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Rashidun Caliphate
Main articles: Rashidun and Rashidun Caliphate
Further information: Military campaigns under Caliph Uthman and Political aspects of Islam
Empire of the Rāshidūn Caliphate at its peak under the third rāshidūn caliph ʿUthmān (654 CE)
Strongholds of the Rāshidūn Caliphate
After the death of Muhammad, his community needed to appoint a new leader, giving rise to the title of caliph (Arabic: خَليفة, romanized: khalīfa, lit. 'successor').[2][6][9] Thus, the subsequent Islamic empires were known as "caliphates",[2][6][46] and a series of four caliphs governed the early Islamic empire: Abū Bakr (632–634), ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (Umar І, 634–644), ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (644–656), and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (656–661). These leaders are known as the rāshidūn ("rightly-guided") caliphs in Sunnī Islam.[6] They oversaw the initial phase of the early Muslim conquests, advancing through Persia, the Levant, Egypt, and North Africa.[6]
Alongside the growth of the Umayyad Caliphate, the major political development within early Islam in this period was the sectarian split and political divide between Kharijite, Sunnī, and Shīʿa Muslims; this had its roots in a dispute over the succession for the role of caliph.[2][10] Sunnīs believed the caliph was elective and any Muslim from the Arab clan of Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad, might serve as one.[11] Shīʿītes, on the other hand, believed the title of caliph should be hereditary in the bloodline of Muhammad, and thus all the caliphs, with the exceptions of Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and his firstborn son Ḥasan, were actually illegitimate usurpers.[11] However, the Sunnī sect emerged as triumphant in most regions of the Muslim world, with the exceptions of Iran and Oman. Muhammad's closest companions (ṣaḥāba), the four "rightly-guided" caliphs who succeeded him, continued to expand the Islamic empire to encompass Jerusalem, Ctesiphon, and Damascus, and sending Arab Muslim armies as far as the Sindh region.[47] The early Islamic empire stretched from al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) to the Punjab region under the reign of the Umayyad dynasty.
After Muhammad's death, Abū Bakr, one of his closest associates, was chosen as the first caliph ("successor"). Although the office of caliph retained an aura of religious authority, it laid no claim to prophecy.[6][48] A number of tribal Arab leaders refused to extend the agreements made with Muhammad to Abū Bakr, ceasing payments of the alms levy and in some cases claiming to be prophets in their own right.[48] Abū Bakr asserted his authority in a successful military campaign known as the Ridda wars, whose momentum was carried into the lands of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires.[49] By the end of the reign of the second caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, the Arab Muslim armies, whose battle-hardened ranks were now swelled by the defeated rebels[50] and former imperial auxiliary troops,[51] invaded the eastern Byzantine provinces of Syria and Egypt, while the Sasanids lost their western territories, with the rest of Persia to follow soon afterwards.[48]
ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb improved the administration of the fledgling Islamic empire, ordering improvement of irrigation networks, and playing a role in foundation of cities like Basra. To be close to the poor, he lived in a simple mud hut without doors and walked the streets every evening. After consulting with the poor, ʿUmar established the Bayt al-mal,[52][53][54] a welfare institution for the Muslim and Non-Muslim poor, needy, elderly, orphans, widows, and the disabled. The Bayt al-mal ran for hundreds of years under the Rāshidūn Caliphate in the 7th century CE and continued through the Umayyad period and well into the Abbasid era. ʿUmar also introduced child benefit for the children and pensions for the elderly.[55][56][57][58] When he felt that a governor or a commander was becoming attracted to wealth or did not meet the required administrative standards, he had him removed from his position.[59] The expansion was partially halted between 638 and 639 CE during the years of great famine and plague in Arabia and the Levant, respectively, but by the end of ʿUmar's reign, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and much of Persia were incorporated into the early Islamic empire.
