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23-509: Muhammad ibn Ziyad was a descendant of Yazid , younger brother of the first Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I . In 814 he was arrested and brought to the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun on account of his ancestry, but his life was spared in the end. He was merely placed under surveillance and became the protégé of the caliph's minister al-Fadl ibn Sahl . Three years later a letter from the governor of Yemen arrived to Baghdad , complaining about attacks by

46-460: The hajj , Muhammad marched south to Yemen with an army of Khurasani soldiers and arrived there in 818. He fought numerous battles against the tribes and won control over the Tihama lowland in the next year. Following his victories, Muhammad was appointed amir of Yemen by al-Ma'mun with the task to restrain ' Alid Shi'a influence. Muhammad established a new city, Zabid , as his capital. It

69-399: The conquest of Syria from 634 until his death in the plague of Amwas in 639. Following the capture of Damascus around 635, he was placed in command of the city and its military district. After the death of the overall Muslim commander of Syria, Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah , in 639, he was appointed by Caliph Umar ( r.  634–644 ) the governor of Damascus, Jordan and Palestine. Yazid

92-712: The Abbasid governors in the highland lacked support from their home base in Iraq , other dynasties were established. The Yufirids established an independent state in San'a in 847 and forced the Ziyadid ruler to tolerate their rule in exchange for mentioning him on coins and in the Friday prayer . An imam of the Shi'ite Zaydiyyah sect, al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya established a power base in

115-576: The Ash'arite and Akkite tribes. Al-Fadl recommended that al-Ma'mun send the capable Muhammad ibn Ziyad to Tihamah in order to suppress the tribes. The situation was particularly critical since the Alids under a leader called Ibrahim al-Jazzar threatened to detach Yemen from Abbasid control at this time. Muhammad ibn Ziyad was a sworn enemy of the Alids, which made him a suitable choice for the task. After performing

138-730: The Islamic prophet Muhammad captured Mecca in 630. Soon afterward, he fought with the Muslims against the Thaqif tribe and its nomadic allies at the Battle of Hunayn . He was among the Qurayshites who the Islamic prophet won over through his generosity, in his case receiving a present of one hundred camels and forty ounces of silver. Yazid was married to Fakhita, a daughter of Muhammad's close companion Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf . Yazid

161-584: The Muslim troops there. Later in 639, Yazid succumbed to the plague as well. He did not leave any children. Umar appointed Mu'awiya in his brother's place over Damascus and Jordan. Yazid is referred to in later Islamic sources as 'Yazid al-Khayr' (Yazid the Good) because of his positively viewed role in the Syrian conquest. Because of the nature of his death during a state of war he is considered by these sources to be

184-623: The defenders of both places capitulated after negotiations. He later left Damascus to confront a Byzantine force led by a patrician, Theodore, sent by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius to recapture the city. Yazid was reinforced by Khalid and the Byzantines were defeated. In the Battle of the Yarmuk in 636, where the Muslims scored a decisive victory against the Byzantines, which consolidated and extended their conquest of much of Syria, Yazid

207-763: The deputy governor of Damascus under Abu Ubayda ibn al-Jarrah 's overall command over the Muslims in Syria. From Damascus, according to some of the early Muslim sources, Yazid dispatched lieutenant commanders against various places, including Dihya ibn Khalifa of the Banu Kalb to Palmyra in the desert to the northeast and a certain Zahra of the Banu Qushayr to the Batanea plain in the Hauran region south of Damascus;

230-512: The end of his reign the area between Aden and ash-Sharjah remained under his control. Even as late as 976, the royal revenues amounted to a million gold dinars . The Yufirids again attacked in 989 and burnt Zabid. However, the Mamluk al-Husayn bin Salamah managed to save the kingdom from complete collapse. He defeated the mountain tribes and restored the Ziyadid realm to its old limits. Al-Husayn

253-531: The first major Byzantine town to fall to the Muslims in Syria. After their major victory against the Byzantines at the Battle of Ajnadayn , during which Yazid acted as lieutenant commander, he launched further operations in the Balqa. Among these was the capture of the Amman fort in 635. Yazid took part in the siege of Damascus , beginning in 634. Following the fall of city in 635, or later in 637, Yazid became

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276-565: The following names and dates: Muhammad bin Ziyad 818–859, Ibrahim bin Muhammad 859–896, Ziyad bin Ibrahim 896–902, Ibn Ziyad 902–911, Abu'l-Jaysh 911–981, etc.) Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan ibn Harb ibn Umayya ( Arabic : يزيد بن أبي سفيان بن حرب بن أمية , romanized :  Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān ibn Ḥarb ibn Umayya ; died 639) was a leading Arab Muslim commander in

