In the pre-Islamic period, the Umayyads were a prominent clan of the Meccan tribe of Quraysh, descended from Umayya ibn Abd Shams.
[5] A Qurayshite leader, Abd Manaf ibn Qusayy, who based on his place in the genealogical tradition would have lived in the late 5th century, was charged with the maintenance and protection of the Kaʿba and its pilgrims.
[8] This position was likely an occasional political post whose holder oversaw the direction of Mecca's military affairs in times of war, instead of an actual field command.
[8] The historian Giorgio Levi Della Vida suggests that information in the early Arabic sources about Umayya, as with all the ancient progenitors of the tribes of Arabia, "be accepted with caution", but "that too great skepticism with regard to tradition would be as ill-advised as absolute faith in its statements".
[7] Della Vida asserts that since the Umayyads who appear at the beginning of Islamic history in the early 7th century were no later than third-generation descendants of Umayya, the latter's existence is highly plausible.
To secure these routes, they developed economic and military alliances with the nomadic Arab tribes that controlled the northern and central Arabian desert expanses, gaining them a degree of political power in Arabia.
[14] An Umayyad chief, Abu Sufyan, thereafter became the leader of the Meccan army that fought the Muslims under Muhammad at the battles of Uhud and the Trench.
[13] Abu Sufyan and his sons, along with most of the Umayyads, embraced Islam toward the end of Muhammad's life, following the Muslim conquest of Mecca.
[13] To secure the loyalty of prominent Umayyad leaders, including Abu Sufyan, Muhammad offered them gifts and positions of importance in the nascent Muslim state.
[16] Muhammad's death in 632 created a succession crisis, while nomadic tribes throughout Arabia that had embraced Islam defected from Medina's authority.
[17] Abu Bakr, one of Muhammad's oldest friends and an early convert to Islam, was elected caliph (paramount political and religious leader of the Muslim community).
[21] When Umar's overall commander over the province, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah, died in 639, he appointed Yazid governor of the Damascus, Palestine and Jordan districts of Syria.
[22] Umar's exceptional treatment of Abu Sufyan's sons may have stemmed from his respect for the family, their burgeoning alliance with the powerful Banu Kalb tribe as a counterweight to the aristocratic Himyarite tribes who dominated the Homs district, or the lack of a suitable candidate amid the plague of Amwas, which had already killed Abu Ubayda and Yazid.
[22] Caliph Umar died in 644 and was succeeded by Uthman ibn Affan, a wealthy Umayyad merchant, early convert to Islam, and son-in-law and close companion of Muhammad.
[25] Nonetheless, as a result of Uthman's policies, the Umayyads regained a measure of the power they had lost after the Muslim conquest of Mecca.
[25] The assassination of Uthman in 656 became a rallying cry for the Qurayshite opposition to his successor, Muhammad's cousin and son in-law Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib of the Banu Hashim.
[26] Initially, he refrained from openly claiming the caliphate, focusing instead on undermining Ali's authority and consolidating his position in Syria, all in the name of avenging Uthman's death.
[29] As Ali was bogged down combating his former partisans, who became known as the Kharijites, Mu'awiya was recognized as caliph by his core supporters, the Syrian Arab tribes, in 659 or 660.
[31] Based on the accounts of the traditional Muslim sources, Hawting writes that: ... the Umayyads, leading representatives of those who had opposed the Prophet [Muhammad] until the latest possible moment, had within thirty years of his death reestablished their position to the extent that they were now at the head of the community which he had founded.
They relocated to Palmyra or Damascus, where Yazid's son and successor, Mu'awiya II, ruled at a time when most provinces of the Caliphate discarded Umayyad authority.
[43] After Mu'awiya II died in 684, the junds of Palestine, Homs and Qinnasrin recognized Ibn al-Zubayr, while loyalist tribes in Damascus and Jordan scrambled to nominate an Umayyad as caliph.
The Banu Kalb, lynchpins of Sufyanid rule, nominated Yazid's surviving sons Khalid and Abd Allah, but they were considered young and inexperienced by most of the other loyalist tribes.
Per the arrangement agreed by the tribes, Marwan would be succeeded by Khalid, followed by Amr al-Ashdaq, the son of Sa'id ibn al-As.
[53] Abd al-Malik's court in Damascus was filled with far more Umayyads than under his Sufyanid predecessors, a result of the clan's exile to the city from Medina.
[54] He maintained close ties with the Sufyanids through marital relations and official appointments, such as according Yazid's son Khalid a prominent role in the court and army and wedding to him his daughter A'isha.
He kept Sulayman as governor of Palestine, while appointing his sons to the other junds of Syria, with Abd al-Aziz over Damascus, al-Abbas over Homs and Umar over Jordan, as well as giving them command roles in the frontier wars against the Byzantines in Anatolia.
[61] He was quoted by al-Maqqari as stating, "among the many [favors] bestowed on us by the Almighty ... is his allowing us to collect in this country our kindred and relatives, and enabling us to give them a share in this empire".
However, a number of them settled in Egypt and Iran, where one of them, Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, authored the famous source of Arab history, the Kitab al-Aghani, in the 10th century.