Yahya ibn al-Hakam ibn Abi al-As (Arabic: يَحْيَى بْنِ الْحَكَم بْنِ أَبِي الْعَاص, romanized: Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥakam ibn Abī al-ʿĀṣ; died before 700) was an Umayyad statesman during the caliphate of his nephew, Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705). He fought against Caliph Ali (r. 656–661) at the Battle of the Camel and later moved to Damascus where he was a courtier of the Umayyad caliphs Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680) and Yazid I (r. 680–683). He was appointed governor of Palestine by Abd al-Malik and is credited in an inscription for building part of a road connecting Damascus to Jerusalem in 692. He served as governor of Medina for a year in 694/95 and afterward led a series of expeditions against the Byzantine Empire along the northern frontier of Syria.

Life

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 was found in Katzrin in the Golan Heights. The epitaph, in Kufic Arabic script, reads "May my Lord have mercy on Yahya ibn al-Hakam and forgive him".^[10]

Family and descendants

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.

References

Bibliography

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• 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.