First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate A.D. 661-750

The Umayyad period was a crucial one for the de­velopment of Islam and Islamic culture. At the be­ginning of the ninety years of Umayyad rule over the Middle East, the region had only recently been conquered by the Arabs, and there is little un­ambiguous evidence about the development of Islam at that time. By the time the dynasty was over­thrown, the Arabic languages and culture had made substantial progress among the many non-Arab conquered peoples, many of the religious and social features that we recognize as distinctly Islamic had begun to crystallize, and large numbers of the sub­ject peoples had entered Islam. Hawting provides an introductory survey of the period of the Umayyad dynasty. The historical evi­dence is often susceptible to widely differing in­terpretations. While the author is not mainly con­cerned here with analysis of the sources, he does provide some discussion of them and the problems associated with using them. He discusses the con­tinuing debate about the place of the Umayyads in Arab and Islamic history, a debate that continues to produce heated argument.Hawting, Gerald R. is the author of 'First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate A.D. 661-750', published 1986 under ISBN 9780809313242 and ISBN 0809313243.