Al-Walid I

Al-Walid was born in Medina in c. 674.[2] His father, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, hailed from the Umayyad clan of the Quraysh tribe.[2] Al-Walid was born during the rule of Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), the founder and first caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate.[2] While Mu'awiya belonged to the Sufyanid branch of the clan, resident in Syria, al-Walid's family was part of the larger Abu al-As line in the Hejaz (western Arabia, where Mecca and Medina are located). Al-Walid's mother was Wallada bint al-Abbas ibn al-Jaz, a descendant of Zuhayr ibn Jadhima, the prominent 6th-century chief of the Banu Abs tribe.[2][3] In 684, after Umayyad rule collapsed amid the Second Muslim Civil War, the Umayyads of the Hejaz were expelled by a rival claimant to the caliphate, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr. They relocated to Syria, where al-Walid's grandfather, the elder statesman Marwan I, was recognized as caliph by pro-Umayyad Arab tribes in the province, including the powerful Banu Kalb. With the tribes' support, he gradually restored the dynasty's rule in Syria and Egypt.[4] Abd al-Malik succeeded Marwan and conquered the rest of the Caliphate, namely Iraq, with its eastern dependencies, and Arabia.[5] With the key assistance of his viceroy of Iraq, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, Abd al-Malik instituted several centralization measures, which consolidated Umayyad territorial gains.[6]

Qasr Burqu', a fortified outpost in the Syrian Desert built or expanded by al-Walid while he was still a prince in 700/01 CE

The war with the Byzantine Empire, which dated to the Muslim conquest of Syria in the 630s, resumed in 692 after the collapse of the truce that had been reached three years earlier. Annual campaigns were thereafter launched by the Umayyads in the Arab–Byzantine frontier zone and beyond. During his father's caliphate, al-Walid led the campaigns in 695, 696, 697 and 698.[7] In his summer 696 campaign, he raided the area between Malatya (Melitene) and al-Massisa (Mopsuestia), while in the following year, he targeted a place known in Arabic sources as "Atmar", located at some point north of Malatya.[8] He also led the annual Hajj pilgrim caravan to Mecca in 698.[7]

In 700 or 701, al-Walid patronized the construction or expansion of Qasr Burqu', a fortified Syrian Desert outpost connecting Palmyra in the north with the Azraq oasis and Wadi Sirhan basin in the south, ultimately leading to Mecca and Medina.[9] His patronage is attested by an inscription describing him as "the emir al-Walid, son of the commander of the faithful".[10] According to the historian Jere L. Bacharach, al-Walid built the nearby site of Jabal Says, likely as a Bedouin summer encampment between his base of operations in al-Qaryatayn and Qasr Burqu'.[11] Bacharach speculates that al-Walid used the sites, located in the territory of Arab tribes, such as the Banu Kalb, to reaffirm their loyalty, which had been critical to the Umayyads during the civil war.[12]

Silver Dirham minted during the reign of al-Walid I in Istakhr

Toward the end of his reign, Abd al-Malik, supported by al-Hajjaj, attempted to nominate al-Walid as his successor, abrogating the arrangement set by Marwan whereby Abd al-Malik's brother, the governor of Egypt, Abd al-Aziz, was slated to succeed.[13][14] Though the latter refused to step down from the line of succession, he died in 704 or early 705, removing the principal obstacle to al-Walid's nomination. After the death of Abd al-Malik on 9 October 705, al-Walid acceded.[2][13] Al-Walid's reign largely served as a continuation of his father's policies of centralization and expansion.[2][15] Unlike his father, he was heavily dependent on al-Hajjaj and allowed him free rein over the eastern half of the Caliphate.[14] Moreover, al-Hajjaj strongly influenced al-Walid's internal decision-making, with officials often being installed and dismissed upon the viceroy's direction.[14] Al-Hajjaj's prominence was such that he is discussed more frequently in the medieval Muslim sources than al-Walid or Abd al-Malik, and his time in office (694–714) is a hallmark of the continuity between the two reigns.[13]

The 9th-century historian al-Ya'qubi describes al-Walid's physical appearance as "tall and swarthy", "snub-nosed ... with a touch of gray [sic] at the tip of his beard" and that he "spoke ungrammatically".[16] To his father's chagrin, al-Walid abandoned speaking the classical Arabic in which the Qur'an was written, yet he insisted that everyone in his company have knowledge of the Qur'an.[17] He was also known to have embraced the formal trappings of monarchy, in a manner unprecedented among earlier caliphs.[18]

Territorial expansion

A map depicting growth of the caliphate. The area highlighted in green depicts the expansion of its territory, in the Maghreb, Hispania, Sindh and Transoxiana, during al-Walid's reign

