The Sarcophagus of Agilbert: A Masterpiece of…

Muawiyah dies in 680, and the Islamic community is soon convulsed by civil wars.

During this time, al-Muhallab deserts the Umayyads and sides with the anti-caliph ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr, who entrusts him with suppressing the Kharijite rebellions in Iraq by the Azariqa.

Basra will subsequently become known as Basra al-Muhallab.

Muawiyah has pacified the Arab kingdom, greatly extended its frontiers, and transformed the early Muslim patriarchy into an imperial monarchy, the Umayyad Caliphate.

Having beautified Damascus, he has developed a court to rival that of Constantinople.

At his death in 680, many of those whom Muawiyah had kept in check now rebel against his son Yazid, who is widely opposed in Syria and Mesopotamia, inaugurating what will be a series of bloody civil wars that will rend the fabric of the late Muawiyah’s Arabian Empire.

'Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and one of the Ahl al-Bayt (people of the House) of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, had migrated to Medina shortly after Muhammad.

There Muhammad told Ali that he had been ordered by God to give his daughter, Fatimah, to Ali in marriage.

'Ali had been an active servant of Muhammad's service during his decade at the helm of the community in Medina, carrying messages and orders and leading war parties of warriors on battles, participating in all the battles fought for Islam during this time eith the exception of Tabuk.

After the assassination in 656 of the third Caliph, Uthman Ibn Affan, the Companions of Muhammad in Medina had chosen 'Ali to be the new Caliph.

Because Ali is unable to apprehend and punish Uthman's murderers due to the rebel infiltration of the Muslim ranks, Muawiyah ibn Abī Sufyān, who had been a companion of Muhammad and been Governor of Syria since 640, had refused to acknowledge his caliphate.

Muawiyah had met with considerable military success in the ensuing civil war, including the seizure of Egypt.

Whereas the Shiites believe, as they do today, that the imamate, or leadership, is the sole right of the house of 'Ali, the Kharijites insist that any pious and able Muslim can be a leader of the Muslim community.

And whereas the Sunnis believe that the imam's impiousness does not, by itself, justify sedition, the Kharijites insist on the right to revolt against any ruler who deviates from the example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the first two Caliphs.

A Kharajite had in 661 finally assassinated 'Ali at prayer in the mosque of Kufa with a strike of a poison-coated sword, and Muawiyah—holding both Syria and Egypt and, as commander of the largest force in the Muslim Empire, having strongest claim to leadership—had assumed the caliphate.

'Ali’s sons Hasan and Hussein had acquiesced to the rule of Mu'awiyah and received pensions from him.

Hasan, initially defying Muawiyah, had soon ceased hostilities and retired to a quiet private life in Medina, where he lived until his death in 670 under mysterious circumstances.

Hussein, however, refuses in April, 680 to recognize the legitimacy of Muawiyah's son and successor, Yazid.

The townsmen of Kufah, a city with a Shi'ite majority, now invite Hussein, reputedly the favorite grandson of Muhammad, to lead then in raising the standard of revolt against the Umayyads.

Hussein, after receiving some favorable indications, sets out for Kufah from Mecca with a small band of relatives and followers.

According to traditional accounts, he meets the poet al-Farazdaq on the way and is told that the hearts of the Iraqis are for him, but their swords are for the Umayyads.

The governor of Iraq, on behalf of the caliph, sends four thousand men to arrest Hussein and his small band, trapping him on October 10 near the banks of the Euphrates River.

Hussein refuses to surrender, and he and his escort are slain, his head sent to Yazid in Damascus. (Shi'ite Muslims observe the first ten days of Muharram, the date of the battle according to the Islamic calendar, as days of lamentation in remembrance of Hussein's martyrdom.)

Revenge for Hussein’s death at the Battle of Karbala' is turned into a rallying cry that will help undermine the Umayyad caliphate and give impetus to the rise of a powerful Shi'ite movement, making permanent a division in Islam between the party of 'Ali and the Sunnite majority.

The Umayyads subdue Iraq, but rebellions in the name of this or that relative of 'Ali will continue, attracting more and more non-Arab support and introducing new dimensions to his cause.

The Göktürks, known in medieval Chinese sources as Tujue, had originated from the Ashina tribe, an Altaic people who lived in the northern corner of the area presently called Xinjiang.

