Muslims Till Death:
ASSALAAMU ALAYKUM WARAHMATULLAH WABARAKAATUHU . LET'S START TONIGHT'S EDUCATION. OUR TOPIC IS 👇. *THE STORY OF MU'AWIYA BUN ABU SUFYAN (r.t.a) (Episode 2)*___*PAGE 1*___
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Moreover, the focus of Arabian tribal migration was toward the Sasanian front in Iraq. Mu'awiya restored, repopulated and garrisoned the coastal cities of Antioch, Balda, Tartus, Maraqiya and Baniyas. In Tripoli he settled significant numbers of Jews, while sending to Homs, Antioch and Baalbek Persian holdovers from the Sasanian occupation of Byzantine Syria in the early 7th century. Upon Uthman's direction, Mu'awiya settled groups of the nomadic Tamim, Asad and Qays tribes to areas north of the Euphrates in the vicinity of Raqqa. Mu'awiya oversaw a liberal recruitment policy that resulted in considerable numbers of Christian tribesmen and frontier peasants fill the ranks of his regular and auxiliary forces.
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Indeed, the Christian Tanukhids and the mixed Muslim–Christian Banu Tayy formed part of Mu'awiya's army in northern Syria. To help pay for his troops, Mu'awiya requested and was granted ownership by Uthman of the abundant, income-producing, Byzantine crown lands in Syria, which were previously designated by Umar as communal property for the Muslim army. Though Syria's rural, Aramaic Christian population remained largely intact, the Muslim conquest had caused a mass flight of Greek Christian urbanites from Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia and Tripoli to Byzantine territory, while those who remained held pro-Byzantine sympathies. According to the historian J. W. Jandora, "Mu'awiya was thus confronted with a population problem".
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In contrast to the other conquered regions of the Caliphate where new garrison cities were established to house Muslim troops and their administration, in Syria the troops settled in existing cities, including Damascus, Homs, Jerusalem, Tiberias, Aleppo and Qinnasrin. Mu'awiya restored, repopulated and garrisoned the coastal cities of Antioch, Balda, Tartus, Maraqiya and Baniyas. In Tripoli he settled significant numbers of Jews, while sending to Homs, Antioch and Baalbek Persian holdovers from the Sasanian occupation of Byzantine Syria in the early 7th century. Upon Uthman's direction, Mu'awiya settled groups of the nomadic Tamim, Asad and Qays tribes to areas north of the Euphrates in the vicinity of Raqqa.
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Mu'awiya initiated the Arab naval campaigns against the Byzantines in the eastern Mediterranean, requisitioning the harbors of Tripoli, Beirut, Tyre, Acre, and Jaffa. Umar had rejected Mu'awiya's request to launch a naval invasion of Cyprus, citing concerns about the Muslim forces' safety at sea, but Uthman allowed him to commence the campaign in 647, after refusing an earlier entreaty. The governor's rationale was that the Byzantine-held island posed a threat to Arab positions along the Syrian coast and it could be easily neutralized. The exact year of the raid is unclear with the traditional Arabic sources citing 647/48, 648/49 or 649/50, while two Greek inscriptions in the Cypriot village of Solois cite two raids launched between 648 and 650.
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According to the 9th-century Muslim historians al-Baladhuri and Khalifa ibn Khayyat, Mu'awiya led the raid in person accompanied by his wife Katwa bint Qaraza ibn Abd Amr of the Qurayshite Banu Nawfal alongside the commander Ubada ibn al-Samit. Katwa died on the island and at some point Mu'awiya married her sister Fakhita.
In a different narrative, the raid was conducted by Mu'awiya's admiral Abd Allah ibn Qays, who landed at Salamis before occupying the island. In either case, the Cypriots were forced to pay a tribute equal to that which they paid the Byzantines. Mu'awiya established a city with a garrison and a mosque to maintain the Caliphate's influence in the island, which became a staging ground for the Arabs and the Byzantines to launch raids against each other's territories.
