Mu'awiya I
The governor who won a civil war, moved the capital to Damascus, and made the caliphate hereditary - which is the decision Islam has argued about ever since. Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan came from the Meccan clan that had led the opposition to Muhammad and converted only at the end. He governed Syria for some twenty years under the caliphs Umar and Uthman, and when Uthman, his kinsman, was murdered in 656, he refused allegiance to Ali until the killers were produced. The war that followed turned on the Battle of Siffin in 657, where his troops are said to have raised pages of the Quran on their spears to force arbitration - a manoeuvre that split Ali's own supporters and produced the Kharijites, who eventually killed him. Ali's assassination in 661 left Mu'awiya unopposed, and the year is remembered as the Year of the Community. He ruled from Damascus rather than Medina, kept the Byzantine administrative machinery and its Greek-speaking officials, and paid for loyalty rather than compelling it. The remark attributed to him, that he did not use his sword where his whip would do and did not use his whip where his tongue would do, is the standard illustration of his method. He built the first Arab navy, took Cyprus and Rhodes, and sent fleets against Constantinople itself. Then he named his son Yazid as successor and took oaths for him in advance, converting an elective office into a dynasty. That is the act his critics never forgave. Yazid's accession in 680 produced the confrontation at Karbala, where Ali's son Husayn was killed with his household, and the founding grief of Shia Islam. Mu'awiya died in 680 having ruled for nineteen years without losing a province.
- Lived: 602 CE – 680 CE
- Nationality: Arab
- Roles: ruler, head_of_state
