajjaj and its consequences when
Sulayman became caliph. It is reported that the caliph Yazid II, when

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The Third Civil War 
91
he appointed his brother Hisham as heir apparent, had also specified
that his own son al-Walid should be the successor to Hisham. This
last, with the support of some members of the Umayyad family and
other prominent Arabs, had considered overturning the succession
arrangements made by Yazid II, in order to appoint one of his own
sons as his successor. The designated heir apparent, al-Walid b.
Yazid II, was himself a fluent poet with a reputation for loose living
and lack of respect for Islam. After spending a lonely and embittered
youth—he seems to have been eleven years old when Yazid II named
him second in line for the succession in 720—at Hisham’s court in
Rusafa (Rusafat Hisham, possibly to be identified as Qasr al-Hayr
al-Sharqi in the desert north-east of Palmyra and not with the ancient
Rusafa/Sergiopolis near the Euphrates), he later withdrew to a
palace of his own in the Jordanian desert. Here he passed his time
devoid of administrative responsibilities, awaiting the death of his
uncle the caliph and his own succession. The plan to depose him was
never put into effect but the intrigues involved must have soured al-
Walid and marked out those involved as his enemies to be dealt with
when power came to him.
2
When Hisham died in 743 the agents whom al-Walid maintained
at Rusafa immediately sealed up the dead man’s property and
brought the caliphal staff and seal, which we now hear about for the
first time as apparently official caliphal regalia, to the new ruler. Al-
Walid II received the oath of allegiance (the 
bay‘a
) in Damascus, but
then withdrew to his own residence or residences (he is named as the
builder of several) in the desert. The official protestations of joy on
his accession brought to him from the provinces, the apparently
genuine relief and fresh expectations felt at the death of the long-
reigning and unpopular Hisham, and the goodwill acquired when the
new caliph immediately increased the pay of those enrolled in the
diwan,
 were all soon dissipated, however, and there shortly
developed a plot to overthrow him. Three groups in particular were
prominent in the opposition to al-Walid II.
Firstly, his measures against those who had earlier opposed his
succession, including the execution of some prominent Arabs
(although not members of the Umayyad family) and his flogging
and imprisonment of his powerful cousin Sulayman b. Hisham,
naturally increased the hatred of those already opposed to him on
personal grounds. Some members of the Umayyad family, in