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The inhabitants of Cyprus were largely left to their own devices and archaeological evidence indicates uninterrupted prosperity during this period. Mu'awiya's naval forces to raid Crete and Rhodes in 653. From the raid on Rhodes, Mu'awiya remitted significant war spoils to Uthman. In 654/55, a joint naval expedition launched from Alexandria, Egypt and the harbors of Syria routed a Byzantine fleet commanded by Constans II off the Lycian coast at the Battle of the Masts. Constans II was forced to sail to Sicily, opening the way for an ultimately unsuccessful Arab naval attack on Constantinople. The Arabs were commanded by the governor of Egypt Abd Allah ibn Abi Sarh or Mu'awiya's lieutenant Abu'l-A'war.
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Meanwhile, after two previous attempts by the Arabs to conquer Armenia, a third attempt in 650 ended with a three-year truce reached between Mu'awiya and the Byzantine envoy Procopios in Damascus. In 653, Muawiya received the submission of the Armenian leader Theodore Rshtuni, which the Byzantine emperor Constans II (r. 641–668) practically conceded when he withdrew from Armenia that year. In 655, Mu'awiya's lieutenant commander Habib ibn Maslama al-Fihri in captured Theodosiopolis and deported Rshtuni to Syria, solidifying Arab rule over Armenia. Mu'awiya's domain was generally immune to the growing discontent prevailing in Medina, Egypt and Kufa against Uthman's policies in the 650s.
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The exception was Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, who had been sent to Damascus for openly condemning Uthman's enrichment of his kinsmen. He criticized the lavish sums that Mu'awiya invested in building his Damascus residence, the Khadra Palace, prompting the governor to expel him. Uthman's confiscation of crown lands in Iraq and his nepotism drove the Quraysh and the dispossessed elites of Kufa and Egypt to oppose the caliph. In some report, Uthman sent for assistance from Mu'awiya when rebels from Egypt besieged his home in June 656. Mu'awiya dispatched a relief army toward Medina, but it withdrew at Wadi al-Qura when word reached of Uthman's slaying. Ali, Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, was recognized as caliph in Medina, but was soon after opposed by much of the Quraysh led by al-Zubayr and Talha, both prominent companions , and A'isha(rta), who feared the loss of their own influence and that of their tribe under Ali.
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In some reports Uthman decline the support from Muawiyah. The latter defeated the triumvirate near Basra at the Battle of the Camel, which ended in the deaths of al-Zubayr and Talha, both potential contenders for the caliphate, and the retirement of A'isha to Mecca.
With his position in Iraq, Egypt and Arabia secure, Ali turned his attention toward Mu'awiya, who, unlike the other provincial governors, had a strong and loyal power base, demanded revenge for the slaying of his Umayyad kinsman Uthman and could not be easily replaced.
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At this point, Mu'awiya did not yet claim the caliphate and his principal aim was to keep power in Syria. For seven months from the date of Ali's election there had been no formal relations between the caliph and the governor of Syria. Ali's victory in Basra left Mu'awiya vulnerable, his territory wedged between Ali's forces in Iraq and Egypt to the east and west, while the war with the Byzantines was ongoing in the north.
After failing to gain the defection of Egypt's governor, Qays ibn Sa'd, he resolved to end the Umayyad family's hostility to Amr ibn al-As, the conqueror and former governor of Egypt, whom they accused of involvement in Uthman's death.
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End of Today's Education. Subhaanaka Allaahumma wabihamdika asha-hadu an laa ilaaha illaa Anta astagfiruka wa atuubu ilaika. Suggestions and problems are welcome. *We shall continue on this story in sha Allah* . May HE strengthen and make us steadfast in faith. May HE accept our ibaadat and grant us the Good in this World and the Hereafter. May Allah Azza wa jalla forgive and grant us Jannah...AMIN
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