معاوية

Army of Yazid

Mu‘awiya ibn Abi Sufyan

Architect of the dynasty

He turned leadership into inheritance.

Mu‘awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, of the Umayyad clan, governed Syria for some two decades and built his power on the public treasury and an extensive network of agents.

He fought Imam ‘Ali (a), pressured Imam al-Hasan (a) into a peace treaty, and then broke its terms. In his final years he engineered the succession of his son Yazid — introducing inherited monarchy into the leadership of the Muslims and setting the stage for the tragedy of Karbala.