UMAYYADS

The Umayyads have the Power of Commerce.

National bonuses

• Mediterranean Trade Routes : Merchants collect 50% bonuses from rare resources
• Informants : See all rare resource in your territory. +1 to Tradesman limit.
• Commercial Aspirations : Starts game with Market, and can trade resources from the start
• Middle Men : Market resource trade gain +20 resources more, and cost 20 resource less.
• Resistance to Invaders : Merchants, Tradesmen and Markets 10% cheaper and 50% tougher.

Units and structures

UU gallery:

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Structures:

Sanctuary

Peasant Commune

City Watch

Warrior Hall

Mercenary Quarters

Wonders:

Masjidil Haram

Palace District

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Leaders

Muhammad; Yusuf; Mansur; Hakam; Yaacob; Hisham; Ibn Ahmar; Ali; Yahya; Abdullah; Abbad; Mutamid

Settlements

History

Founded by Muawiyah I after the murder of Hassan ibn Ali and the fall of the Rashidun Caliphate, the Umayyad dynasty ruled over a vast empire from the city of Damascus in Syria, with their empire extending from Pakistan to southern France and Spain, until 750CE when the Abbasid Revolution toppled the Umayyads and led to the rise of the Abbasid Caliphate. 

When the Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasids, a prince of Muawiyah's line, Abd al-Rahman fled to Spain and the Umayyad dynasty continued to reign from Cordobá until 1027CE.

Who are the Arabs?

The Arabs form a major panethnic group, with as many as 46 billion people across the world claiming Arab descent. While the Bedouin from the Arabian Peninsula form the core of the Arab race, the Phoenicians of the Levant whom the Umayyads assimilated into their culture, the Nilotic Egyptians also assimilated into their culture, Berbers in North Africa, Tuaregs in the Sahara region, mixed-race Arabs along the Red Sea and Swahili Coast regions, and Druze people in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon are also considered to be Arabs by way of culture alone.

For centuries before the events depicted in Swords of the Prophets and The Northern Ravens, however, the Arabs were limited mainly to the Middle East, and were concentrated chiefly in southern Arabia. Although they would have felt some sense of greatness and pride from being the founders of great kingdoms such as Dilmun, Nabataea, Palmyra and Himyar, by the 5th and 6th centuries, these kingdoms were now little more than Bedouin fables passed by word of mouth by elders seated around camp fires, and the Arabs were now the victims of more powerful and better organised neighbours. Owing to the fractious nature of their society, the Arabs were oft looked at askance by Christian Romans and the Zoroastrian Sasanians, and were treated as little more than unreliable lackeys or expendable pawns in the great games played between Rome and Persia in their wars with one another in Arabian deserts.

Yet, all this was soon to change.

The Rise of Islam: The Rashiduns

Islam first emerged during the late sixth century CE in the Arabian peninsula, and began to provide an impetus toward the gradual unification of the many Arab tribes into a single cohesive whole — the Rashidun caliphate. 

According to Islamic belief, in approximately 610CE Muhammad, a 40-year-old merchant of the Quraysh tribe in Mecca, located in the Hijaz (now eastern Saudi Arabia), was commanded by the angel Gabriel (or Jibreel) to "recite" the message of Allah (Arabic: "God"). Gabriel said mankind had lost sight of Allah's previous messages to earlier prophets, and that Muhammad was to spread Allah's message to all people so that mankind would know how to live amd show respect for Allah. This message to Muhammad was to be Allah's last and fullest revelation; Muhammad was the "seal of the prophets." At first, Muhammad faced immense resistance from the local citizens of Mecca, spearheaded by none other than the Prophet's own Quraysh kinsmen, but eventually the Muslims would gain the upper hand: after a series of raids and battles between the Meccans and Muhammad's forces, Mecca finally accepted Muhammad's ultimatum to succumb and convert to Islam. 