Local populations of Jews and indigenous Christians, who lived as religious minorities and were forced to pay the jizya tax under the Muslim rule in order to finance the wars with Byzantines and Sasanids, often aided Muslims to take over their lands from the Byzantines and Persians, resulting in exceptionally speedy conquests.[60][61] As new areas were conquered, they also benefited from free trade with other areas of the growing Islamic empire, where, to encourage commerce, taxes were applied to wealth rather than trade.[62] The Muslims paid zakat on their wealth for the benefit of the poor. Since the Constitution of Medina, drafted by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the Jews and the Christians continued to use their own laws and had their own judges.[63][64] To assist in the quick expansion of the state, the Byzantine and the Persian tax collection systems were maintained and the people paid a poll tax lower than the one imposed under the Byzantines and the Persians.[citation needed]
In 639 CE, ʿUmar appointed Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan as the governor of Syria after the previous governor died in a plague along with 25,000 other people.[65][66] To stop the Byzantine harassment from the sea during the Arab–Byzantine wars, in 649 Muawiyah set up a navy, with ships crewed by Monophysite Christians, Egyptian Coptic Christians, and Jacobite Syrian Christians sailors and Muslim troops, which defeated the Byzantine navy at the Battle of the Masts in 655 CE, opening up the Mediterranean Sea to Muslim ships.[67][68][69][70]
Eastern territories of the Byzantine Empire invaded by the Arab Muslims during the Arab–Byzantine wars (650 CE)
Early Muslim armies stayed in encampments away from cities because ʿUmar feared that they may get attracted to wealth and luxury, moving away from the worship of God, accumulating wealth and establishing dynasties.[59][71][72][73] Staying in these encampments away from the cities also ensured that there was no stress on the local populations which could remain autonomous. Some of these encampments later grew into cities like Basra and Kufa in Iraq and Fustat in Egypt.[74]
When ʿUmar was assassinated in 644 CE, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, second cousin and twice son-in-law of Muhammad, became the third caliph. As the Arabic language is written without vowels, speakers of different Arabic dialects and other languages recited the Quran with phonetic variations that could alter the meaning of the text. When ʿUthmān became aware of this, he ordered a standard copy of the Quran to be prepared. Begun during his reign, the compilation of the Quran was finished some time between 650 and 656 CE, and copies were sent out to the different centers of the expanding Islamic empire.[75] After Muhammad's death, the old tribal differences between the Arabs started to resurface. Following the Roman–Persian wars and the Byzantine-Sasanian wars, deep-rooted differences between Iraq (formerly under the Sasanian Empire) and Syria (formerly under the Byzantine Empire) also existed. Each wanted the capital of the newly established Islamic empire to be in their area.[76]
As ʿUthmān became very old, Marwan I, a relative of Muawiyah slipped into the vacuum, becoming his secretary and slowly assuming more control. When ʿUthmān was assassinated in 656 CE, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, assumed the position of caliph and moved the capital to Kufa in Iraq. Muawiyah I, the governor of Syria, and Marwan I demanded arrest of the culprits. Marwan I manipulated every one and created conflict, which resulted in the first Muslim civil war (the "First Fitna"). ʿAlī was assassinated by the Kharijites in 661 CE. Six months later, ʿAlī's firstborn son Ḥasan made a peace treaty with Muawiyah I, in the interest of peace. In the Hasan–Muawiya treaty, Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī handed over power to Muawiyah I on the condition that he would be just to the people and not establish a dynasty after his death.[77][78] Muawiyah I subsequently broke the conditions of the agreement and established the Umayyad dynasty, with a capital in Damascus.[79] Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, by then Muhammad's only surviving grandson, refused to swear allegiance to the Umayyads; he was killed in the Battle of Karbala the same year, in an event still mourned by Shīʿa Muslims on the Day of Ashura. Political unrest called the second Muslim civil war (the "Second Fitna") continued, but Muslim rule was extended under Muawiyah I to Rhodes, Crete, Kabul, Bukhara, and Samarkand, and expanded into North Africa. In 664 CE, Arab Muslim armies conquered Kabul,[80] and in 665 CE pushed further into the Maghreb.[81]
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