Khalid ibn Yazid

Genealogical tree of the Sufyanids, the ruling family of the Umayyad Caliphate, to which Khalid belonged

Khalid was likely born in circa 668 and was a son of the Umayyad caliph, Yazid I (r. 680–683), and Fakhita bint Abu Hashim ibn Utba,[1] who belonged to the Rabi'a line of the Banu Abd Shams clan of the Quraysh; the Umayyads belonged to the Umayya line of this same clan. At the time of his brother Caliph Mu'awiya II's death in early 684, Khalid was still a minor.[1] Umayyad authority had collapsed across the caliphate, with most provinces recognizing the suzerainty of the Mecca-based caliph Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr. Likewise, in the Umayyads' stronghold of Syria, the Qaysi tribes in the north and the dominant factions of Homs and Palestine recognized Ibn al-Zubayr. Loyalist tribes, namely the Banu Kalb and their allies who dominated Jordan and Damascus, strove to preserve Umayyad rule and by extension, their financial and military privileges. Thus, Khalid was proposed as Mu'awiya II's successor by the Kalbi chieftain Ibn Bahdal, but this was opposed by the other tribal nobles due to Khalid's young age and inexperience.[2]

When their father's paternal first cousin, al-Walid ibn Utba ibn Abi Sufyan, was imprisoned by the pro-Zubayrid governor of Damascus, al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri, Khalid and his brother Abdallah rallied the Kalb, their father's maternal kinsmen, and freed him.[3] In the weeks after, the loyalist tribes convened in Jabiya to elect a caliph from among the Umayyad dynasty. Though Ibn Bahdal and the Kindite nobleman Malik ibn Hubayra al-Sakuni lobbied for Khalid, viewing him as the most likely to guarantee their privileges due to his blood ties to their tribes, Husayn ibn Numayr al-Sakuni and Rawh ibn Zinba al-Judhami pressed for Marwan ibn al-Hakam, who, though an Umayyad from Medina with no ties to Syria or the loyalist tribes, was the most senior and experienced of the candidates.[4] After a compromise was reached recognizing Khalid as Marwan's successor, a consensus was reached and Marwan acceded.[1][5] To neutralize Khalid and his supporters, Marwan married Khalid's mother.[1][6]

Marwan viewed Khalid as politically weak and removed him from the line of succession in favor of his own son Abd al-Malik.[1] Despite this, close ties developed between Khalid and Abd al-Malik.[1] Khalid became an adviser of the caliph and married his daughter A'isha.[1] In the summer of 691, Khalid was made a commander in Abd al-Malik's siege of the Qaysi leader Zufar ibn al-Harith al-Kilabi in al-Qarqisiya in the Jazira.[1] After this victory, the caliph appointed Khalid commander of his army's left wing at the Battle of Maskin against Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr, which resulted in the Umayyad conquest of Zubayrid Iraq.[7][8] In the aftermath of the victory, Khalid gave refuge to Zufar's son Hudhayl, who despite his father's recent reconciliation with Abd al-Malik, defected to the Zubayrids. Through Khalid's good offices, Abd al-Malik pardoned Hudhayl.[9]

Khalid spent the rest of his life in Jund Hims (military district of Homs) where he was in charge of a certain amount of territory.[1] He may have engaged in some level of poetry and hadith scholarship, though historian M. Ullmann considers him to have been an "amateur" in the former and "of no importance" in the latter.[1] Khalid died in Homs in 704,[1] and was buried there.[10] In the early 10th century, a third-generation descendant of Khalid, Sa'id ibn Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, was recorded as living in Syria.[11]

Khalid was said by later Islamic sources to have become an alchemist, holding that he ordered scholars from Egypt to translate into Arabic the alchemy, medicine and astronomy works of Greek and Coptic authors, and studied alchemy under a Greek monk known as Maryanos or Stephanos. These anecdotes were not factual and stem from an earlier anecdote, recorded in the work of al-Baladhuri, that Khalid was mocked for surrendering his place in the caliphal succession and was afterward occupied pursuing an impossible task. Ullmann writes that the later legend emerged due to an interpretation that Khalid's "impossible" pursuit was alchemy. The later sources attached Khalid's name to various alchemical works, including K. Firdaws al-ḥikma.[1] Medieval Latin sources later attributed a number of alchemical treatises to a certain Calid filius Jazidi.[1]

• Ahmed, Asad Q. (2010). The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Ḥijāz: Five Prosopographical Case Studies. Oxford: University of Oxford Linacre College Unit for Prosopographical Research. ISBN 978-1-900934-13-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Hawting, G.R., ed. (1989). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XX: The Collapse of Sufyānid Authority and the Coming of the Marwānids: The Caliphates of Muʿāwiyah II and Marwān I and the Beginning of the Caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik, A.D. 683–685/A.H. 64–66. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-855-3.
• Ullmann, M. (1978). "Khālid b. Yazīd b. Muʿāwiya". In van Donzel, E.; Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch. & Bosworth, C. E. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume IV: Iran–Kha. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 929–930. OCLC 758278456.