Muhammad ibn Marwan

Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad ibn Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam (died 719/720) was an Umayyad prince and one of the most important generals of the Umayyad Caliphate in the period 690–710, and the one who completed the Arab conquest of Armenia. He defeated the Byzantines and conquered their Armenian territories, crushed an Armenian rebellion in 704–705 and made the country into an Umayyad province. His son Marwan II was the last Umayyad caliph. Life Muhammad was the son of Caliph Marwan I by a slave girl named Zaynab, and hence half-brother to Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. When Marwan assumed the throne, he sent Muhammad to Upper Mesopotamia to secure Armenia. In 691, he commanded his brother's advance guard at the Battle of Maskin against Mus'ab ibn al-Zubayr (brother of the Mecca-based rival caliph Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr). In 692/3, he defeated a Byzantine army in the Battle of Sebastopolis, by persuading the large Slavic contingent of the imperial army to defect to him. In the next year, he invaded Byzantine Asia Minor with the assistance of the same Slavs, and scored a success against a Byzantine army near Germanikeia, while in 695, he raided the province of Fourth Armenia. In 699–701, along with his nephew, Abdallah ibn Abd al-Malik, he was dispatched to Iraq to assist the governor al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf in the suppression of the rebellion of Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath. In 701 Muhammad campaigned against the Byzantine-controlled Armenian territory east of the Euphrates, and forced its population and the local governor, Baanes, to submit to the Caliphate. Soon after his departure, however, the Armenians rebelled and called for Byzantine aid. Repeated campaigns in 703 and 704 by Muhammad and Abdallah ibn Abd al-Malik crushed the revolt, and Muhammad further secured Muslim control by organizing a large-scale massacre of the Armenian princely families in 705.