299-466: The highlands. However, the sources are somewhat obscure since the historian al-Hamdani asserts that another family, Banu Shurah, exercised paramount power in the Tihama for parts of the ninth century and were established in Zabid. From other sources it appears that San'a in fact continued to be governed by an Abbasid governor up to 847. Little is known about the economic structure of the Ziyadid realm, but

322-482: The historian Umara writes that the dynasty was bolstered by the flourishing international trade. The ruler received duties from ships coming from India . From the east came luxury products such as musk , camphor , ambergris , sandalwood and porcelain . From Africa came Ethiopian and Nubian slaves via the Dahlak Archipelago . Umara also mentions taxes on ambergris collection at Bab al-Mandab and

345-775: The northern highlands in 897; it was the beginning of the Yemeni imamate that endured until 1962. Furthermore, the late ninth and early tenth centuries saw a great deal of agitation by Ismaili figures who adhered to the Fatimid imam (whose descendants were later to become caliphs in Egypt ). Zabid itself was sacked by the sectarian Qarmatians , an Ismaili branch, in 904. In 904 the Isma'ilis under Ibn Hawshab and Ali ibn al-Fadl al-Jayshani invaded Sana'a. The Yufirid emir As'ad ibn Ibrahim retreated to Al-Jawf , and between 904 and 913, Sana'a

368-570: The south coast, and on pearl fishing . Meanwhile, Abbasid rule in Arabia was declining. After the violent end of caliph al-Musta'in in 866, the second Ziyadid ruler, Ibrahim ibn Muhammad, kept the tax revenues for himself and adopted royal trappings. He nevertheless continued reciting the khutba in the name of the Abbasids. As the Ziyadids' power tended to be concentrated on the lowland, and

391-604: The state. According to Kamal Suleiman Salibi , the last Ziyadi ruler was murdered in 1018 and replaced by Nafis. Nafis adopted royal titles but was immediately challenged by Najah, who defeated Nafis and Marjan and founded the Najahid dynasty in 1022. (This list follows H.C. Kay, Yaman: Its early medieval history (London 1892). A deviant list is published in Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The new Islamic dynasties (Columbia University Press 1996), p. 99, with

414-640: Was appointed by caliph Abu Bakr ( r.  632–634 ) one of the main commanders of the Muslim conquest of Byzantine Syria , launched in 633 or 634. Yazid and his men, who numbered between 3,000 and 7,500 according to the sources, were initially dispatched to the Balqa region east and northeast of the Dead Sea . In May 634 Yazid and the other main commanders, including Amr ibn al-As , Shurahbil ibn Hasana and Khalid ibn al-Walid , besieged and captured Bosra ,

437-555: Was built in a circular shape and situated midway between the sea and the mountains. He was able to expand his influence into Hadramawt and parts of highland Yemen, all the while recognizing Abbasid overlordship. The historian Umara enumerates his possessions as including Hadramawt, Diyar Kindah, Shihr , Mirbat in Oman , Abyan , Lahij , Aden and the maritime provinces as far north as Hali, as well as Janad, Mikhlaf al-Ma'afir, Mikhlaf Ja'far, San'a , Sa'dah , Najran , and Bayhan in

460-426: Was conquered no less than 20 times by Isma'ilis and Yufirids. As'ad ibn Ibrahim regained Sana'a in 915. Yemen was in turmoil as Sana'a became a battlefield for the three dynasties, as well as independent tribes. Under the lengthy reign of Abu'l-Jaysh Ishaq (r. 904–981), the Ziyadid dynasty experienced a temporary revival. However, when Abu'l-Jaysh grew old the outer regions began to fall away from Ziyadid rule. Towards

483-504: Was one of the four principal Muslim field commanders. He and Mu'awiya also launched operations against the Syrian littoral, capturing the Mediterranean port towns of Sidon , Beirut and Byblos . When Abu Ubayda died in the plague of Amwas in 639, Yazid was appointed by Caliph Umar ( r.  634–644 ) as the governor of Damascus, Jordan and Palestine . The plague had afflicted much of Syria and took an enormous toll on

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506-512: Was remembered as a just and high-spirited regent who dug wells and canals and constructed roads across the kingdom. He governed until his peaceful demise in 1012. The back side of the coin was that the Ziyadid monarchs lost effective power after 981 while a succession of Mamluks held real power, which at length made for political turmoil. After al-Husayn's death, his slave, the eunuch Marjan, held power as wazir . He in turn raised two Ethiopian slaves called Nafis and Najah who received high offices in

529-646: Was the elder half-brother of Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan , who was appointed as his successor over Damascus and Jordan by Umar and gradually became governor over all of Syria. Yazid was a son of Abu Sufyan , a chief of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca , belonging to the Umayya branch of its Banu Abd Shams clan. His mother was Zaynab bint Nawfal (also identified as Zaynab bint Hashim) of the Kinana tribe. He embraced Islam with his father and paternal half-brother Mu'awiya when

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