Yazid ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (Arabic: يَزِيد ٱبْن عَبْد الْمَلِك ٱبْن مَرْوَان, romanized: Yazīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān; c. 690/91 — 26 January 724), commonly known as Yazid II, was the ninth Umayyad caliph, ruling from 720 until his death in 724. Although he lacked administrative or military experience, he derived prestige from his lineage, being a descendant of both ruling branches of the Umayyad dynasty, the Sufyanids who founded the Umayyad Caliphate in 661 and the Marwanids who succeeded them in 684. He was designated by his half-brother, Caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik (r. 715–717), as second-in-line to the succession after their cousin Umar (r. 717–720), as a compromise with the sons of Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705).
He reversed the reformist policies of Umar, mainly by reimposing the jizya (poll tax) on the mawali (non-Arab Muslim converts) and resuming the war efforts on the frontiers of the Caliphate, especially against the Khazars in the Caucasus and the Byzantines in Anatolia. Yazid's moves were in line with the desires of the Arab militarist camp and the Umayyad dynasty but did not solve the fiscal crisis of the Caliphate as war booty had become insufficient and the reimposition of the jizya met strong resistance from the converted populations in the large provinces of Khurasan and Ifriqiya. He issued an iconoclastic edict whereby Christian icons were destroyed in churches across the caliphate, influencing the Byzantine emperor Leo III (r. 717–741) to institute a similar edict in his domains.
Yazid reintroduced Syrian troops to enforce Umayyad rule in Iraq, where their domination was long resented. One of the first events of his reign was the wide-scale rebellion of the Iraqis under Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, whose suppression marked the end to the serious anti-Umayyad revolts in the restive province. Ibn al-Muhallab was a champion of the Yamanis and Yazid's appointment of Qaysi partisans to rule Iraq escalated the factional tensions there, though elsewhere Yazid balanced the interests of the two rival factions. The deadly suppression of the Muhallabids became a rallying cry for revenge during the Abbasid Revolution, which toppled the Umayyads in 750.
Yazid was born in Damascus, the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, c. 690/91. He was the son of Caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) and his influential wife Atika, the daughter of Yazid II's namesake, Caliph Yazid I (r. 680–683). Sources occasionally refer to him as 'Ibn Atika'. His kunya (patronymic) was Abu Khalid and he was nicknamed al-Fata (lit. 'the Youth'). Yazid II's pedigree united his father's Marwanid branch of the Umayyad dynasty, in power since 684, and the Sufyanid branch of Yazid I and the latter's father Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), founder of the Umayyad Caliphate.
Yazid did not possess military or administrative experience before his reign. He rarely left Syria except for a number of visits to the Hejaz (western Arabia, home of the Islamic holy cities Mecca and Medina), including once for the annual Hajj pilgrimage sometime between 715 and 717.
He was possibly granted control of the region around Amman by Abd al-Malik. He built the desert palaces of al-Qastal and al-Muwaqqar, both in the general vicinity of Amman. The palaces are conventionally dated to his caliphate, though a number of archaeologists suggest Yazid began their construction before 720.
Yazid established marital ties to the family of al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (d. 714), the powerful viceroy of Iraq for his father, Caliph Abd al-Malik, and brother, al-Walid I (r. 705–715). He married al-Hajjaj's niece, Umm al-Hajjaj, the daughter of Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi. During her uncle's lifetime, she gave birth to Yazid's sons: al-Hajjaj, who died young, and al-Walid II, who became caliph in 743. Yazid was also married to Su'da bint Abd Allah ibn Amr, a great-granddaughter of Caliph Uthman (r. 644–656), who mothered Yazid's son and daughter Abd Allah and Aisha. Su'da's cousin, Sa'id ibn Khalid ibn Amr ibn Uthman, is held by the 9th-century historian al-Ya'qubi to have "exercised the most influence upon Yazīd". Yazid had also taken two singers Sallama al-Qass and Habbaba as concubines. Overall, Yazid had six children from his two wives and eight by slave concubines. His other sons were al-Nu'man, Yahya, Muhammad, al-Ghamr, Sulayman, Abd al-Jabbar, Dawud, Abu Sulayman, al-Awwam and Hashim.
