Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ibn al-Hakam (Arabic: ‫ﻋﺑد اﻟﻣﻠك اﺑن ﻣروان اﺑن اﻟﺣﻛم‬, romanized: ʿAbd al-Malik ibn
Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam; July/August 644 or June/July 647 – 9 October 705) was the
fifth Umayyad caliph, ruling from April 685 until his death. A member of the first generation of born
Muslims, his early life in Medina was occupied with pious pursuits. He held administrative and
military posts under Caliph Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), founder of the Umayyad Caliphate, and his own
father, Caliph Marwan I (r. 684–685). By the time of Abd al-Malik's accession, Umayyad authority
had collapsed across the Caliphate as a result of the Second Muslim Civil War and had been
reconstituted in Syria and Egypt during his father's reign.
Following a failed invasion of Iraq in 686, Abd al-Malik focused on securing Syria before making
further attempts to conquer the greater part of the Caliphate from his principal rival, the Meccabased caliph Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr. To that end, he concluded an unfavorable truce with the
reinvigorated Byzantine Empire in 689, quashed a coup attempt in Damascus by his kinsman, alAshdaq, the following year, and reincorporated into the army the rebellious Qaysi tribes of
the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) in 691. He then conquered Zubayrid Iraq and dispatched his
general, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, to Mecca where he killed Ibn al-Zubayr in late 692, thereby reuniting the
Caliphate under Abd al-Malik's rule. The war with Byzantium resumed, resulting in Umayyad
advances into Anatolia and Armenia, the destruction of Carthage and the recapture of Kairouan, the
launchpad for the later conquests of western North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, in 698. In the
east, Abd al-Malik's viceroy, al-Hajjaj, firmly established the caliph's authority in Iraq and Khurasan,
stamping out opposition by the Kharijites and the Arab tribal nobility by 702. Abd al-Malik's final
years were marked by a domestically peaceful and prosperous consolidation of power.
In a significant departure from his predecessors, rule over the Caliphate's provinces was centralized
under Abd al-Malik, following the elimination of his rivals. Gradually, loyalist Arab troops from Syria
were tasked with maintaining order in the provinces as dependence on less reliable, local Arab
garrisons receded. Tax surpluses from the provinces were forwarded to Damascus and the
traditional stipends to veterans of the early Muslim conquests and their descendants were abolished,
salaries being restricted to those in active service. The most consequential of Abd al-Malik's reforms
were the introduction of a single Islamic currency in place of Byzantine and Sasanian coinage and
the establishment of Arabic as the language of the bureaucracy in place of Greek and Persian in
Syria and Iraq, respectively. His Muslim upbringing, the conflicts with external and local
Christian forces and rival claimants to Islamic leadership all influenced Abd al-Malik's efforts to
prescribe a distinctly Islamic character to the Umayyad state. Another manifestation of this initiative
was his founding of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the earliest archaeologically attested
religious monument built by a Muslim ruler and the possessor of the
earliest epigraphic proclamations of Islam and the prophet Muhammad. The foundations established
by Abd al-Malik enabled his son and successor, al-Walid I (r. 705–715), who largely maintained his
father's policies, to oversee the Umayyad Caliphate's territorial and economic zenith. Abd al-Malik's
centralized