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Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (; – 23 February 715), commonly known as al-Walid I (), was the sixth Umayyad caliphate, ruling from October 705 until his death in 715. He was the eldest son of his predecessor, Caliph Abd al-Malik (). As a prince, he led annual raids against the Byzantine Empire from 695 to 698 and built or restored fortifications along the Syrian Desert route to Mecca. He became Wali al-Ahd in , after the death of the designated successor, Abd al-Malik's brother Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan.
Under al-Walid, his father's efforts to centralize government, impose a more Arabic and Islamic character on the state, and expand its borders were continued. He heavily depended on al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, his father's powerful viceroy over the eastern half of the caliphate. During his reign, armies commissioned by al-Hajjaj conquered Sind and Transoxiana in the east, while the troops of Musa ibn Nusayr, the governor of Ifriqiya, conquered the Maghreb and al-Andalus in the west, bringing the caliphate to its largest territorial extent. War spoils from the conquests enabled al-Walid to finance impressive public works, including his greatest architectural achievement, the Umayyad Mosque, as well as the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. He was the first caliph to institute programs for social welfare, aiding the poor and handicapped among the Muslim Arabs of Bilad al-Sham, who held him in high esteem.
His reign was marked by domestic peace and prosperity and likely represented the peak of Umayyad power, though it is difficult to ascertain his direct role in its affairs. The balance al-Walid maintained among the elites, including the Qays and Yaman army factions, may have been his key personal achievement. On the other hand, the massive military expenditures of his rule, as well as his extravagant grants to the Umayyad dynasty, became a financial burden on his successors.
The war with the Byzantine Empire, which dated to the Muslim conquest of Syria in the 630s, resumed in 692 after the collapse of the truce that had been reached three years earlier. Annual campaigns were thereafter launched by the Umayyads in the al-Awasim and beyond. During his father's caliphate, al-Walid led the campaigns in 696, 697, 698 and 699. In his summer 696 campaign, he raided the area between Malatya (Melitene) and Mopsuestia (Mopsuestia), while in the following year, he targeted a place known in Arabic sources as 'Atmar', located at some point north of Malatya. He also led the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca in 698.
In 700 or 701, al-Walid patronized the construction or expansion of Qasr Burqu', a fortified Syrian Desert outpost on the route connecting Palmyra in the north with the Azraq oasis and Wadi Sirhan basin in the south, ultimately leading to Mecca and Medina. His patronage is attested by an inscription naming him as "the emir al-Walid, son of the commander of the faithful". According to the historian Jere L. Bacharach, al-Walid built the nearby site of Jabal Says, likely as a Bedouin summer encampment between his base of operations in al-Qaryatayn and Qasr Burqu'. Bacharach speculates that al-Walid used the sites, located in the territory of Arab tribes, to reaffirm their loyalty, which had been critical to the Umayyads during the civil war.
Al-Walid essentially continued his father's policies of centralization and expansion. Unlike Abd al-Malik, al-Walid heavily depended on al-Hajjaj and allowed him free rein over the eastern half of the caliphate. Moreover, al-Hajjaj strongly influenced al-Walid's internal decision-making, with officials often being installed and dismissed upon the viceroy's recommendation.
By 712, the Arabs solidified their control of Cilicia and the areas east of the Euphrates River and launched raids deep into Anatolia. After one such raid against Ancyra in 714, the Byzantine emperor Anastasios II () sent a delegation to negotiate a truce with al-Walid or decipher his intentions. The delegates reported back that al-Walid was planning a land and naval assault to conquer the Byzantine capital Constantinople. Al-Walid died in 715 and the siege was carried out under his successors, ending in 718 as a disaster for the Arabs.
Umar maintained friendly ties to the holy cities' religious circles. He led the Hajj for at least four of the six years he was in office, with al-Walid's son Umar leading it in 707 and al-Walid leading it in 710, the only time he left Syria during his caliphate. Umar provided safe haven to Iraqis evading the persecution of al-Hajjaj. Umar informed al-Walid of al-Hajjaj's abuses, while al-Hajjaj advised the caliph to dismiss Umar for hosting Iraqi rebels. Al-Walid, wary of the Hejaz once again developing into a center of anti-Umayyad activity as it had during the Second Muslim Civil War, dismissed Umar in 712. He split the governorship of the Hejaz, appointing al-Hajjaj's nominees Khalid ibn Abdallah al-Qasri to Mecca and Uthman ibn Hayyan al-Murri to Medina. Neither was ever appointed to lead the Hajj, al-Walid reserving that office for Maslama and his own sons.
