Al-Walid I

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Al-Walid I bigraphy, stories - Umayyad caliph

Al-Walid I : biography

668 – 715

The Arab Empire in its greatest extent. Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik () or Al-Walid I (668 – 23 February 715) was an Umayyad caliph who ruled from 705 to his death in 715. His reign saw the greatest expansion of the Caliphate, as successful campaigns were undertaken in Transoxiana, Sind, Hispania and against the Byzantines.

Sources

  • Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, v. 23 The Zenith of the Marwanid House, transl. Martin Hinds, Suny, Albany, 1990

Biography

He was born to Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and his wife who was from the central Arabian region Najd. Walid continued the expansion of the Islamic empire that was sparked by his father, and was an effective ruler. His father Abd al-Malik had taken the oath of allegiance for Walid during his lifetime.Muhammad and conquests of Islam by Francesco Gabreili. As such the succession of Walid was not contested. His reign was marked by endless successions of conquests east and west, and historians consider his reign as the apex of Islamic power.

Conquests

Walid continued the Islamic conquests and took the early Islamic empire to its farthest extents. Then, in 711, Muslim armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar(Named After Tariq Ibn Zayd) and began to conquer the Iberian Peninsula using North African Berber armies. By 716, the Visigoths of Iberia had been defeated and Iberia was under Muslim control. In the east, Islamic armies made it as far as the Indus River in 712—under Walid, the Caliphate stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to India. Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf continued to play a crucial role in the organization and selection of military commanders in the East, serving as virtual viceroy there.

Walid paid great attention to the expansion of an organized military, building the strongest navy in the Umayyad era, it was this tactic that supported the ultimate expansion to Iberia. His reign is considered as the apex of Islamic power.

Walid also began the first great building projects of Islam, the most famous of which is the mosque at Damascus. The long history of Islamic architecture really begins with Walid. This is also the period, however, in which Islamic court culture begins to germinate. With the caliph as a patron, artists and writers begin to develop a new, partly secular culture based on Islamic ideas.

It was also Walid that coupled Islamicization with Arabicization. Conversion was not forced on conquered peoples; however, since non-believers had to pay an extra tax, many people did convert for religious and non-religious reasons. This created several problems, particularly since Islam was so closely connected with being Arab. Being Arab, of course, was more than an ethnic identity, it was a tribal identity based on kinship and descent. As more and more Muslims were non-Arabs, the status of Arabs and their culture became threatened. In particular, large numbers of Coptic-speaking (Egypt) and Persian-speaking Muslims threatened the primacy of the very language that Islam is based on. In part to alleviate that threat, Walid instituted Arabic as the only official language of the empire. He decreed that all administration was to be done only in Arabic. It was this move that cemented the primacy of Arabic language and culture in the Islamic world.

Like his father, Walid continued to allow Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf free rein, and his trust in Hajjaj paid off with the successful conquests of Transoxiana and Sindh. Musa ibn Nusayr and his retainer Tariq ibn Ziyad conquered Al-Andalus. Hajjaj was responsible for picking the generals who led the successful eastern campaigns, and was well known from his own successful campaign against Ibn Zubayr during the reign of Walid’s father. Others, such as Walid’s brother Salamah, advanced against the Byzantines and into Adharbayjan.

Valladolid is an industrial city and it is a municipality in north-central Spain, upon the Rio Pisuerga and within the Ribera del Duero region. It is the capital of the province of Valladolid and of the autonomous community of Castile and León, therefore is part of the historical region of Castile. The name "Valladolid" is linked with the Arabic name for the city بلد الوليد meaning The City of Al- Walid,but a more likely suggestion is a conjunction of the Latin: VALLIS, "Valley", and Celtic: TOLITUM, "place of confluence of waters",and indeed their inhabitants are still called by the archaic form closer to its possible original name,"Vallisoletanian" .