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Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik الوليد بن عبد الملك
Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik rendered in Arabic calligraphy
Caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate
Reign	8 October 705 – 23 February 715
Predecessor	Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan
Successor	Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik
Born	668 Medina
Died	23 February 715 (aged 47)
Issue	Abd al-Aziz, Yazid III, Ibrahim, al-Abbas
Full name Al-Walīd ibn ‘Abd al-Malik Arabic: الوليد بن عبد الملك‎
House	Banu Abd Shams
Dynasty	Umayyad
Father	Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan
Mother	Walladah bint al-Abbas al-Ghatafaniyyah[1]

Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik (Arabic: الوليد بن عبد الملك‎) or Al-Walid I (668 – 23 February 715) was an Umayyad Caliph who ruled from 705 until his death in 715. His reign saw the greatest expansion of the Caliphate, as successful campaigns were undertaken in Transoxiana in Central Asia, Sind, Hispania in far western Europe, and against the Byzantines.

Biography

Early life and family

Al-Walid was born in Medina in 668. He was the eldest son of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, who succeeded his father Marwan I as the Umayyad caliph in 685, and one Abd al-Malik’s wives, Wallada bint Abbas ibn al-Jaz.^[2] She was a fourth-generation direct descendant of Zuhayr ibn Jadhima, the mid-6th-century chieftain of the Banu Abs, a subtribe of the latter Arab tribe of Ghatafan.^[2] Two of al-Walid’s wives, Umm Abdallah bint Abdallah ibn Amr and Izza bint Abd al-Aziz ibn Abdallah were third and fourth-generation descendants of Caliph Uthman (r. 644–656), respectively.^[3]

Reign

Al-Walid continued his father's expansion of the Islamic empire and was an effective ruler. His father Abd al-Malik had taken the oath of allegiance for Walid during his lifetime.^{[4][unreliable source?]}. As such the succession of Walid was not contested. His reign was marked by a number of conquests in both the east and west with historians considering his reign as the apex of Islamic power.

Sulayman succeeded his brother Walid after he died in 715. He was buried in the Bab al-Saghir cemetery in Damascus. His grave is still present to this date.^{[citation needed]}

Conquests

The Caliphate at its greatest extent.

  Under Muhammad, 622-632

  Rashidun expansion, 632-661

  Umayyad expansion, 661-750

Walid continued his father's policies of expanding Islamic power through conquests and took the early Islamic empire to its farthest extent. In 711, Muslim armies crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and began to conquer the Iberian Peninsula using North African Berber troops. By 716, the Visigoths of Iberia had been defeated and most of Iberia was under Muslim control and some of present day France. 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 effectively the viceroy there.

Walid paid great attention to the development and expansion of a well-organized military. He built the strongest navy of the Umayyad era which was a key element in Caliphate's expansion into Iberia.

Like his father, Walid continued to allow Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf free rein, and his trust in Hajjaj paid off with his successful conquests of Transoxiana and Sindh. Musa ibn Nusayr and his retainer Tariq ibn Ziyad conquered Al-Andalus; whilst Mohammad Bin Qasim Conquered Sindh (present day Pakistan). Hajjaj was responsible for picking the generals who led the successful eastern campaigns, and was successful in his campaign against Ibn Zubayr during the reign of Walid's father. Others, such as Walid's brother Maslamah, advanced against the Byzantines and into Adharbayjan.

Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari describes how Qutayba ibn Muslim, Khurasan's governor, led forces extending the Caliphate to the east. Qutayba conquered Samarkand, advanced into Farghana and sent envoys to China. (v. 23)

Al-Tabari records how Hajjaj tortured Yazid ibn al-Muhallab. Yazid escaped and made his way to Walid's brother Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik who granted him refuge. Hajjaj pressed Walid about this and Walid commanded Sulayman to send him Yazid in chains. Sulayman had his own son approach Walid chained to Yazid and spoke in favour of Yazid's safety. Walid accepted this and told Hajjaj to desist. (v. 23, p. 156f)

Islamic culture and civilization

The Umayyad Mosque, built under Walid

Coins of Al-Walid I, found in Sistan.

Walid began the first major building projects of Islam. The history of Islamic architecture can be said to have begun in earnest with Walid. Around 701, al-Walid ordered the building of Al-Aqsa Mosque, opposite his father's Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. Walid repaired and refurbished Masjid al Nabawi in Medina. He also improved roads, mountain passes and wells in Hijaz (al-Tabari v. 23, p. 144).

At the site of the Christian Basilica of Saint John the Baptist, he built a mosque, now known as the Great Mosque of Damascus or simply the Umayyad Mosque.^[5][6][7][8] The mosque holds a shrine which is said to contain the head of John the Baptist, honored as a prophet by Muslims and Christians alike (he is considered a Prophet of Islam and is known as Yahya). The head was said to have been found during the excavations for the building of the mosque. The tomb of Saladin stands in a small garden adjoining the north wall of the mosque.

Walid coupled Islam with Arabic culture and values. Since non-believers had to pay an extra tax, many people did convert for religious and non-religious reasons.^{[citation needed]} This created several problems, particularly since Islam was so closely connected with being Arab. Being Arab 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 was threatened. In particular, large numbers of Coptic-speaking (Egypt) and Persian-speaking Muslims threatened the primacy of the very language that Islam was 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.^{[citation needed]}

Walid built one of the first care homes for intellectually disabled individuals and built the first hospital which accommodated intellectually disabled individuals as part of its services. In addition, Walid assigned each intellectually disabled individual a caregiver.^[9]

Sources

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

References

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Al-Walid I

Bibliography

• 
  Ahmed, Asad Q. (2010). The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Ḥijāz: Five Prosopographical Case Studies. University of Oxford Linacre College Unit for Prosopographical Research. ISBN 9781900934138.
  


• Grafman, Rafi; Rosen-Ayalon, Myriam (1999). "The Two Great Syrian Umayyad Mosques: Jerusalem and Damascus". Muqarnas. Boston: BRILL. 16: 1–15. doi:10.2307/1523262.


• 
  Al-Tabari (1990). Hinds, Martin, ed. History of al-Tabari, Vol. 23: The The Zenith of the Marwanid House. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-721-1.