Al-Walid maintained his father's policy of balancing the power of the two factions in the military and administration. According to the historian Hugh N. Kennedy, it is "possible that the caliph kept it the on the boil so that one faction would not acquire a monopoly of power". Al-Walid's mother genealogically belonged to the Qays and he accorded Qaysi officials certain advantages. However, Wellhausen doubts that al-Walid preferred one faction over the other, "for he had no need to do so, and it is not reported" by the medieval historians. The Qays–Yaman division intensified under al-Walid's successors, who did not maintain his balancing act. The feud was a major contributor to the Umayyad regime's demise in 750.
Al-Walid or his son al-Abbas founded the city of Anjar, between Damascus and Beirut, in 714. It included a mosque, palace, and residential, commercial, and administrative structures. According to the art historian Robert Hillenbrand, Anjar "has the best claim of any Islamic foundation datable before 750 ... to be a city", though it was probably abandoned within forty years of its construction. In the Hejaz, al-Walid attempted to redress the hardships of pilgrims making the trek to Mecca by having water wells dug throughout the province, improving access through the mountain passes, and building a drinking fountain in Mecca. The historian M. A. Shaban theorizes that while al-Walid's projects in the cities of Syria and the Hejaz had a "utilitarian purpose", they were mainly intended to provide employment, in the form of cheap labor, for the growing non-Arab populations in the cities.
Welfare programs included financial relief for the poor and servants to assist the handicapped, though this initiative was limited to Syria, and only to the Arab Muslims there. As such, Shaban considered it "a special state subsidy to the ruling class".
Most of the structure was demolished. Al-Walid's architects replaced the demolished space with a large prayer hall and a courtyard bordered on all sides by a closed portico with double arcades. The mosque was completed in 711. The army of Damascus, numbering some 45,000 soldiers, were taxed a quarter of their salaries for nine years to pay for its construction. The scale and grandeur of the great mosque made it a "symbol of the political supremacy and moral prestige of Islam", according to the historian Nikita Elisséeff. Noting al-Walid's awareness of architecture's propaganda value, Hillenbrand calls the mosque a "victory monument" intended as a "visible statement of Muslim supremacy and permanence". The mosque has maintained its original form until the present day.
In Jerusalem, al-Walid continued his father's works on the Temple Mount. There is disagreement as to whether the al-Aqsa Mosque, which was built on the same axis of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, was originally built by Abd al-Malik or al-Walid. Several architectural historians hold that Abd al-Malik commissioned the project and that al-Walid finished or expanded it. The earliest source indicating al-Walid's work on the mosque is the Aphrodito Papyri, which contain letters from December 708 – June 711 between his governor of Egypt, Qurra ibn Sharik, and an official in Upper Egypt discussing the dispatch of Egyptian laborers and craftsmen to help build the "Mosque of Jerusalem". It is likely that the unfinished administrative and residential structures that were built opposite the southern and eastern walls of the Temple Mount, next to the mosque, date to the era of al-Walid, who died before they could be completed.
In 706 or 707, al-Walid instructed Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz to significantly enlarge the Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina. Its redevelopment entailed the demolition of the living quarters of Muhammad's wives and the incorporation of the graves of Muhammad and the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr () and Umar. The vocal opposition to the demolition of Muhammad's home from local religious circles was dismissed by al-Walid. He lavished large sums for the reconstruction and supplied mosaics and Greek and Copts craftsmen. According to Hillenbrand, the building of a large-scale mosque in Medina, the original center of the caliphate, was an "acknowledgement" by al-Walid of "his own roots and those of Islam itself" and possibly an attempt to appease Medinan resentment at the loss of the city's political importance to Syria under the Umayyads. In the words of McMillan, the mosque and the works benefitting the pilgrims to the holy cities "were a form of reconciliation ... a constructive counterweight to the political damage" caused by the Umayyad sieges of Mecca in 683 and 692 and assault on Medina during the civil war. Other mosques that al-Walid is credited for expanding in the Hejaz include the Masjid al-Haram around the Kaaba in Mecca and the mosque of Ta'if.
