At a glance
Era 2- Dates
- Ruled 65-86 AH (685-705 CE)
- Who
- Umayyad caliph who reunited the caliphate and made Arabic the language of the state
- Era
- The Umayyads
ProfileAbd al-Malik ibn Marwan
Abd al-Malik came to the throne in 685, in the middle of the second civil war, when rival claimants held much of the Muslim world. Over the next seven years he won it back and reunited the caliphate under Damascus.
He then gave the state a clearer Islamic and Arab identity. Government records, which had been kept in Greek and Persian, were changed to Arabic. Around 696 he issued new gold and silver coins bearing verses of the Quran instead of images, which became the model for Islamic coinage for centuries. In Jerusalem he built the Dome of the Rock, completed around 691, over the rock on the Noble Sanctuary. With its golden dome and long Arabic inscriptions, it is one of the oldest surviving Islamic monuments.
Four of his sons ruled after him, among them al-Walid I, under whom the armies reached Iberia and Sindh.
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SourcesSources for this profile
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