At a glance
Era 2- Dates
- Ruled 127-132 AH (744-750 CE)
- Who
- Frontier general who became the last caliph of the Umayyad dynasty
- Era
- The Umayyads
ProfileMarwan II
Marwan ibn Muhammad was a grandson of the caliph Marwan I and a first cousin of Hisham, the caliph under whom he rose. He made his name far from Damascus. Hisham sent him to govern Armenia and Azerbaijan, and for years he led the armies of the Caucasus frontier against the Khazars and the princes of Georgia. He reorganised his troops into smaller, more mobile units, and his soldiers knew him as a tireless commander.
After Hisham died in 743 the dynasty began to tear itself apart. Al-Walid II was killed by his own relatives in 744, and his successors died or were pushed aside within months. Marwan marched on Syria with his frontier army and took the caliphate at the end of 744. He moved his court to Harran, in northern Mesopotamia, close to the troops he trusted, and spent most of his reign putting down revolts in Syria, Iraq and Arabia.
Meanwhile, in distant Khurasan, Abu Muslim raised the black banners of the Abbasid movement in 747. Its army swept west and took Kufa. In January 750 Marwan met it beside the Great Zab river in northern Iraq and was routed. He fled through Syria to Egypt, still hoping to raise a new army, but he was caught and killed at Busir in August 750.
Almost ninety years of Umayyad rule ended with him. One young prince of the family escaped to al-Andalus and founded a new Umayyad state there.
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