Umayyad Caliphate

The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the Islamic caliphates, ruled by the Umayyad dynasty from Damascus. It came to power after the first civil war in the Muslim community, when Muawiya became caliph, and it expanded Muslim rule across North Africa, into the Iberian Peninsula and eastwards into Central Asia and the Indus valley. Arabic became the language of administration, and Arab coinage replaced older Byzantine and Persian currencies. The caliphs built monuments such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque of Damascus. Resentment among non-Arab converts and rival groups eventually led to the Abbasid Revolution, which overthrew the dynasty, though one of its members founded a state in al-Andalus.

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