By dint of his descent, Yazid was a natural candidate for the succession to the caliphate. A noble Arab maternal lineage held political weight during this period in the Caliphate's history, and Yazid took pride in his maternal Sufyanid descent, viewing himself superior to his paternal half-brothers. He was chosen by his half-brother Caliph Sulayman (r. 715–717) as the second-in-line in the caliphal succession after their first cousin, Umar, who ruled from 717 to 720. Yazid acceded at the age of 29 after the death of Umar on 9 February 720. For most of his reign, he resided in Damascus or his estates in Jund al-Urdunn (the military district of Jordan), which was centered in Tiberias and roughly corresponded with the Byzantine province of Palaestina Secunda.
Suppression of the Muhallabids
Shortly before or immediately after Yazid's accession, the veteran commander and disgraced governor of Iraq and the vast eastern province of Khurasan, Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, escaped from Aleppo where Umar had him imprisoned. During Sulayman's reign, Ibn al-Muhallab, an enemy of al-Hajjaj, had been responsible for the torture and deaths of members of al-Hajjaj's family, Yazid's in-laws, and feared retaliatory maltreatment when Yazid's accession became apparent. Yazid had long-held suspicions of the influence and ambitions of the Muhallabid family in Iraq and the eastern Caliphate.
Evading the pursuit of Umayyad commanders, Ibn al-Muhallab reached Basra, one of the main garrison towns of Iraq and the center of his family and tribe, the Azd Uman. On Yazid's orders, Basra's governor Adi ibn Artat al-Fazari arrested many of Ibn al-Muhallab's brothers and cousins before his arrival to the city. Ibn al-Muhallab, backed by his Yamani factional allies in the Basra garrison defeated and captured Ibn Artat. The Qays–Mudar factions of Basra, though traditional rivals of the Yaman and unsympathetic to Ibn al-Muhallab, did not oppose him. Yazid pardoned Ibn al-Muhallab, but Ibn al-Muhallab declared jihad (holy war) against the caliph and the Syrian troops who enforced Umayyad rule in Iraq. Most of the Syrians had already been withdrawn from their base at Wasit under Umar, and Ibn al-Muhallab captured the city with ease. Most of the qurra (pious Qur'an readers) and the mawali (non-Arab Muslim converts) of Basra supported Ibn al-Muhallab's cause, except the prominent theologian al-Hasan al-Basri. The Iranian dependencies of Basra, namely Ahwaz, Fars and Kerman, joined the revolt, though not Khurasan, where Qays–Mudar troops counterbalanced the pro-Muhallabid Yamani faction in the province's garrisons.
Ibn al-Muhallab advanced on Kufa, the other main garrison center of Iraq, where he attracted support across the tribal spectrum and among many of its noble Arab households. In the meantime, Yazid dispatched his kinsmen, the veteran commanders Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik and al-Abbas ibn al-Walid, to suppress the revolt. They killed Ibn al-Muhallab and routed his army near Kufa on 24 August 720. Yazid ordered the executions of the roughly two hundred prisoners-of-war captured from Ibn al-Muhallab's camp, while Ibn al-Muhallab's son Mu'awiya ordered the execution of Ibn Artat and his thirty supporters incarcerated in Wasit. Afterward, the Umayyad authorities pursued and killed many of the Muhallabids, including nine to fourteen boys who were sent to Yazid and executed by his order. The Muhallabid revolt's suppression marked the last of the great anti-Umayyad uprisings in Iraq.
Escalation of Qays–Yaman factionalism
The defeat of the Yamani Muhallabids signaled a triumph for the Qays–Mudar faction in the province and its eastern dependencies. As governor of Iraq, Yazid appointed the pro-Qaysi Maslama, who was dismissed for not forwarding the provincial tax surplus to the caliph's treasury, and then Maslama's Qaysi lieutenant, Umar ibn Hubayra al-Fazari. According to the historian Julius Wellhausen, "the proscription of the whole of the prominent and powerful [Muhallabid] family, a measure hitherto unheard of in the history of the Umaiyids [sic], came like a declaration of war against the Yemen [faction] in general, and the corollary was that the government was degenerating into a Qaisite party-rule". Wellhausen blamed the caliph for the escalation of factionalism and attributed the appointment of Ibn Hubayra to his own desire for revenge against the Muhallabids' Yamani backers. The Yamani-affiliated tribes of Khurasan viewed the events as a humiliation, and during the Abbasid Revolution which toppled the Umayyads in 750, they adopted as one of their slogans "revenge for the Banu Muhallab [Muhallabids]".