Al-Walid unsuccessfully attempted to nominate his son Abd al-Aziz as his successor and void the arrangements set by his father, in which Sulayman was to succeed al-Walid. Relations between the two brothers had become strained. Sulayman acceded and dismissed nearly all of al-Walid's governors. Although he maintained the militarist policies of al-Walid and Abd al-Malik, expansion of the caliphate largely ground to a halt under Sulayman ().
The historian Gerald Hawting comments that the combined reigns of al-Walid and Abd al-Malik, tied together by al-Hajjaj, represented in "some ways the high point of Umayyad power, witnessing significant territorial advances both in the east and the west and the emergence of a more marked Arabic and Islamic character in the state's public face". Domestically, it was generally a period of peace and prosperity. Kennedy asserts that al-Walid's reign was "remarkably successful and represents, perhaps, the zenith of Umayyad power", though his direct role in these successes is unclear and his primary accomplishment may have been maintaining the equilibrium between the rival factions of the Umayyad family and military.
By virtue of the conquests of Hispania, Sind and Transoxiana during his reign, his patronage of the great mosques of Damascus and Medina, and his charitable works, al-Walid's Syrian contemporaries viewed him as "the worthiest of their caliphs", according to the 9th-century historian Umar ibn Shabba. Several were dedicated to al-Walid and his sons by al-Farazdaq, his official court poet. The latter's contemporary, Jarir, lamented the caliph's death in verse: "O eye, weep copious tears aroused by remembrance; after today there is no point in your tears being stored." The Christian poet al-Akhtal considered al-Walid to be "the caliph of God through whose rain is sought".
Al-Walid embraced the formal trappings of monarchy in a manner unprecedented among earlier caliphs. He resided at several palaces, including in Khunasira in northern Syria and Dayr Murran. The considerable wealth in his treasury allowed him to spend extravagantly on his relatives. Expectations of such grants among the growing number of Umayyad princes continued under his successors. Their generous stipends and costly private constructions were resented by "nearly everyone else" in the caliphate and were "a drain on the treasury", according to the historian Khalid Yahya Blankinship. More significant were the costs to equip and pay the armies driving the conquests. The substantial expenditures under both Abd al-Malik and al-Walid became a financial burden on their successors, under whom the flow of war spoils, on which the caliphal economy depended, began to diminish. Blankinship notes that the enormous losses incurred during the 717–718 siege of Constantinople alone "practically wiped out the gains made under al-Walid".
Marsham notes al-Walid's marriage to his first cousin, Umm al-Banin, "tied the fortunes" of Abd al-Malik and her father, Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan. From her al-Walid had his sons Abd al-Aziz, Muhammad, Marwan, and Anbasa, and a daughter, A'isha. From another Umayyad wife, Umm Abd Allah bint Abd Allah ibn Amr, a great-granddaughter of Caliph Uthman (), al-Walid had his son Abd al-Rahman. He also married Umm Abd Allah's niece, Izza bint Abd al-Aziz, whom he divorced.
Out of his twenty-two children, fifteen were born to umm walad, including al-Abbas, whose mother was Greek. According to al-Tabari, the mother of al-Walid's son Yazid III () was Shah-i-Afrid (also called Shahfarand), the daughter of the Sasanian dynasty prince Peroz III and granddaughter of the last Sasanian king, Yazdegerd III (). She had been taken captive in the conquest of Transoxiana and was gifted to al-Walid by al-Hajjaj. The mother of his son Ibrahim () was a concubine named Su'ar or Budayra. His other sons by concubines were Umar, Bishr, Masrur, Mansur, Rawh, Khalid, Jaz, Maslama, Tammam, Mubashshir, Yahya, and Sadaqa.
In 744, around a dozen of al-Walid's sons, probably resentful at being sidelined from the caliphal succession, conspired with other Umayyad princes and elites under Yazid III to topple their cousin Caliph al-Walid II (). His assassination in April 744 sparked the Third Muslim Civil War (744–750). Yazid III acceded but died six months later, after which he was succeeded by his half-brother Ibrahim. The latter did not attain wide recognition and was overthrown in December 744 by a distant Umayyad kinsman, Marwan II (). Several descendants of al-Walid, progeny of his son Rawh, were executed during the Abbasid Revolution which toppled Umayyad rule in 750. Others from the lines of his sons al-Abbas and Umar survived, including the Habibi family, which attained prominence in the Umayyad emirate of al-Andalus after its establishment in 756.
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