Yahya ibn al-Hakam

Yahya was a son of al-Hakam ibn Abi al-As and a younger half-brother of Caliph Marwan I (r. 684–685).[1][2] His mother hailed from the Banu Murra tribe of Ghatafan.[1] He fought alongside Marwan and their brother Abd al-Rahman and other senior leaders of the Quraysh against Caliph Ali (r. 656–661) at the Battle of the Camel in 656.[1][2] Ali was victorious and Yahya, wounded, found safety with a member of the large Banu Tamim tribe in Basra.[1] This tribesman escorted him to the headquarters of his distant cousin, the governor of Syria, Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, in Damascus.[1] He stayed in the city through the course of Mu'awiya's caliphate (661–680) and that of his son and successor, Yazid I (r. 680–683).[1] Yahya publicly condemned the slaying of Ali's son and the Islamic prophet Muhammad's grandson, Husayn, by Yazid's army at the Battle of Karbala in 680.[1]

At some point between 685 and 694, Yahya's nephew, the caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (r. 685–705), appointed him the governor of Palestine.[1][3] Yahya was mentioned in an inscription on a milestone found near Samakh that credited him for supervising the construction of a road through the Fiq pass in the Golan Heights on behalf of Abd al-Malik.[4][5] The inscription dates to May/June 692,[6] making it the oldest known Islamic inscription about the foundation of a road.[7]

In 694/95, Yahya was appointed governor of Medina.[8] He was recalled to Damascus in the following year,[1] during which he led a summer campaign against the Byzantines in the general vicinity of Malatya and al-Massisa. In 697/98, he led a campaign against the Byzantine fortress at Marj al-Shahm.[9] This may have occurred in 698/699.[1] Yahya died prior to 700.[1] His tombstone, which in Kufic Arabic script reads "May my Lord have mercy on Yahya ibn al-Hakam and forgive him" was found in Katzrin in the Golan Heights.[10]

One of Yahya's wives during his governorship of Medina was Umm al-Qasim al-Sughra, a daughter of a leading companion of Muhammad, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf.[11] A son of Yahya, Yusuf, served as governor of Mosul toward the end of Abd al-Malik's reign, and his son al-Hurr and grandson Yahya ibn al-Hurr each served terms in the province in 727–732 and 732, respectively.[12] One of Yahya's daughters, Amina, was wed to Abd al-Malik's son, the future caliph Hisham.[13] Afterward,[14] another daughter, Umm Hakim, who, like her mother Zaynab bint Abd al-Rahman, was well-known for her beauty and love for wine,[15] married Hisham and bore the latter five sons,[16] including Sulayman,[17] Maslama,[18] Yazid al-Afqam,[19] and Mu'awiya.[11] The latter's son, Abd al-Rahman I, went on to found the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba in modern-day Spain in 756.

• 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.
• Crone, Patricia (1980). Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52940-9.
• Gil, Moshe (1997) [1983]. A History of Palestine, 634–1099. Translated by Ethel Broido. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59984-9.
• Blankinship, Khalid Yahya, ed. (1989). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XXV: The End of Expansion: The Caliphate of Hishām, A.D. 724–738/A.H. 105–120. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-569-9.
• Hillenbrand, Carole, ed. (1989). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XXVI: The Waning of the Umayyad Caliphate: Prelude to Revolution, A.D. 738–744/A.H. 121–126. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-810-2.
• Intagliata, Emanuele E. (2018) [1950]. Palmyra after Zenobia AD 273-750: An Archaeological and Historical Reappraisal. Oxford: Oxbow Books. ISBN 978-1-78570-942-5.
• Judd, Steven (July–September 2008). "Reinterpreting al-Walīd b. Yazīd". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 128 (3): 439–458. JSTOR 25608405.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Robinson, Chase F. (2004). Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-511-03072-X.
• Rowson, Everett K., ed. (1989). The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XXII: The Marwānid Restoration: The Caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik, A.D. 693–701/A.H. 74–81. SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-975-8.
• Madelung, Wilferd (1997). The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56181-7.
• "Museum Notes". Museum Notes. New York: American Numismatic Society. 19: 178, note 53. 1974.
• Sharon, Moshe (June 1966). "An Arabic Inscription from the Time of the Caliph 'Abd al-Malik". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 29 (2): 367–372. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00058900.
• Sharon, Moshe (2004). Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae (CIAP): D-F. Volume Three. Leiden and Boston: Brill. ISBN 90-04-13197-3.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)