Under al-Walid, the armies of the Caliphate "received a fresh impulse" and a "period of great conquests" began, according to the historian Julius Wellhausen.[18] During the second half of his reign, the Umayyads reached their furthest territorial extent.[15]

Expansion from the eastern frontiers was overseen by al-Hajjaj from Iraq.[2] His lieutenant governor of Khurasan, Qutayba ibn Muslim, launched numerous campaigns against Transoxiana (Central Asia), which had been a largely impenetrable region for earlier Muslim armies, between 705 and 715.[2] Qutayba gained the surrender of Bukhara in 706–709, Khwarazm and Samarkand in 711–712, and Farghana in 713.[2] In contrast to most other Muslim conquests, he did not settle Arab Muslims in Transoxiana; instead, he secured Umayyad suzerainty through tributary alliances with local rulers, whose power remained intact.[19] The exceptions to this policy were the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, which were each assigned Arab garrisons and tax administrators, had their Zoroastrian houses of worship razed and in the case of Samarkand, fitted with a mosque.[20] As a long-term result, both cities developed as future centers of Islamic and Arabic learning.[21] From 708 or 709, al-Hajjaj's nephew, Muhammad ibn Qasim, conquered Sind, the northwestern region of South Asia.[14][22]

In the west, al-Walid's governor in Ifriqiya (central North Africa), Musa ibn Nusayr, a holdover from Abd al-Malik's reign, had subjugated the Berbers of the Hawwara, Zenata and Kutama confederations and proceeded with his advance toward the Maghreb (western North Africa).[23] In 708 or 709, he conquered Tangier and Sus, in the far north and south of modern-day Morocco.[23][24] Musa's Berber mawla (freedman; pl. mawali), Tariq ibn Ziyad, invaded the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) in 711, and was reinforced by an army led by Musa in the following year.[15][23] By 716, a year after al-Walid's death, Hispania had been largely conquered.[15] The massive war spoils netted by the conquests of Transoxiana, Sind and Hispania were comparable to the amounts accrued in the early Muslim conquests during the reign of Caliph Umar (r. 634–644).[25]

Closer to the Umayyad seat of power in Syria, al-Walid appointed his half-brother Maslama governor of the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) and charged him with raiding the frontier zone with Byzantium.[2] Though Maslama established a strong power base in his province, he achieved few territorial gains.[2] After a lengthy siege, the Byzantine fortress of Tyana was captured in c. 708.[lower-alpha 1] Al-Walid entrusted most of Syria's military districts to his sons;[27][28] al-Abbas was assigned to Homs and fought reputably in the campaigns against Byzantium alongside Maslama, while Abd al-Aziz, who also took part in the anti-Byzantine war effort, and Umar were appointed to Damascus and Jordan, respectively.[27] Al-Walid did not participate in the campaigns and is reported to have left Syria only once as caliph, when he led the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 710.[2]

Patronage of great mosques

Al-Walid is credited with the construction or expansion of numerous great mosques throughout the Caliphate, including (1) the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus (2) the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem; and (3) the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. The mosques in Jerusalem and Medina have been substantially altered since al-Walid's era, while the Umayyad Mosque has maintained much of its original form.

The great mosque founded by al-Walid in Damascus, later known as the Umayyad Mosque, was the greatest architectural achievement of his rule. Under his predecessors, Muslim residents had worshipped in a small musalla (Muslim prayer room) attached to the 4th-century cathedral of John the Baptist.[43][44] By al-Walid's reign, the musalla could not cope with the fast-growing Muslim community and no sufficient free spaces were available elsewhere in the urban space of Damascus for a large congregational mosque.[43] In 705, al-Walid had the church converted into a mosque, compensating local Christians with other properties in the city.[43][44]

Most of the structure was demolished, with the exceptions of the exterior walls and corner towers, which were thenceforth covered by marble inlays and mosaics.[45][44] Al-Walid's architects replaced the demolished space with a large prayer hall and a courtyard bordered on all sides by a closed portico with double arcades.[45] A large cupola was installed at the center of the prayer hall and a high minaret was erected on the mosque's northern wall.[45] The mosque was completed in 711 and Blankinship notes that the field army of Damascus, numbering some 45,000 soldiers, were taxed a quarter of their salaries for nine years to pay for its construction.[25][45] The scale and grandeur of the great mosque made it a "symbol of the political supremacy and moral prestige of Islam", according to historian Nikita Elisséeff.[45] Noting al-Walid's awareness of architecture's propaganda value, historian Robert Hillenbrand calls the Damascus mosque a "victory monument" intended as a "visible statement of Muslim supremacy and permanence".[46] The mosque has maintained its original form until the present day.[2]

In Jerusalem, al-Walid continued his father's works on the Temple Mount.[28] A number of medieval Muslim accounts credit the construction of the Jami Al-Aqsa to al-Walid, while others credit his father.[28] It is likely that the unfinished administrative and residential structures that were built opposite the southern and eastern walls of the Temple Mount, next to the mosque, date to the era of al-Walid, who died before they could be completed and were not finished by his successors.[47]

