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[COLOR="Blue"]The Umayyad Dynasty (Arabic بنو أمية banū umayya / الأمويون al-umawiyyūn, Persian امویان Omaviyân, Turkish Emevi), also "Umawi", was the first dynasty of caliphs of the Islamic empire after the reign of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs (Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali) ended.

Overview
The term "Umayyad" is Greek, referring to "Banu Umayyah" those descended from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of Muawiya I. Most historians consider the dynasty to begin with Muawiya ibn Abu Sufyan, because Muawiya was the first to assert the Umayyads' right to rule on a dynastic principle. Caliph Uthman before him was also a descendent of Umayya, and during his time had been criticised for placing members of his family within political positions (for which he was murdered); however since he never declared an heir he cannot be considered the founder of a dynasty.

Umayya and the Prophet Muhammad both descended from a common ancestor Abd-Munaf. One son of Abd-Munaf was Hashim, whose son was Abdul Muttalib, whose son was Abdullah, whose son was Prophet Muhammad. Another son of Abd Munaf was Abd-Shams, whose son was Umayya. The clans of Hashim and Umayya both belonged to the Quraish tribe named after an ancestor of Abd-Munaf. The Umayyads thereby claimed to be the "people of the House"; which claim was countered by the Alids and (later) the Abbasids, whose relations to the Prophet were closer. However in accordance with the Shi'a Islam History Umayya was not the real son of Abd-Shams. Abd-Shams did not have any child. He was visiting Rome where saw a child being sold in miserable conditions. Being childless he adopted Ummaya and took him to Arabia where he was brought up. When Ummaya was young he departed from Quraish tribe.

The Umayyad clan had bitter rivalry with the Hashim clan (from which came the Abbasid clan), especially as Abu Sufian was the most determined and bitterest enemy of Muhammad, and sought to exterminate the adherents of the new religion, by waging a series of battles. But at last, Abu Sufian embraced Islam, and so did his son Muawiya, and they provided much needed political and diplomatic skills for the management and expansion of the fast growing Islamic empire.

Muawiya's personal dynasty, the "Sufyanids", reigned only from CE 661 to CE 683, when his son Yazid died with no credible heirs. The Umayyads and their supporters then rallied around the "Marwanids" descended from Marwan, 684-750. After that the Abbasids took over the Near East and killed nearly all Umayyads there. Some Sufyanid pretenders occasionally rebelled in Syria, although these were generally not accepted as genuine members of the family. 'Abd al-Rahman of the Marwanids survived in the Al-Andalus (Moorish Iberia), and later proclaimed his family as the Umayyad Caliphate revived[/COLOR]