Legacy of Muʿāwiyah I

Muʿāwiyah stands out as one of the few caliphs who is depicted both in Muslim historiography and in modern scholarship as a decisive force in Islamic history. Undoubtedly one reason for the prominence that is assigned to him is that he was a controversial figure. Pious scholars of the dominant Sunni sect of Islam, together with writers of the minority, dissenting Shiʿis, have always heaped opprobrium on Muʿāwiyah: the Sunni because of his deviations from the pattern of leadership set by the Prophet Muhammad and the Rashidun (“rightly guided”) caliphs, the Shiʿah because he had usurped the caliphate from ʿAlī.

Although Muʿāwiyah has been and still is condemned for his sins from these two quarters, he has also been the subject of lavish praise in Arabic literature as the ideal ruler. In other words, unlike most of the other caliphs, Muʿāwiyah looms large in Islamic history because he has consistently aroused partisanship at different extremes. But, beneath the biased portraits given in traditional Muslim historiography, there is a person whose actual accomplishments were of great magnitude quite apart from partisan value judgments and interpretations. These accomplishments lay primarily in political and military administration, through which Muʿāwiyah was able to rebuild a Muslim state that had fallen into anarchy and to renew the Arab Muslim military offensive against unbelievers.