In 706 or 707, al-Walid instructed Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz to significantly enlarge the Prophet's Mosque in Medina.[48][49] Its redevelopment entailed the demolition of the living quarters of Muhammad's wives and the expansion of the structure to incorporate the graves of Muhammad and the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr (r. 632–634) and Umar.[2][50][51] The vocal opposition to the demolition of Muhammad's home from local religious circles was dismissed by al-Walid.[48] An ornate enclosure was built around the graves and fitted with a concave mihrab (prayer niche), four minarets and a pentagonal-shaped entrance.[51] Al-Walid lavished large sums for the mosque's reconstruction and supplied Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz with mosaics and Greek and Coptic craftsmen.[50] According to Hillenbrand, the building of a large scale mosque in Medina, the original center of the Caliphate, was an "acknowledgement" by al-Walid of "his own roots and those of Islam itself" and possibly an attempt to appease Medinese resentment at the loss of their city's political importance to Syria under the Umayyads.[48] Other mosques that al-Walid is credited for expanding in the Hejaz include the Sanctuary Mosque around the Ka'aba in Mecca and the mosque of Ta'if.[25]

Al-Walid died of an illness in Dayr Murran, an Umayyad winter estate on the outskirts of Damascus,[52] on 23 February 715,[2][53] about one year after al-Hajjaj's death.[22][lower-alpha 2] He was buried in Damascus at the cemetery of Bab al-Saghir or Bab al-Faradis and Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz led the funeral prayers.[55][54]

Al-Walid unsuccessfully attempted to nominate his son Abd al-Aziz as his successor, voiding the arrangements set by his father, in which Sulayman was to accede after al-Walid.[2] Relations between the two brothers had become strained.[2] Sulayman acceded and dismissed nearly all of al-Walid's governors. Although he maintained the militarist policies of al-Walid and Abd al-Malik, expansion of the caliphate largely ground to a halt under Sulayman (r. 715–717).[56] Two of al-Walid's sons, Yazid III and Ibrahim, successively served as caliphs for less than a year in 744.[57]

By virtue of the conquests of Hispania, Sind and Transoxiana during his reign, his patronage of the great mosques of Damascus and Medina, and his charitable works, al-Walid's Syrian contemporaries viewed him as "the worthiest of their caliphs", according to the 9th-century historian Umar ibn Shabba.[55] Several panegyrics were dedicated to al-Walid and his sons by al-Farazdaq, his official court poet.[58] The latter's contemporary, Jarir, lamented the caliph's death: "O eye, weep copious tears aroused by remembrance; after today there is no point in your tears being stored."[59] The Christian poet al-Akhtal considers al-Walid to be "the caliph of God through whose sunna rain is sought".[1]

According to Hawting, the reigns of al-Walid and Abd al-Malik, tied together by al-Hajjaj, represented in "some ways the high point of Umayyad power, witnessing significant territorial advances both in the east and the west and the emergence of a more marked Arabic and Islamic character in the state's public face".[13] Domestically it was generally a period of peace and prosperity.[2][15] Kennedy asserts that al-Walid's reign was "remarkably successful and represents, perhaps, the zenith of Umayyad power", though his direct role in these successes is unclear and his primary accomplishment may have been maintaining the equilibrium between the rival factions of the Umayyad family and military.[2]

Al-Walid was survived by several sons: al-Ya'qubi names sixteen,[60] while the 10th-century historian al-Tabari names nineteen.[55] From his wife Umm al-Banin, the daughter of his uncle Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan, he had his sons Abd al-Aziz and Muhammad.[55] From another Umayyad wife, Umm Abd Allah bint Abd Allah ibn Amr, a great-granddaughter of Caliph Uthman (r. 644–656), he had his son Abd al-Rahman.[61] He was married to another descendant of Uthman, Umm Abd Allah's cousin Izza bint Abd al-Aziz.[62][lower-alpha 3] Al-Walid was also married to a woman of the Banu Fazara tribe, with whom he had his son Abu Ubayda.[55]

Al-Abbas, al-Walid's eldest son, was born to a Greek concubine.[63] Yazid III's mother, Shah-i Afrid or Shahfirand, was a daughter of the last Sasanian king, Peroz III, and a concubine of al-Walid given to him by al-Hajjaj.[64][65] Ibrahim's mother was a concubine named Su'ar or Budayra.[66] Among his other sons were Bishr, Masrur, Umar, Rawh, Khalid, Tammam, Mubashshir, Yahya and Sadaqa, none of whose mothers are known.[55][60] Al-Ya'qubi alone names Jurayy,[60] and al-Tabari alone names Mansur, Anbasa and Marwan.[55]

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