Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan: Arabic offices, new coins and the octagonal domed shrine

Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ruled from Damascus from 685 to 705. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, he was the fifth caliph of the Umayyad dynasty. He reorganised the machinery of government and made Arabic the official language across the empire. His name is linked today with three things: the Arabic of government offices, new gold and silver coins bearing only inscriptions, and the octagonal domed building in Jerusalem known as the Dome of the Rock.

Early life

According to Britannica, Abd al-Malik was born in Medina in 646 or 647. His father, Marwan ibn al-Hakam, later became the fourth Umayyad caliph, from 684 to 685. Abd al-Malik spent the first half of his life with his father in Medina and was educated there. Britannica says he was given administrative responsibilities at the age of 16. He stayed in Medina until 683, after which he went to Syria with his father.

Accession

After his father Marwan died in 685, Abd al-Malik became caliph. Damascus remained his capital.

Arabic, the language of government offices

According to the German historian Julius Wellhausen, accounts in the government office in Damascus were kept in Greek, and in Kufa in Persian. Abd al-Malik decided that all office work should be done in Arabic. Citing the early historian al-Baladhuri, Wellhausen writes that in Damascus the task was given to Sulayman ibn Sa’d, who completed it in a year. As a reward he received the land tax of the Jordan region for one year, which amounted to 180,000 dinars.

According to Encyclopaedia Iranica, the change in Iraq took place in 697, when the governor Hajjaj ibn Yusuf moved the office to Arabic with the technical help of Salih ibn Abd al-Rahman, a Persian scribe from Sistan. Iranica adds that the process was gradual rather than sudden, and that in distant provinces such as Khorasan, Arabic replaced Persian only towards the end of the Umayyad period.

According to Wellhausen, only the language changed. The old system of accounting remained the same, and old officials who knew Arabic kept their posts.

Coinage and finance

Before Abd al-Malik, the empire mostly used Byzantine gold coins and silver coins of Sasanian Iran. According to the British historian William Muir, Abd al-Malik set up a royal mint in Damascus, where gold dinars and silver dirhams began to be struck.

Early accounts differ on when this reform began. According to Wellhausen, al-Baladhuri writes that gold coins began to be made in Damascus in 74 AH and silver coins in Kufa late in 75 AH, while al-Waqidi gives the year as 76 AH. Some dinars of the early years also carried a standing figure of the caliph.

Then, in 77 AH (696-697), a new and lasting design appeared. According to Qatar Museums records, Abd al-Malik that year removed images of every kind from coins, and the new coins carried only Arabic inscriptions giving the type of coin, the year and sometimes the name of the mint. A Harvard record lists a dinar of 77 AH weighing 4.25 grams, with an inscription on its edge saying the dinar was struck in the year 77. These dinars did not carry the name of the mint, but Qatar Museums says they are believed to have been made in Damascus.

The postal system

The Umayyad government ran a postal system, called the “barid”, to carry official letters and news to the capital. According to Iranica, a separate barid office had already been set up in the Umayyad period in the time of Muawiya. An introduction to an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, however, describes Abd al-Malik as the ruler who established the postal system and a unified currency based on Damascus. It can therefore be said that the barid already existed and was further organised during Abd al-Malik’s reign.

The orientalist C. E. Bosworth writes in Iranica that barid couriers travelled on mules, horses or camels, or on foot, and carried official mail to the central office in Damascus, while private letters were carried only in exceptional cases.

Architecture: the Dome of the Rock

The best-known building of Abd al-Malik’s reign is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. According to Britannica, an inscription inside the building dates its construction to 72 AH (691-692), and this is generally accepted as the year of its completion. Britannica describes it as the oldest surviving monument of Islamic architecture.

The building has an octagonal plan. According to Britannica, at its centre is a gilded wooden dome about 20 metres in diameter. The dome rests on a high drum, which is supported by a circle of 16 piers and columns. Around this circle runs an octagonal ambulatory of 24 piers and columns. The outer walls are also octagonal, and each wall is about 18 metres wide and 11 metres high. Both the dome and the walls have many windows.

Marble, mosaic and metal plaques were used inside and outside. According to Britannica, the mosaics resemble those of Byzantine buildings in technique, but contain no human or animal figures. In their place are vegetal designs, Arabic inscriptions and images of jewels and crowns. The basic structure of the building has survived to this day, although its decoration has been changed several times. In the 16th century the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I replaced the outer mosaics with coloured ceramic tiles, and in the 20th century a new gold covering was put on the dome.

Death

According to Britannica, early sources describe Abd al-Malik as eloquent and fond of poetry, and as a ruler who personally supervised all affairs of government.

According to Wellhausen, Abd al-Malik died in Damascus on 14 Shawwal 86 AH, which is 9 October 705. Early accounts give his age as between 58 and 63, and Wellhausen prefers 60. According to Britannica, he had named his three sons, Walid, Sulayman and Yazid, as successors in turn, and after him his eldest son Walid became caliph without difficulty.

Legacy

Wellhausen writes that Abd al-Malik is called the “father of kings”, because four of his sons, Walid, Sulayman, Yazid II and Hisham, became caliphs after him, and only two of the later Umayyad caliphs were not his direct descendants.

Three marks of his reign survive today: the tradition of Arabic as an official language; the inscription-only dinars, examples of which are kept in the world’s major museums; and the octagonal domed building in Jerusalem, which, 13 centuries later, still stands with its original structure.