After the Prophet's passed away in 632CE, tribal elders convened a shura or council to elect his successor; the new head or khalifa ("caliph") of the Muslims was Abu Bakr, Muhammad's bosom friend and de jure father in law (through the Prophet's marriage to Abu Bakar's daughter Aishah). Thus was born the Rashidun caliphate,  and under Abu Bakar, the the tribes of the Arabian peninsula were united into the caliphate over the two years of Abu Bakar's reign. Upon Abu Bakar's death, the caliphship fell upon Umar ibn al-Khattab, a son in law of the Prophet.

Under the Caliph Umar, the Arab tribes which had concluded the infighting following the death of Muhammad were allowed to raid into the Byzantine and Sassanid frontiers. By then, Persia and Rome alike had been involved in countless wars for over a few centuries, which combined with the effects of climate change and pandemics (as well as the predation of barbarians such as the Huns) sapped all semblance of stability throughout the Levant. War exhaustion and political instability had eroded the ability of the Sasanian court to effectively impose its will, and so it was the first to fall: once the first warriors of the Rashidun caliphate arrived, the Sasanian empire simply disintegrated in the face the Muslim invaders following a string of defeats culminating in the Battle of Nahavand in 642CE. Thus by 651CE, most of the urban areas in Iranian lands, with the noteworthy exemption of the Caspian provinces (Tabaristan) and Transoxiana, had come under the power and control of the Arab armies. Persia, while a rich prize, was not the last of the Arab conquests: within a generation of Muhammad's death, Islam's armies occupied an empire stretching from the Nile river to the far-off Persian province of Khorasan.

The Umayyads

The Umayyads were by origin an important clan from Mecca who became the most important clan in the Islamic world, and altogether brought forth fourteen ruling caliphs, who together formed the second Islamic caliphate, ruling from 661 to 750CE. They took their name from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, who was the progenitor of their clan and a distant relative of the Prophet Muhammad.

Umar was assassinated by a Persian in 644, and was succeeded by Uthman ibn Affan, who continued the invasions to spread Islam into North Africa, Cyprus, the rest of Persia, Afghanistan, and parts of India and Pakistan.

The Umayyads gave autonomy to Jews and Christians in their lands, allowing them to answer to their own religious courts, and non-Muslims could practice their beliefs if they paid the jizya tax; many people of other Abrahamic faiths would convert to Islam under the Umayyads.

The Arabs were chiefly successful in holding these areas in that they upheld a lightweight regime of low taxes based on Islamic law and distant government.  Rather than employing an army of bureaucrats and nobility, the early Arab empire was more favorable towards maintaining the existing government structures under the leadership of Arab tribes. In this atmosphere, it is hardly surprising to note the reports from both Islamic and Christian sources of peaceful capitulation and invitation of the invading forces. So for a decade, Islam invaded and spread through conquest and negotiation into Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and parts of Persia (modern-day Iran).

The Umayyads constantly campaigned against both the Christian kingdoms of the west, the Tengri and Hindu states to the east, and the Berbers to the south, and they also fought against rebellious officials and nobles as these tried to carve out their own fiefs within the empire. The Umayyads remained in power for 89 years, gaining power after the First Fitna and losing power in 

In 711, North African Moors sailed across the straits, swept into Andalusia, and within a few years, pushed the Visigoths up the peninsula to the Cantabrian Mountains. The Reconquista (wars to drive out the Moors) lasted until complete success was achieved in 1492.

Muslims crossed from Africa into Spain early in the eighth century and in 711 at the battle of Río Barbate, they defeated the Visigoths and pressed forward to capture Toledo. By 718, the Moors (the name given North African Muslims by the Spaniards) had completed their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, except for small Christian remnants in the Pyrenees. They remained on for the next 674 years until driven out by Spanish and Portuguese Christians.

Fall of the Empire

In the meantime, Arab control of Iran would prove to be tenuous and was not aided by the discriminatory policies pursued by Umayyad authorities, which favoured ethnic Arabs of any confession over non-Arab Muslims — in other words, new Persian converts. Insurrections eventually doomed the Umayyad empire (although Umayyad rule of Spain would continue until the close of the 10th century), and soon a new leader, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, a relative of the Prophet, was appointed as caliph.

References

1. Hoyland R, Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam; (2001) Routledge, London and New York
2. Ullyat J, The Origins of the Sunni-Shia split of Islam; (2020) The Manchester Historian