Under the leadership of Bumin Khan and his sons, the Göktürks had in the late sixth century succeeded the Xiongnu as the main Turkic power in the region and taken hold of the lucrative Silk Road trade.

Rapidly expanding to rule huge territories in northwestern China, North Asia and Eastern Europe as far west as the Crimea, they are the first Turkic tribe known to use the name "Turk" as a political name.

A civil war at the beginning of the seventh century had left the empire divided into the eastern and western parts.

The eastern part, still ruled from Ötüken, had remained in the orbit of the Sui Empire and retained the name Göktürk.

The khans Shipi and Khieli of the East had attacked China at its weakest moment during the transition between the Sui and Tang dynasties, but in 657, the eastern part of the khaganate had been overrun by the Tang general Su Ding Fang, while the central part had emerged as the independent khaganate of Khazaria, led by a branch of the Ashina dynasty.

The Tang Emperor of China could by 659 claim to rule the entire Silk Road as far as Persia, as the Eastern Göktürks now carried Chinese titles and fought by their side in their wars.

The eastern steppes from 659 to 681 have been characterized by numerous independent rulers, weak, divided, and engaged in constant petty wars.

To the east, the Uyghurs had defeated their one-time allies the Syr-Tardush, a Tiele people and khanate in central and northern Asia, while to the west the Turgesh of the Ili Valley had emerged as successors to the Western Göktürks, or Onoq.

Despite these setbacks, Ilteris Sad, or Idat, and his brother Bakçor Qapagan Khan, or Mo-ch'o, after revolting against Chinese domination, succeed in 681 in reestablishing the Khanate.

The Eastern Göktürk Khagans over the following decades will steadily gain control of the steppes beyond the Great Wall.

The Danube Bulgars, a Turkic tribe, had conquered the Slavs immediately south of the Danube, absorbing a large portion of ancient Dacia in 676.

The Bulgars, who will soon be permeated by Vlach and, even more thoroughly, by Slavic elements, will unite with the Slavs to oppose Imperial control.

At the same time, their conquests will carry them deeper into the ambit of Constantinopolitan Christianity.

The Bulgarian khan Asparukh, eluding Constantine IV's attempts to defeat him, has by 681 forced the emperor to recognize the first Bulgarian state, which, with its capital at Pliska (near modern Shumen), combines a Bulgarian political structure with Slavic linguistic and cultural institutions.

Occupying lands south of the Danube into the Thracian plain—much to the humiliation of Constantinople—the Bulgars have thus deprived the empire of control in the north and central Balkans.

The ancient Black Sea Port of Odessus in the northeastern portion of the Bulgars' kingdom becomes known under them as Varna.

The armies of the Bulgars and Slavs had advanced after their decisive victory at Ongala in 680 to the south of the Balkan Mountains, defeating again the forces of Constantinople.

The Empire is compelled to sign a humiliating peace treaty that acknowledges the establishment of a new state on the borders of the Empire.

They are also to pay an annual tribute to Bulgaria.

The First Bulgarian Empire will be a regional power for more than two centuries.

The emperor in 680 summons the sixth ecumenical Council of Constantinople.

Some eastern Christians, forbidden to talk of the concept of one nature of Christ, think to enforce the unity of the person of Christ by talking of one will (thelema) and one operation (energeia) from the two natures.

Persons holding this view are called Monothelites.

Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, and Honorius, pope of Rome, appear to have embraced the Monothelite doctrine.

The council of 680 condemns the Monothelites, among them Honorius, dead for forty-two years, and asserts two wills and two operations, the orthodox christological doctrine as laid in 451 by the Council of Chalcedon (451).

“Each nature with the communion of the other willed and wrought that which was proper to itself.”

The council does not, however, posthumously accuse Honorius of the formal teaching of heresy.

Yazid, whose mother Maysun was Christian, lightens the taxation of some Christian groups and abolishes the tax concessions granted to the Samaritans as a reward for aid they had rendered in the days of the early Arab conquests.

He energetically tries to continue the policies of Mu'awiyah and keeps many of the men who had been in his father's service.

He reforms the financial system, strengthens the administrative structure of the empire, and improves the military defenses of Syria.

Concerning himself with agricultural matters, he improves the irrigation system of the Damascus oasis.