(7) ARAB – UMAYYAD CALIPHATE (661-750 / 756-1031)

 

The Arab conquests were a nigh-unstoppable historical explosion, once previously divided tribes in a historical backwater had been united under Mohammed – conquering one of history’s largest pre-modern empires (indeed the seventh or eighth largest in all history) in about a century or so, a blitzkrieg by horse, sail…and camel!

Mohammed had essentially conquered the Arabian peninsula, but his death left his successors – the three great Arab caliphates – only at the start of extending his empire to even wider conquests.

Now it might be said that I am somewhat inconsistent between empires in my entries, as I classify some, such as the Arab caliphates, as separate empires by different dynasties, while others I essentially classify as single empires despite their dynastic succession or fragmentation.

And the answer is, as usual, that I make my own rules and break them anyway – some empires have historical unity to them, if only in culture or theme, that appeals to me, while the different Arab caliphates appeal to me as distinct polities.

The Rashadun Caliphate, immediate successors to Mohammed, did most of the heavy lifting of empire as they broke out of the Arabian peninsula. Two formidable empires blocked their path, the Persian Empire and the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, but the Arabs conquered the former and routed the latter back to Anatolia.

However, it was under their successors, the Umayyad Caliphate, that Arab empire reached its greatest extent, westwards from the north African shore to Europe itself – conquering Spain (well, not quite all, in a manner similar to the famous caveat to the Roman conquest of Gaul in Asterix comics) and famously invading France before being turned back at Tours by Charles Martel. Eastwards, they also extended beyond Persia through central Asia to the fringes of India and China – the latter of which presented even the Tang Empire some difficulty resisting their advance.

The Umayyads were mostly overthrown by the third Arab caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, who then presided over what is often regarded as the Golden Age of Islam from their capital in Baghdad – but for all that became increasingly vestigial in the empire they had inherited from the Umayyads as it fragmented into separate dynasties. The Abbasids did revive their political authority somewhat in Mesopotamia and Persia – only to be crushed along with Baghdad by the Mongols, although they continued to limp along in even more vestigial form in Egypt until the Ottomans replaced them as caliphate. Ha! That’s what you get for messing with my boys, the Umayyads!

Nor were the Umayyads done with history just yet – the Umayyads managed to pull a Taiwan, with an Umayyad prince in the role of Chiang Kai-Shek, fleeing into exile across the Mediterranean to Spain and continuing the Caliphate as the Emirate of Cordoba independent from the Abbasids, even with their own rival golden age of Islam in the fabled Al Andalus of Spain.

The Umayyads endured for almost three centuries before finally falling again in 1031 – but true to karmic form, once again cursed their successors with fragmentation, as Islamic Spain broke up into minor states and principalities, weakening it to Christian reconquest.

 

 

DECLINE AND FALL

 

You have to rank the Ummayads high for tenacity in their decline and fall – even in defeat by the Abbasid Revolution, they pulled a Taiwan to rule in Spain, partying it up in Ibiza like an English tourist .

 

THE UMAYYAD CALIPHATE NEVER FELL

 

Well it obviously did, although perhaps not in its enduring influence in Spain, and even more so in the dreams of caliphate by Islamic political extremists in the twenty-first century.

 

METEORIC RISE

 

The Arab caliphates and their conquests – the early Islamic conquests as they are sometimes called – were one of the most meteoric rises in history, ultimately conquering one of the world’s largest empires in a little over a century.

That conquest sees it ranked at least in seventh or eighth place for largest empires in history with about 11 million square kilometers, but I’ve seen a greater extent asserted for the height of the Umayyad Caliphate of 13-15 million square kilometers, which would potentially rank it as high as fourth place. Also, while 622-750 AD is generally given as the period of early Islamic conquests, those conquests were effectively done by 720 AD, with only minor fluctuation in the last thirty years.

Accordingly, the empire of the Arab caliphates was won in not just one but three meteoric rises. The first was by Muhammad himself, essentially uniting the area of the Arabian Peninsula or about three million square kilometers, albeit thinly populated desert, in the ten years or so from 622 AD to 632 AD. His successors, the Rashidun Caliphate, essentially doubled that by conquests from the East Roman Empire and Persian Empire in next twenty to thirty years from 632 AD.

And this entry, the Umayyad Caliphate more than doubled that again, essentially in the thirty years from 690 AD to 720 AD.

 

THE SUN NEVER SETS

 

One of the top 10 largest empires in history – although the sun literally set on them, they can be ranked among the world empires of history.

 

EVIL EMPIRE

 

To be honest, I don’t know much about the brutality of Arab conquests or repression, although there seem to be a number of revolts against them, not least the Abbasid revolution itself.

But they do have to rank highly in evil empire stakes for one thing – the Arab slave trade, which was of a scale at least equal to, if not exceeding, the more notorious Atlantic slave trade by European empires – not as intense perhaps, but of a longer duration. As in only abolished (when it was formally abolished) in the twentieth century.