661–750 CE
Umayyad Period
The Umayyad Caliphate (41–132 AH / 661–750 CE) succeeded the Rashidun period following the First Fitna. Ruling from Damascus, the Umayyads oversaw the Arabization of imperial administration, the introduction of an epigraphic gold and silver coinage without figural imagery, and major building projects, most famously the Dome of the Rock (72 AH / 691–692 CE) and the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus.
Content from this period
- Research Paper
The Dome of the Rock Inscriptions and Early Islamic Identity
What the 72 AH Dome of the Rock inscriptions can and cannot tell historians about the state of the Qur'anic text and Islamic religious identity at the end of the first Islamic century.
- Research Paper
Islam: History, Authority and the Development of Islamic Tradition
A historical-critical review of the Qur'an and Hadith as sources of religious authority in Islam, distinguishing established fact, scholarly consensus, majority and minority opinion, disputed claims, and theological interpretation at every step.
- Research Paper
Women in Mainstream Islam: Protection, Restriction, and the Historical Development of Religious Practice
A historical-critical review testing whether practices commonly described as Islamic requirements for women — segregation, face-veiling, travel guardianship, exclusion from mosques and public office — rest on the Qur'an itself or on later hadith, jurisprudence, dynastic custom, and regional practice.
- Article
Islam: A Reader's Guide to the Qur'an, Hadith and Early Islamic History
A plain-language companion to Revert Way's academic review of the Qur'an and Hadith: the same evidence, sources, and arguments, with every technical term and historical figure introduced on first use.
- Evidence Library
The Standing Caliph Dinar
A transitional gold coin type issued under Abd al-Malik depicting the caliph before the 77 AH reform replaced all figural imagery with epigraphy.
- Evidence Library
The Dome of the Rock Inscriptions (72 AH / 691–692 CE)
A monumental Kufic inscription band, roughly 240 meters long, running around the interior and exterior arcades of the Dome of the Rock: the earliest securely dated substantial body of Qur'anic-related text.