The Umayyad period was a crucial one for the development of Islam and Islamic culture. At the beginning of the ninety years of Umayyad rule over the Middle East, the region had only recently been conquered by the Arabs, and there is little unambiguous evidence about the development of Islam at that time. By the time the dynasty was overthrown, the Arabic languages and culture had made substantial progress among the many non-Arab conquered peoples, many of the religious and social features that we recognize as distinctly Islamic had begun to crystallize, and large numbers of the subject peoples had entered Islam.
Hawting provides an introductory survey of the period of the Umayyad dynasty. The historical evidence is often susceptible to widely differing interpretations. While the author is not mainly concerned here with analysis of the sources, he does provide some discussion of them and the problems associated with using them. He discusses the continuing debate about the place of the Umayyads in Arab and Islamic history, a debate that continues to produce heated argument.
